White Spruce Seedling (Picea glauca) Discovered North of the Brooks Range Along Alaska's Dalton Highway

A white spruce seedling, Picea glauca (Moench) Voss, was found at the northern edge of the Brooks Range in Alaska, more than 50 km north of the latitudinal tree line. The seedling, 19 cm tall and about nine years old, was growing at the side of the Dalton Highway to Prudhoe Bay. It most likely sprouted from a seed transported across the Brooks Range on a vehicle and has survived on the well-drained gravel road berm, where site conditions are more favorable for germination and survival than in the surrounding tundra. This spruce has survived for about a decade under current climatic conditions. Even with a warming climate, natural seed dispersal is severely hampered by the rugged topographic barrier of the Brooks Range. Considering the amount of vehicle traffic on the Dalton Highway, however, it is likely that more pioneering spruce seedlings will turn up along this corridor. Once over the Brooks Range, a spruce population can potentially develop and expand.Un plant d’épinette blanche, Picea glauca (Moench) Voss, a été trouvé du côté nord de la chaîne de Brooks en Alaska, plus de 50 kilomètres au nord de la limite forestière latitudinale. Le plant de 19 centimètres de hauteur a environ neuf ans et pousse au bord de l’autoroute de Dalton, vers la baie Prudhoe. Il est vraisemblablement le fruit d’une graine transportée par un véhicule à travers la chaîne de Brooks. Il a survécu sur la berme de la route de gravier bien irriguée, où les conditions sont plus favorables à la germination et à la survie des graines que dans la toundra environnante. Cette épinette vit depuis une dizaine d’années dans les conditions climatiques actuelles. Malgré le réchauffement climatique, la dispersion naturelle des graines est gravement entravée par la barrière topographique accidentée de la chaîne de Brooks. Cependant, compte tenu de l’intensité de la circulation routière sur l’autoroute de Dalton, il est fort possible que d’autres plants d’épinettes poussent le long de ce corridor. Une fois de l’autre côté de la chaîne de Brooks, une population d’épinettes pourrait se développer et prendre de l’expansion

Intangible assets and investments at the sector level : empirical evidence for Germany

This paper investigates the role intangible capital plays for economic growth in different sectors in Germany. It consists of two major parts. In the first part, we aim at measuring investment in intangibles at the sector level. We shed light on differences across sectors but also compare these figures with investment in physical capital and with investment in intangibles in the UK as European benchmark. The second part explores the role of intangible assets for stimulating growth at the sector level by performing growth accounting analyses. We find that German firms have boosted investments in intangible capital from 1995-2006 by 30%. Furthermore, results reveal differences in the investment patterns among the UK and Germany. In nearly all sectors investments in design and computerized information are larger in the UK. In contrast, German firms invest a higher proportion of gross output in R&D in all sectors, and advertising is also more common except for the sector trade & transport. Intangible assets have stimulated labour productivity growth in all sectors. The contribution varies between 0.17 (construction) and 0.59 (manufacturing) percentage points. In manufacturing, financial and business services innovative property capital is the most influential type of intangible capital for labour productivity, followed by economic competencies and computerized information. In all other sectors, economic competencies play the most prominent role for labour productivity growth

Effect of permafrost thaw on CO2 and CH4 exchange in a western Alaska peatland chronosequence

Permafrost soils store over half of global soil carbon (C), and northern frozen peatlands store about 10% of global permafrost C. With thaw, inundation of high latitude lowland peatlands typically increases the surface-atmosphere flux of methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas. To examine the effects of lowland permafrost thaw over millennial timescales, we measured carbon dioxide (CO2) and CH4 exchange along sites that constitute a ~1000 yr thaw chronosequence of thermokarst collapse bogs and adjacent fen locations at Innoko Flats Wildlife Refuge in western Alaska. Peak CH4 exchange in July (123 ± 71 mg CH4–C m−2 d−1) was observed in features that have been thawed for 30 to 70 (\u3c100) yr, where soils were warmer than at more recently thawed sites (14 to 21 yr; emitting 1.37 ± 0.67 mg CH4–C m−2 d−1 in July) and had shallower water tables than at older sites (200 to 1400 yr; emitting 6.55 ± 2.23 mg CH4–C m−2 d−1 in July). Carbon lost via CH4 efflux during the growing season at these intermediate age sites was 8% of uptake by net ecosystem exchange. Our results provide evidence that CH4 emissions following lowland permafrost thaw are enhanced over decadal time scales, but limited over millennia. Over larger spatial scales, adjacent fen systems may contribute sustained CH4 emission, CO2 uptake, and DOC export. We argue that over timescales of decades to centuries, thaw features in high-latitude lowland peatlands, particularly those developed on poorly drained mineral substrates, are a key locus of elevated CH4 emission to the atmosphere that must be considered for a complete understanding of high latitude CH4 dynamics

Worker remittances and the global preconditions of ‘smart development’

With the growing environmental crisis affecting our globe, ideas to weigh economic or social progress by the ‘energy input’ necessary to achieve it are increasingly gaining acceptance. This question is intriguing and is being dealt with by a growing number of studies, focusing on the environmental price of human progress. Even more intriguing, however, is the question of which factors of social organization contribute to a responsible use of the resources of our planet to achieve a given social result (‘smart development’). In this essay, we present the first systematic study on how migration – or rather, more concretely, received worker remittances per GDP – helps the nations of our globe to enjoy social and economic progress at a relatively small environmental price. We look at the effects of migration on the balance sheets of societal accounting, based on the ‘ecological price’ of the combined performance of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion. Feminism in power, economic freedom, population density, the UNDP education index as well as the receipt of worker remittances all significantly contribute towards a ‘smart overall development’, while high military expenditures and a high world economic openness are a bottleneck for ‘smart overall development’

Gas Accretion in Star-Forming Galaxies

Cold-mode gas accretion onto galaxies is a direct prediction of LCDM simulations and provides galaxies with fuel that allows them to continue to form stars over the lifetime of the Universe. Given its dramatic influence on a galaxy's gas reservoir, gas accretion has to be largely responsible for how galaxies form and evolve. Therefore, given the importance of gas accretion, it is necessary to observe and quantify how these gas flows affect galaxy evolution. However, observational data have yet to conclusively show that gas accretion ubiquitously occurs at any epoch. Directly detecting gas accretion is a challenging endeavor and we now have obtained a significant amount of observational evidence to support it. This chapter reviews the current observational evidence of gas accretion onto star-forming galaxies.Comment: Invited review to appear in Gas Accretion onto Galaxies, Astrophysics and Space Science Library, eds. A. J. Fox & R. Dav\'e, to be published by Springer. This chapter includes 22 pages with 7 Figure

Gas Accretion via Lyman Limit Systems

In cosmological simulations, a large fraction of the partial Lyman limit systems (pLLSs; 16<log N(HI)<17.2) and LLSs (17.2log N(HI)<19) probes large-scale flows in and out of galaxies through their circumgalactic medium (CGM). The overall low metallicity of the cold gaseous streams feeding galaxies seen in these simulations is the key to differentiating them from metal rich gas that is either outflowing or being recycled. In recent years, several groups have empirically determined an entirely new wealth of information on the pLLSs and LLSs over a wide range of redshifts. A major focus of the recent research has been to empirically determine the metallicity distribution of the gas probed by pLLSs and LLSs in sizable and representative samples at both low (z2) redshifts. Here I discuss unambiguous evidence for metal-poor gas at all z probed by the pLLSs and LLSs. At z<1, all the pLLSs and LLSs so far studied are located in the CGM of galaxies with projected distances <100-200 kpc. Regardless of the exact origin of the low-metallicity pLLSs/LLSs, there is a significant mass of cool, dense, low-metallicity gas in the CGM that may be available as fuel for continuing star formation in galaxies over cosmic time. As such, the metal-poor pLLSs and LLSs are currently among the best observational evidence of cold, metal-poor gas accretion onto galaxies.Comment: Invited review to appear in Gas Accretion onto Galaxies, Astrophysics and Space Science Library, eds. A. J. Fox & R. Dav\'e, to be published by Springe

The effects of financialisation and financial development on investment: Evidence from firm-level data in Europe

In this paper we estimate the effects of financialization on physical investment in selected western European countries using panel data based on the balance-sheets of publicly listed non-financial companies (NFCs) supplied by Worldscope for the period 1995-2015. We find robust evidence of an adverse effect of both financial payments (interests and dividends) and financial incomes on investment in fixed assets by the NFCs. This finding is robust for both the pool of all Western European firms and single country estimations. The negative impacts of financial incomes are non-linear with respect to the companies’ size: financial incomes crowd-out investment in large companies, and have a positive effect on the investment of only small, relatively more credit-constrained companies. Moreover, we find that a higher degree of financial development is associated with a stronger negative effect of financial incomes on companies’ investment. This finding challenges the common wisdom on ‘finance-growth nexus’. Our findings support the ‘financialization thesis’ that the increasing orientation of the non-financial sector towards financial activities is ultimately leading to lower physical investment, hence to stagnant or fragile growth, as well as long term stagnation in productivity

Magnetic stimulation for non-homogeneous biological structures

BACKGROUND: Magnetic stimulation has gained relatively wide application in studying nervous system structures. This technology has the advantage of reduced excitation of sensory nerve endings, and hence results in quasi-painless action. It has become clinically accepted modality for brain stimulation. However, theoretical and practical solutions for assessment of induced current distribution need more detailed and accurate consideration. Some possible analyses are proposed for distribution of the current induced from excitation current contours of different shape and disposition. Relatively non-difficult solutions are shown, applicable for two- and three-dimensional analysis. METHODS: The boundary conditions for field analysis by the internal Dirichlet problem are introduced, based on the vector potential field excited by external current coils. The feedback from the induced eddy currents is neglected. Finite element modeling is applied for obtaining the electromagnetic fields distribution in a non-homogeneous domain. RESULTS: The distributions were obtained in a non-homogeneous structure comprised of homogeneous layers. A tendency was found of the induced currents to follow paths in lower resistivity layers, deviating from the expected theoretical course for a homogeneous domain. Current density concentrations occur at the boundary between layers, suggesting the possibility for focusing on, or predicting of, a zone of stimulation. CONCLUSION: The theoretical basis and simplified approach for generation of 3D FEM networks for magnetic stimulation analysis are presented, applicable in non-homogeneous and non-linear media. The inconveniences of introducing external excitation currents are avoided. Thus, the possibilities are improved for analysis of distributions induced by time-varying currents from contours of various geometry and position with respect to the medium