The chemical composition of the volatile metabolites of Crithmum maritimum harvested from several geographic localities along the Mediterranean coasts was studied by GC and GC-MSD. The major oil constituents were found to be dillapiole, gamma-terpinene, sabinene, limonene and beta-phellandrene. The Western populations were richer in dillapiole, whereas the Southern collections were characterize...

Tropical forests play a substantial role in the global carbon (C) cycle and are projected to experience significant environmental change, highlighting the importance of understanding the factors that control C and N cycling in this biome. Yet interactions between biogeochemical and abiotic variables, notably species diversity and precipitation, remain poorly resolved in the tropics. In a wet lo...

The kinetic of the heterogeneous chemical reaction of aluminum hydroxide and fluosilicic acid was studied. It was found that the diffusion of the reactants through the porous silica coating to the aluminum hydroxide surface and the interfacial chemical reaction between the diffusing reactant and aluminum hydroxide platelets control the overall reaction rate. These two phenomena were studied...

Understanding the scale at which natural products vary the most is critical because it sheds light on the type of factors that regulate their production. The sponge Aplysina aerophoba is a common Mediterranean sponge inhabiting shallow waters in the Mediterranean and its area of influence in Atlantic Ocean. This species contains large concentrations of brominated alkaloids (BAs) that play a num...

AIMS To determine whether there were temporal or seasonal patterns in the occurrence of chemical incidents reported to the West Midlands Chemical Incident Surveillance System, UK. METHODS A retrospective analysis of reports maintained on a computerised database was carried out for information received from January 1997 to December 2001. RESULTS Annual numbers of events increased significant...

Reindeer management in the Fennoscandian area is currently facing challenges such as degradation of winter pastures, which may lead in the most severely affected areas to a concurrent decline in reindeer herd productivity. The use of often expensive supplementary feeding to prevent production losses has increased the demand for studies on the physiological effects of nutritional restriction and...

Long-distance signalling is important for coordinating plant responses to the environment. Variation potentials (VPs) are a type of long-distance electrical signal that are generated in plants in response to wounding or flaming. Unlike self-propagating action potentials, VPs can be measured beyond regions of dead or chemically treated tissue that block signal generation, suggesting a different ...

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is widely used for pla-narization of advanced interconnect and shallow trench isolation structures in integrated circuit manufacture. Of particular concern is within-die variation in the interlevel dielectric or oxide thickness remaining after polish, due to pattern density variations across the die. 1 Recent modeling of CMP has shown that a " planarization l...

This is the first report evaluating the relationship between the chemical compositions of cumin seeds (based on the analysis of the content of catalase, ascorbate peroxidase, proline, protein, terpenic compounds, alcohol/phenols, aldehydes, and epoxides) and the induction efficiency of somatic embryogenesis in two Iranian superior cumin landraces (Golestan and North Khorasan). Cotyledons isolat...

Despite the ecological and economic importance of lignin and other wood chemical components, there are few studies of the natural genetic variation that exists within plant species and its adaptive significance. We used models developed from near infra-red spectroscopy to study natural genetic variation in lignin content and monomer composition (syringyl-to-guaiacyl ratio [S/G]) as well as cell...