Male pufferfish (Torquigener albomaculosus) construct “mystery circles”, geometric circular structures with radially aligned peaks and valleys, on sandy seabeds for reproduction. We discovered an earliest-stage mystery circle composed of dozens of irregular depressions. The structure changed to a primitive circular form with radially aligned valleys and a circular depression in the central area...

The McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica are considered to be one of the most physically and chemically extreme terrestrial environments on the Earth. However, little is known about the organisms involved in nitrogen transformations in these environments. In this study, we investigated the diversity and abundance of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and bacteria (AOB) in four McMurdo Dry Valleys wit...

Introduction: Most of the cratered uplands of Mars are dissected by networks of branching valleys, whose evolutionary history is still controversial [e.g. 1, 2]. The valleys show branching patterns closely analogous to terrestrial fluvial valleys, which may indicate that the valleys were cut primarily by surface runoff after precipitation [2]. However, short, stubby tributaries and amphitheater...

The modern Antarctic Dry Valleys are locked in a hyper-arid, polar climate that enables the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) to remain stable, frozen to underlying bedrock. The duration of these dry, cold conditions is a critical prerequisite when modeling the long-term mass balance of the EAIS during past warm climates and is best examined using terrestrial paleoclimatic proxies. Unfortunately,...

Montane species distributions interrupted by valleys can lead to range fragmentation, differentiation and ultimately speciation. Paleoclimatic fluctuations may accentuate or reduce such diversification by temporally altering the extent of montane habitat and may affect species differentially. We examined how an entire montane bird community of the Western Ghats--a linear, coastal tropical mount...

Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) is associated with an unstable CGG repeat sequence in the 5' untranslated region in the first exon of the FMR1 gene which resides at chromosome position Xq27.3 and is coincident with the fragile site FRAXA. The CGG sequence is polymorphic with respect to size and purity of the repeat. Interpopulation variation in the polymorphism of the FMR1 gene and consequently, in th...

This paper deals with the enumeration of k-colored Motzkin paths with a fixed number of (left and right) peaks and valleys. Further enumeration results are obtained when peaks and valleys are counted at low and high level. Many well-known results for Dyck paths are obtained as special cases.

In the basic fitness landscape metaphor for molecular evolution, evolutionary pathways are presumed to follow uphill steps of increasing fitness. How evolution can cross fitness valleys is an open question. One possibility is that environmental changes alter the fitness landscape such that low-fitness sequences reside on a hill in alternate environments. We experimentally test this hypothesis o...

urban landscape structural analysis; focused on the remnant patch mosaic network as the component with closest interdependency with air and water related processes was undertaken to find and propose environmental planning suggestions.assessments demonstrate that remnant patch mosaic network structure of tehran is still restorable. with appropriate corrective measures based on the natural lay ou...