Understanding the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem productivity has become a central issue in ecology and conservation biology studies, particularly when these relationships are connected with global climate change and species extinction. However, which facets of biodiversity (i.e. taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity) account most for variations in productivity are...

*Correspondence: Richard T. Sayre, Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico Consortium, 100 Entrada Dr, Los Alamos, NM 87544, USA e-mail: rsayre@newmexico consortium.org One of the most environmentally sustainable ways to produce high-energy density (oils) feed stocks for the production of liquid transportation fuels is from biomass. Photosynthetic carbon capture combined with biomass combust...

How long would it take for forests to recover their original productivity following continuous intensive management if they are left untouched? This issue was explored using the model FORECAST, calibrated and validated for coastal Douglas-fir stands on Vancouver Island (western Canada). Three types of forest management (production of timber, pulp, and biomass) were simulated, being different in...

The fluorescence of a fermentation culture was studied for its application as an estimator of biomass concentration. The measurement was obtained by irradiating the culture with ultraviolet light (366 nm) through a glass window and detecting fluorescent light at the window surface at 460 nm. It was estimated that over one-half of the fluorescent material was intercellular reduced nicotinamide a...

In some situations the producers desire to maximize total profit of Decision Making Units (DMUs) while the inputs and outputs prices of DMUs change from one time period to another. In this paper, the researchers develop productivity index when producers are going to maximize total profit when the price of inputs and outputs are known.The proposed method uses all price information about inputs a...

*Second-generation Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) have recently been developed that explicitly represent the ecological dynamics of disturbance, vertical competition for light, and succession. Here, we introduce a modified second-generation DGVM and examine how the representation of demographic processes operating at two-dimensional spatial scales not represented by these models can i...

background: this study quantified the effect of four popular culture media in a biodiesel production study on the qualitative and quantitative lipid content, dry biomass, and lipid productivity of nannochloropsis oculata. methods: culture of microalgae was done separately in walne, f/2, sato, and tmrl media. in the logarithmic and stationary growth phases, biomass production and lipid accumulat...

We performed whole-lake manipulations of fish populations to test the hypothesis that higher trophic levels regulate zooplankton and phytoplankton community structure, biomass, and primary productivity. The study involved three lakes and spanned 2 yr. Results demonstrated hierarchical control of primary production by abiotic factors and a trophic cascade involving fish predation. In Paul Lake, ...

background: due to the increasing health care costs, the issue of productivity in hospitals must be taken into great consideration in order to provide, preserve and promote public health services. thus, increasing the level of productivity must become the main aim of any hospital. objective of this study is to determine the total factor productivity and its components over the period under the ...

Vert-pre et al. (1) identified regimes in productivity for marine fish stocks, with the goal of urging management to develop strategies that are robust to regime-like behavior. Identification of drivers of productivity [i.e., is the stock driven by spawning biomass (the abundance hypothesis in Vert-pre et al.’s analysis in ref. 1) or environment (the regimes, random, and mixed hypotheses)?] is ...