283 research outputs found

    Inter-decadal variability of phytoplankton biomass along the coastal West Antarctic Peninsula

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    The West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is a climatically sensitive region where periods of strong warming have caused significant changes in the marine ecosystem and food-web processes. Tight coupling between phytoplankton and higher trophic levels implies that the coastal WAP is a bottom-up controlled system, where changes in phytoplankton dynamics may largely impact other food-web components. Here, we analysed the inter-decadal time series of year-round chlorophyll-a (Chl) collected from three stations along the coastal WAP: Carlini Station at Potter Cove (PC) on King George Island, Palmer Station on Anvers Island and Rothera Station on Adelaide Island. There were trends towards increased phytoplankton biomass at Carlini Station (PC) and Palmer Station, while phytoplankton biomass declined significantly at Rothera Station over the studied period. The impacts of two relevant climate modes to the WAP, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and the Southern Annular Mode, on winter and spring phytoplankton biomass appear to be different among the three sampling stations, suggesting an important role of local-scale forcing than large-scale forcing on phytoplankton dynamics at each station. The inter-annual variability of seasonal bloom progression derived from considering all three stations together captured ecologically meaningful, seasonally co-occurring bloom patterns which were primarily constrained by water-column stability strength. Our findings highlight a coupled link between phytoplankton and physical and climate dynamics along the coastal WAP, which may improve our understanding of overall WAP food-web responses to climate change and variability

    Energy loss of fast quarks in nuclei

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    We report an analysis of the nuclear dependence of the yield of Drell-Yan dimuons from the 800 GeV/c proton bombardment of 2H^2H, C, Ca, Fe, and W targets. Employing a new formulation of the Drell-Yan process in the rest frame of the nucleus, this analysis examines the effect of initial-state energy loss and shadowing on the nuclear-dependence ratios versus the incident proton's momentum fraction and dimuon effective mass. The resulting energy loss per unit path length is −dE/dz=2.32±0.52±0.5-dE/dz = 2.32 \pm 0.52\pm 0.5 GeV/fm. This is the first observation of a nonzero energy loss of partons traveling in nuclear environment.Comment: 5 pages, including 4 figure

    Sustainable Food Systems At Urban Public Universities: A Survey Of U‐21 Universities

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    Urban communities are challenged by the conventional food system in diverse ways. To mitigate these challenges, a growing sustainable food system (SFS) movement mobilizes existing resources—including public institutions—to resolve disparities in access to healthy food, increase economic opportunities, conserve natural resources, and build a stronger, more local food system. Many public universities located in inner cities have adopted missions committing themselves to the improvement of their cities and regions. They also perform anchoring roles to revitalize their immediate neighborhoods, and, in a contemporary extension of their civic purposes, embrace sustainability as an institutional goal. Urban public universities therefore can play many SFS leadership roles, including through links to innovative scholarship, campus dining halls, other food retail such as farmers markets, and civic engagement activities such as community gardens. Through a study of 21 urban public universities, this paper investigates the presence and characteristics of SFS leadership, underlying rationales, and factors that support and oppose leadership.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112274/1/juaf12149.pd

    Effect of resource spatial correlation and Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer mobility on social cooperation in Tierra del Fuego

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    This article presents an agent-based model designed to explore the development of cooperation in hunter-fisher-gatherer societies that face a dilemma of sharing an unpredictable resource that is randomly distributed in space. The model is a stylised abstraction of the Yamana society, which inhabited the channels and islands of the southernmost part of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina-Chile). According to ethnographic sources, the Yamana developed cooperative behaviour supported by an indirect reciprocity mechanism: whenever someone found an extraordinary confluence of resources, such as a beached whale, they would use smoke signals to announce their find, bringing people together to share food and exchange different types of social capital. The model provides insight on how the spatial concentration of beachings and agents’ movements in the space can influence cooperation. We conclude that the emergence of informal and dynamic communities that operate as a vigilance network preserves cooperation and makes defection very costly.MICINN http://www.idi.mineco.gob.es/ CSD2010-00034 (SimulPast CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010) and HAR2009-06996; the government of Castilla y Leónhttp://www.jcyl.es/ GREX251-2009; the Argentine CONICET http://www.conicet.gov.ar/PIP-0706; and the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Researchhttp://www.wennergren.org/ "Social Aggregation: A Yamana Society's Short Term Episode to Analyse Social Interaction, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina". The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscrip

    Population and Environmental Correlates of Maize Yields in Mesoamerica: a Test of Boserup’s Hypothesis in the Milpa

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    Using a sample of 40 sources reporting milpa and mucuna-intercropped maize yields in Mesoamerica, we test Boserup’s (1965) prediction that fallow is reduced as a result of growing population density. We further examine direct and indirect effects of population density on yield. We find only mixed support for Boserupian intensification. Fallow periods decrease slightly with increasing population density in this sample, but the relationship is weak. Controlling for other covariates, fallow-unadjusted maize yields first rise then fall with population density. Fallow-adjusted maize yields peak at 390 kg/ha/yr for low population densities (8 persons / km2) and decline to around 280 kg/ha/yr for the highest population densities observed in our dataset. Fallow practices do not appear to mediate the relationship between population density and yield. The multi-level modeling methods we adopt allow for data clustering, accurate estimates of group-level variation, and they generate conditional predictions, all features essential to the comparative study of prehistoric and contemporary agricultural yields
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