Background: The 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa was the largest on record, resulting in over 25,000 total infections and 15,000 total deaths. Mathematical modeling can be used to investigate the mechanisms driving transmission during this outbreak – in particular, burial practices appear to have been major source of infections. Methodology/Principal Findings: We developed a multi-stage model...

Sedimentation and burial affect a variety of habitats worldwide, especially within coastal marine systems. In the Mediterranean, seagrasses like Cymodocea nodosa are commonly subjected to sedimentation and, although the response of C. nodosa has been documented, few studies have included macrofaunal responses. We used a manipulative field experiment to examine the effects of a single small-scal...

This study addresses the adaptation of Nitraria sphaerocarpa to blown sand at the edge of a desert oasis with regard to the aspects of soil seed banks, seedlings, and population. Horizontally, the total number of seeds per unit area decreased from the shrub canopy center to intershrub areas, and most seeds were found under shrub canopies. Vertically, the highest proportion of seeds was found at...

Burial conditions play a crucial role in archaeological heritage preservation. Especially, the microorganisms were considered as the leading causes which incurred degradation and vanishment of historic materials. In this article, we analyzed bacterial diversity and community structure from M1 of Wangshanqiao using 16 S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. The results indicated that microbial communit...

Clonal plants producing both clumping and spreading ramets can adjust their growth forms in response to resource heterogeneity or environmental stress. They might produce clumping ramets to retain favorable patches, or produce spreading ramets to escape from stress-affected patches. This study aimed to investigate the rarely reported concurrent effects of sediment accretion and nutrient enrichm...

The Eocene-Oligocene transition (EOT), ~34Ma, marks a tipping point in the long-term Cenozoic greenhouse to icehouse climate transition. Paleorecords reveal stepwise rapid cooling and ice growth across the EOT tightly coupled to a transient benthic δC excursion and a major and permanent deepening of the carbonate compensation depth (CCD). Based on biogeochemical box modeling, Merico et al. (200...

Approximately 2.2million cattle carcasses require disposal annually in the United States. Land burial is a convenient disposal method that has been widely used in animal production for disposal of both daily mortalities as well as during catastrophic mortality events. To date, greenhouse gas production after mortality burial has not been quantified, and this study represents the first attempt t...

Salt marshes are highly effective carbon (C) sinks and have higher rates of soil C burial (per square meter) than terrestrial ecosystems. Marsh reclamation and anthropogenic impacts, however, have resulted in extensive losses of salt marshes. Restoration of marshes drained and "reclaimed" for agriculture (referred to in Canada as dykelands) and degraded marshes can generate C credits, but only ...

The rise of stratified societies fundamentally influences the interactions between status, movement, and food. Using isotopic analyses, we assess differences in diet and mobility of individuals excavated from two burial mounds located at the `Atele burial site on Tongatapu, the main island of the Kingdom of Tonga (c. 500 - 150 BP). The first burial mound (To-At-1) was classified by some archaeo...