Thousands of Caspian seals (Phoca caspica) died in the Caspian Sea from April to August 2000. Lesions characteristic of morbillivirus infection were found in tissue specimens from dead seals. Canine distemper virus infection was identified by serologic examination, reverse transcriptase- polymerase chain reaction, and sequencing of selected P gene fragments. These results implicate canine diste...

The Caspian tiger (Panthera tigris virgata) flourished in Central Asian riverine forest systems in a range disjunct from that of other tigers, but was driven to extinction in 1970 prior to a modern molecular evaluation. For over a century naturalists puzzled over the taxonomic validity, placement, and biogeographic origin of this enigmatic animal. Using ancient-DNA (aDNA) methodology, we genera...

The Caspian seal (Pusa caspica) has declined by more than 90% since 1900 and is listed as endangered by IUCN. We made the first quantitative assessment of Caspian seal by-catch mortality in fisheries in the north Caspian Sea by conducting semi-structured interviews in fishing communities along the coasts of Russia (Kalmykia, Dagestan), Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. We recorded a documented minim...

This study investigates children’s explicit and implicit language attitudes in a highly diverse primary education. Set the bilingual province of Fryslân, Netherlands, current research was carried out scope 3M-project (‘More opportunities with multilingualism’: Duarte & Günther-van der Meij, 2018a. A holistic model for multilingualism EuroAmerican Journal Applied Linguistics Languages, 5(2), 24–...

In the present study, the time series encompassing the years 1950-2011 of commercial landings from the Caspian Sea were analyzed using min/max autocorrelation factor analysis (MAFA) and dynamic factor analysis (DFA). These aim was to identify trends and explore the relationships between the response variables (annual landings of 10 species/groups such as kilkas, kutum, common carp, pike perch, ...

This paper reports on the acoustic investigation of Saterland Frisian vowels, including their regional variation. The study aims at identifying merged vowel categories as well as supplementary acoustic dimensions, which enhance the discrimination of spectrally adjacent categories. All vowels were elicited in a /hVt/ frame. Acoustic measurements included vowel duration, mid-vowel F1 and F2, Vowe...

The three mainland Scandinavian languages (Danish, Swedish and Norwegian) are so closely related that the speakers mostly communicate in their own languages (semicommunication). Even though the three West Germanic languages Dutch, Frisian and Afrikaans are also closely related, semicommunication is not usual between these languages. In the present investigation, results from intelligibility tes...