A 56-year time series of human plague cases (Yersinia pestis) in the western United States was used to explore the effects of climatic patterns on plague levels. We found that the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), together with previous plague levels and above-normal temperatures, explained much of the plague variability. We propose that the PDO's impact on plague is conveyed via its effect on...

Vegetation phenology in temperate grasslands is highly sensitive to climate change. However, it is still unclear how the timing of vegetation phenology events (especially for autumn phenology) is altered in response to climate change across different grassland types. In this study, we investigated variations of the growing season start (SOS) and end (EOS), derived from Moderate Resolution Imagi...

Drought is a complex phenomenon which can be characterised mainly by its severity, duration and areal extent. Among these three dimensions, drought severity is the key factor which can be used for drought analysis. Drought indices are typically used to assess drought severity in a meaningful way. DrinC (Drought Indices Calculator) is a software package which was developed for providing a simple...

Dryland plant ecosystems tend to exhibit bistable dynamics with two preferential configurations of bare and vegetated soils. Climate fluctuations are usually believed to act as a source of disturbance on these ecosystems and to reduce their stability and resilience. In contrast, this work shows that random interannual fluctuations of precipitation may lead to the emergence of an intermediate st...

Abstract Introduction Poor sleep affects health. Noise exposure reduces and disrupts in a sex-dependent manner. Non-invasive methods to predict vigilance states have not been tested female rodents, even though is due hormonal changes across the estrous cycle. Here, we hypothesis that duration of physical inactivity (PIA) would 1) change with differences baseline between light dark cycle phases ...

A new material system that can produce very high green strength and green density has been developed for conventional compaction processing. The system, which uses a zincless lubricant, is based on the optimization of the bonding mechanism and binder chemistry. This approach permits the bonding of copper particles in a FC-0208 mix. Examples of the binder-treatment of FN-0208, Ancorstee145P, and...

Based on a high-quality dataset of 713 daily precipitation series, changes in daily precipitation events during 1960–2013 were observed in China’s ten largest river basins. Specifically, the amount of precipitation in four categories defined by fixed thresholds and their proportion on total precipitation were analyzed on annual and seasonal time scales. Results showed annual precipitation incre...