Bioclimatology, structure, and conservation perspectives of Quercus pyrenaica, Acer opalus subsp. Granatensis, and Corylus avellana deciduous forests on Mediterranean bioclimate in the South-Central part of the Iberian Peninsula

The plant variability in the southern Iberian Peninsula consists of around 3500 different taxa due to its high bioclimatic, geographic, and geological diversity. The deciduous forests in the southern Iberian Peninsula are located in regions with topographies and specific bioclimatic conditions that allow for the survival of taxa that are typical of cooler and wetter bioclimatic regions and therefore represent the relict evidence of colder and more humid paleoclimatic conditions. The floristic composition of 421 samples of deciduous forests in the south-central part of the Iberian Peninsula were analyzed. The ecological importance index (IVI) was calculated, where the most important tree species were Quercuspyrenaica, Aceropalus subsp. Granatensis, and Corylusavellana. These species are uncommon in the south-central part of the Iberian Peninsula, forming forests of little extension. An analysis of the vertical distribution of the species (stratum) shows that the majority of the species of stratum 3 (hemicriptophics, camephytes, geophites, and nanophanerophytes) are characteristic of deciduous forests, and their presence is positively correlated with high values of bioclimatic variables related to humidity and presence of water in the soil (nemoral environments), while they are negatively correlated with high values of bioclimatic variables related to high temperatures, evapotranspiration, and aridity. This work demonstrates that several characteristic deciduous forest taxa are more vulnerable to disappearance due to the loss of their nemoral conditions caused by gaps in the tree or shrub canopy. These gaps lead to an increase in evapotranspiration, excess insolation, and a consequent loss of water and humidity in the microclimatic conditions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Social Network of Contemporary Popular Musicians

In this paper we analyze two social network datasets of contemporary musicians constructed from allmusic.com (AMG), a music and artists' information database: one is the collaboration network in which two musicians are connected if they have performed in or produced an album together, and the other is the similarity network in which they are connected if they where musically similar according to music experts. We find that, while both networks exhibit typical features of social networks such as high transitivity, several key network features, such as degree as well as betweenness distributions suggest fundamental differences in music collaborations and music similarity networks are created.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Compact Radio Sources within 30" of Sgr A*: Proper Motions, Stellar Winds and the Accretion Rate onto Sgr A*

Recent broad-band 34 and 44 GHz radio continuum observations of the Galactic center have revealed 41 massive stars identified with near-IR counterparts, as well as 44 proplyd candidates within 30" of Sgr A*. Radio observations obtained in 2011 and 2014 have been used to derive proper motions of eight young stars near Sgr A*. The accuracy of proper motion estimates based on near-IR observations by Lu et al. and Paumard et al. have been investigated by using their proper motions to predict the 2014 epoch positions of near-IR stars and comparing the predicted positions with those of radio counterparts in the 2014 radio observations. Predicted positions from Lu et al. show an rms scatter of 6 mas relative to the radio positions, while those from Paumard et al. show rms residuals of 20 mas, which is mainly due to uncertainties in the IR-based proper motions. Under the assumption of homogeneous ionized winds, we also determine the mass-loss rates of 11 radio stars, finding rates that are on average $\sim$2 times smaller than those determined from model atmosphere calculations and near-IR data. Clumpiness of ionized winds would reduce the mass loss rate of WR and O stars by additional factors of 3 and 10, respectively. One important implication of this is a reduction in the expected mass accretion rate onto Sgr A* from stellar winds by nearly an order of magnitude to a value of few$\times10^{-7}$ \msol\ yr$^{-1}$. Finally, we present the positions of 318 compact 34.5 GHz radio sources within 30\arcs\ of Sgr A*. At least 45 of these have stellar counterparts in the near-IR $K_s$ (2.18 $\mu$m) and $L'$ (3.8$\mu$m) bands.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures, ApJ (in press