One of the more important questions in hydrology is: if the climate warms in the future, will there be an intensification of the water cycle and, if so, the nature of that intensification? There is considerable interest in this question because an intensification of the water cycle may lead to changes in water-resource availability, an increase in the frequency and intensity of tropical storms,...

In this paper we address two topical questions: How do the quality of governance and agricultural intensification impact on spatial expansion of agriculture? Which aspects of governance are more likely to ensure that agricultural intensification allows sparing land for nature? Using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank, the World Database on Protected Areas, and the Y...

Originally designed to explain causes of increased productivity in agricultural systems, the concept of intensification has become widely linked to hunter-gatherer archaeology. Worldwide, recent applications show that progress has been made with regard to recognizing, describing, and modeling the declining foraging efficiency predicted by traditional intensification models that take into accoun...

Subsistence intensification – the extraction of increased amounts of energy from a given area at the expense of foraging efficiency – figures prominently in discussions of the Epipaleolithic period (ca. 21,000–11,500 cal bp). Despite their paramount status, intensification trends are not often subjected to rigorous testing using multiple archaeological data sets. This study aims to fill this ga...

BACKGROUND Regular recertification is mandatory to maintain board certification status in all specialties. However, the evidence that physicians' performance decreases with time since initial certification is limited. We therefore carried out a study to determine whether the frequency of antihypertensive treatment intensification for diabetic patients changes with time since their physicians' l...

Understanding growth patterns at the metropolitan level is instructive for better planning and policy making on sustainable urban development. Using DMSP/OLS data from 1992 to 2013, this article aims to investigate growth patterns of major metropolitans in Mainland China from the aspects of intensification and expansion. We start by calibrating the DMSP/OLS data and selecting 45 major metropoli...

BACKGROUND Hypertension is widely prevalent yet remains uncontrolled in nearly half of US hypertensive adults. Treatment intensification for hypertension reduces rates of major cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality, but clinical inertia remains a notable impediment to further improving hypertension control. This study examines the likelihood and determinants of treatment intensification...

BACKGROUND To describe common type 2 diabetes treatment intensification regimens, patients' characteristics and changes in glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) and body mass index (BMI). METHODS We constructed a national retrospective cohort of veterans initially treated for diabetes with either metformin or sulfonylurea from 2001 through 2008, using Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and Medicare d...

The overarching objective of this project is to identify impacts to tropical cyclone structure and intensity throughout the tropical cyclone lifetime. A common factor is the impact of midand upperlevel environmental conditions that affects formation and intensification of a tropical cyclone. It is hypothesized that during the formation process, the environmental interaction has maximum impact o...

Tropical cyclones (TCs) are hazardous natural disasters. Because TC intensification is significantly controlled by atmosphere and ocean environments, changes in these environments may cause changes in TC intensity. Changes in surface and subsurface ocean conditions can both influence a TC's intensification. Regarding global warming, minimal exploration of the subsurface ocean has been undertake...