Ratios of periods for tensor product motives

In this article we prove some period relations for the ratio of Deligne's periods for certain tensor product motives. These period relations give a motivic interpretation for certain algebraicity results for ratios of successive critical values for Rankin-Selberg L-functions for ${\rm GL}_n \times {\rm GL}_{n'}$ proved by G\"unter Harder and the second author.Comment: In this revised version, we have made some minor modifications according to the comments by the refere

Beware the animals that dance: conservation as an unintended outcome of cultural practices

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Parks Congress of 2003 and the Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) of 2004 call for the recognition and support of Community Conserved Areas, with the CBD Programme of Work on Protected Areas committing countries to take action by 2008. Both within protected areas and in the matrix of land beyond reserves, customs and beliefs of indigenous and local communities can yield conservation benefits. Identifying an intention to conserve by the custodians of customary conserved areas can be challenging as customary practices are embedded within a myriad of cosmologies and worldviews. However, the definition of Community Conserved Areas does not require an expressed intention to conserve nor does it specify the mechanisms by which nature or natural resources can be conserved. Thus, conservation as an unintended outcome of cultural practices is included within the scope of community conservation. Fieldwork was conducted in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, from October 2010 to April 2011. Data for the case study of Gumantong comes from an interview with Porodong Mogilin,!Native Chief Representative of Matunggong Native Court in Bavanggazo, Kudat and meetings of community leaders from the 13 villages surrounding Gumantong. This paper 1) employs the case study of Gumantong in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, to highlight the distinction between communities expressing an intention to conserve and conservation as an unintended outcome of cultural practices and 2) considers the implications of this distinction for the process of recognizing and supporting Community Conserved Areas

Protein synthesis during growth in Neurospora crassa

Protein synthesis during growt

The role of informal protected areas in maintaining biodiversity in the Western Ghats of India

Although it is widely believed that an important function of protected areas is to conserve species that are unable to survive elsewhere, there are very few empirical studies in which a comparison is made between biodiversity of protected areas and that of the cultivated landscape surrounding them. We examined the diversity of trees, birds, and macrofungi at 58 sites in three land-use types in a tree-covered landscape in Kodagu district in the Western Ghats of India. Ten forest reserve sites in the formal protected area, and 25 sacred groves and 23 coffee plantations in the neighboring cultivated landscape were sampled. A total of 215 tree, 86 bird, and 163 macrofungus species were recorded. The forest reserve had a large number of trees that were restricted in their distribution, and the sacred groves had a large number of macrofungi. We observed that deciduous trees and non-forest-dwelling birds increased, and evergreen trees and forest-dwelling birds decreased with increasing intensity of land management. We found that trees having non-timber uses and macrofungi useful to the local people, as well as those with medicinal properties, were abundant in sacred groves. We found no significant differences in the distribution of endemic and threatened birds across the three land-use types. Although endemic trees were more abundant in the forest reserve than in sacred groves, threatened trees were more abundant in sacred groves than in the forest reserve. We attribute the high diversity in sacred groves to the native tree cover in shade coffee plantations. We conclude that informal protected areas are as important as formal ones for biodiversity conservation in Kodagu. We recommend that a conservation strategy that recognizes informal protection traditions is essential for successful biodiversity conservation in regions where formal reserves are surrounded by a matrix of cultivated land