BACKGROUND The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is home to the vast grassland in China. The QTP grassland ecosystem has been seriously degraded by human land use practices and climate change. Fertilization is used in this region to increase vegetation yields for grazers. The impact of long-term fertilization on plant and microbial communities has been studied extensively. However, the influence of s...

Precipitation variation on the Loess Plateau (LP) of China is not only important for rain-fed agriculture in this environmentally sensitive region, but also critical for the water and life securities over the whole Yellow River basin. Here we reconstruct high resolution precipitation variation on the western LP during the past 370 years by using two replicated, annually-laminated stalagmites. S...

Yak domestication represents an important episode in the early human occupation of the high-altitude Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP). The precise timing of domestication is debated and little is known about the underlying genetic changes that occurred during the process. Here we investigate genome variation of wild and domestic yaks. We detect signals of selection in 209 genes of domestic yaks, sev...

Climatic tolerance, especially drought tolerance, is one of the major factors shaping the geographic distributions of plant species. Thus, the general decline in rainfall from the Himalaya-Hengduan Mountains (HHM) to the inner Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) might account for the significant differences in species distributions and richness between the two regions. To test this hypothesis, we condu...

Based on temperature data from 79 meteorological stations, we estimate the warming rate by season on the Tibetan Plateau (TP) during 1984-2013. The warming rate was spatially heterogeneous across seasons over the past 30 years. The northern TP (NTP) experienced more warming than the southern TP (STP) (divided near 33 °N) in all seasons. The greatest north-south difference in warming was 0.70 ± ...

objectives: the aim of this study was to assess and compare the characteristics of commonly used initial archwires by their load deflection graphs. materials and methods : this study tested three wire designs namely copper nickel titanium (cnt), nickel titanium (niti), and multi-strand niti (msnt) archwires engaged in passive self-ligating (psl) brackets, active self-ligating (asl) brackets or ...

Subtropical China harbours the world's most diverse temperate flora, but little is known about the roles of geographical and eco-climatic factors underlying the region's exceptionally high levels of species diversity and endemism. Here we address this key question by investigating the spatio-temporal and ecological processes of divergence within the Dysosma versipellis-pleiantha species complex...

The operative procedure frequently used to narrow the nasal pyramid in the context of a regular rhinoplasty is well known to all rhinoplastic surgeons. It consists of hump removal, followed by lateral osteotomies and medialization of the nasal bones. However, narrowing of a wide nasal pyramid, in the absence of an appreciable dorsal hump, as in the case of an ideal dorsal height or a mild hump,...

intensively staffed facilities in the community. There was a sustained reduction in admissions but the gains appeared to plateau after the initial 2 years raising questions about the ongoing value of assertive outreach teams. As originally conceived, the teams’ intervention was intended to be indefinite and the argument made that gains would be lost once the service was withdrawn. However, this...