Climate variability in central equatorial Africa: Influence from the Atlantic sector.

We document a strong teleconnection between Central Equatorial African (CEA) rainfall (and Congo River discharge) and the large-scale circulation over the North Atlantic, throughout the boreal winter/spring season. Positive rainfall anomalies over CEA (at interannual and multi-annual timescales) are related to anomalous westerly mid-tropospheric zonal winds over the CEA/Atlantic region. These anomalies appear to be part of a coherent structure of zonal wind anomalies extending to the polar regions of the North Atlantic, similar to that associated with the NAO pattern. Idealised model simulations suggest that at least over the tropical and subtropical latitudes of the Atlantic/African sector such a signal may be associated with SST forcing from the Tropical North Atlantic (TNA) region. We conclude that TNA SSTs may force these circulation anomalies over CEA at multi-annual timescales but at interannual timescales they may be relatively independent of TNA SSTs

UD Annotatrix: An Annotation Tool For Universal Dependencies

In this paper we introduce the UD Annotatrix annotation tool for manual annotation of Universal Dependencies. This tool has been designed with the aim that it should be tailored to the needs of the Universal Dependencies (UD) community, including that it should operate in fully-offline mode, and is freely-available under the GNU GPL licence. In this paper, we provide some background to the tool, an overview of its development, and background on how it works. We compare it with some other widely-used tools which are used for Universal Dependencies annotation, describe some features unique to UD Annotatrix, and finally outline some avenues for future work and provide a few concluding remarks

String universality in ten dimensions

We show that the ${\cal N}=1$ supergravity theories in ten dimensions with gauge groups $U(1)^{496}$ and $E_8 \times U(1)^{248}$ are not consistent quantum theories. Cancellation of anomalies cannot be made compatible with supersymmetry and abelian gauge invariance. Thus, in ten dimensions all supersymmetric theories of gravity without known inconsistencies are realized in string theory.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, LaTeX. v2: typos corrected on version appearing in PR

Fungi associated with northern red oak (Quercus rubra ) acorns

Poor regeneration of northern red oak is widespread in the central hardwood region. A two-part study was conducted to determine what fungi are associated with and cause cotyledon discoloration of northern red oak acorns. The field study determined that simulated small mammal notching, surface sowing, time, and site all play a significant role in the amount of cotyledon discoloration in acorns as well as the number of acorns with discoloration. However, germination rate was only affected by site and surface sowing, while seedling vigor ratings were actually higher when acorns had discolored cotyledons. The five species of fungi isolated most frequently were Penicillium chermesinum, Penicillium terrestre, Rhizopus sp., Trichoderma sp. and Fusarium sp. These fungi were used to inoculate northern red oak acorns during two inoculation trials. Cotyledon discoloration occurred in all acorns, but highest levels were evident with the Penicillium terrestre inoculations. Germination rates were lowest in the second inoculation probably as a result of better sterilization techniques used. Therefore, fungi apparently do not have a significant negative impact on northern red oak regeneration unless they enter before germination

SLIDES: Present and Future Status of Climate Change Computer Models

Presenter: Warren M. Washington, Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research. 1 page and 25 slides. Abstract: A presentation will be given on the present and future status of climate change models. The evolution from simple climate models to fully complex Earth system models has led to an improved understanding of the causes of climate change and the impacts on the environment