Preface paper to the Semi-Arid Land-Surface-Atmosphere (SALSA) Program special issue

The Semi-Arid Land-Surface-Atmosphere Program (SALSA) is a multi-agency, multi-national research effort that seeks to evaluate the consequences of natural and human-induced environmental change in semi-arid regions. The ultimate goal of SALSA is to advance scientific understanding of the semi-arid portion of the hydrosphere–biosphere interface in order to provide reliable information for environmental decision making. SALSA approaches this goal through a program of long-term, integrated observations, process research, modeling, assessment, and information management that is sustained by cooperation among scientists and information users. In this preface to the SALSA special issue, general program background information and the critical nature of semi-arid regions is presented. A brief description of the Upper San Pedro River Basin, the initial location for focused SALSA research follows. Several overarching research objectives under which much of the interdisciplinary research contained in the special issue was undertaken are discussed. Principal methods, primary research sites and data collection used by numerous investigators during 1997–1999 are then presented. Scientists from about 20 US, five European (four French and one Dutch), and three Mexican agencies and institutions have collaborated closely to make the research leading to this special issue a reality. The SALSA Program has served as a model of interagency cooperation by breaking new ground in the approach to large scale interdisciplinary science with relatively limited resources

Sociocultural considerations in aging men's health: implications and recommendations for the clinician

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jomh.2009.07.00

Insemination of cattle with semen from a bull transiently infected with pestivirus

When 73 heifers (60 of which were seronegative to pestivirus) were inseminated with pestivirus-contaminated semen from a transiently infected bull, the conception rate to a single insemination was found to be normal (65 per cent). Only three animals became systemically infected, as determined by viraemia and seroconversion. Pestiviru was isolated from the reproductive tracts of two of these heifers when they were slaughtered 42 or 43 days after insemination. Although the initial incidence of infection was low, a cycle of secondary transmission occurred approximately 29 days after insemination, with a further eight heifers (all seronegative) becoming infected from one group of 11 seronegative and four seropositive animals

Climatic control of fluvial-lacustrine cyclicity in the Cretaceous Cordilleran Foreland Basin, western United States

Tectono-stratigraphic models of foredeep sedimentation have generally presumed a direct link between changing rates of tectonism and concomitant sedimentological response as manifested by change in thickness, composition or depositional environment of sediment accumulating in adjacent basins. Lacustrine limestone units within the early Cretaceous fluvial/lacustrine Gannett Group of western Wyoming exhibit systematic variation in several geochemical proxies of relative rates of precipitation and evaporation, indicating that lakewater chemistry was controlled by variation in regional climate. Change in proportion of allochthonous terrigenous clastic vs. autochthonous carbonate deposition, as well as carbonate Mg/Ca ratio and stable isotopic composition, occurs at two scales. Metre-scale alternation of micritic limestone and argillaceous marl is accompanied by mineralogical and isotopic variation within individual beds, indicating preferential carbonate accumulation during intervals of decreased regional meteoric precipitation relative to lake-surface evaporation. Limestone deposition began during intervals of maximum aridity, and decreased as increased meteoric precipitation-driven flux of terrigenous clastic sediment overwhelmed sites of carbonate accumulation. Similar upsection variation in limestone mineralogy and isotopic composition at a scale of tens of metres reflects the multiple processes of long-term increase in meteoric precipitation and lakewater freshening prior to influx of terrigenous sediment, across-basin fluvial-deltaic progradation, and renewed accumulation of riverine terrigenous units. Such trends suggest that formation-scale alternation between fluvial clastic and lacustrine carbonate deposition was controlled by climate change.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75290/1/j.1365-3091.1996.tb02020.x.pd