Growth and pubertal development are important health markers. We used the data of a longitudinal growth study on a contemporary sample of US youth to examine the relationship between peak height velocity (PHV) and Tanner staging. We observed a substantial variability in the timing of PHV across Tanner stages, which is an important consideration for clinicians when assessing growth.

In this article, the homogenization process of periodic structures is analyzed using Bloch waves in the case of system of linear elasticity in three dimensions. The Bloch wave method for homogenization relies on the regularity of the lower Bloch spectrum. For the three dimensional linear elasticity system, the first eigenvalue is degenerate of multiplicity three and hence existence of such a re...

The widespread replacement of native species with cosmopolitan, nonnative species is homogenizing the global fauna and flora. While the empirical study of biotic homogenization is substantial and growing, theoretical aspects have yet to be explored. Consequently, the breadth of possible ecological mechanisms that can shape current and future patterns and rates of homogenization remain largely u...

Species homogenization or floristic differentiation are two possible consequences of the fragmentation process in plant communities. Despite the few studies, it seems clear that fragments with low forest cover inserted in anthropogenic matrices are more likely to experience floristic homogenization. However, the homogenization process has two other components, genetic and functional, which have...

The copper–gold ores of the Moonta mineral field, in the eastern part of the Archaean–Mesoproterozoic Gawler Craton, South Australia, are vein deposits occupying fractures and shear zones within the Palaeoproterozoic Moonta Porphyry. The veins show a spatial relationship with Mesoproterozoic granites, equivalents of the Hiltaba Suite granites that are widespread in the Gawler Craton. The ores w...

Abstract. Homogenization of integral functionals is studied under the constraint that admissible maps have to take their values into a given smooth manifold. The notion of tangential homogenization is defined by analogy with the tangential quasiconvexity introduced by Dacorogna, Fonseca, Malý & Trivisa [18]. For energies with superlinear or linear growth, a Γ-convergence result is established i...

Human population and urbanization is unprecedented in its rate of growth and geographic scope. With the help of humans, exotic species have piggybacked their way to distant lands, which in combination with the loss of endemic native species, has led to the convergence of biological communities toward common and ubiquitous forms. However, the extent to which this ‘‘biotic homogenization’’ varies...

Considerable reshuffling of biotas has occurred in recent decades, largely through the gradual replacement of once spatially distinct, native communities with locally expanding and cosmopolitan, non-native ones, in a process coined biotic homogenization (McKinney & Lockwood 1999; Rahel 2000; Olden & Poff 2003; Rooney et al. 2004). Implications of biotic homogenization surfaced recently within t...

Quantitative studies of biotic homogenization can provide useful insights into conservation problems when used appropriately, but can be dangerously misleading when they are not. By separating the concept of biotic homogenization at the global scale from the study of biotic homogenization at spatiallyand temporally-explicit scales, researchers can avoid many of the subtle pitfalls inherent in h...