Desert riparian ecosystems of North America are hotspots of biodiversity that support many sensitive species, and are in a region experiencing some of the highest rates of climatic alteration in North America. Fremont cottonwood, Populus fremontii, is a foundation tree species of this critical habitat, but it is threatened by global warming and regional drying, and by a non-native tree/shrub, T…

The Early Devonian segment of the Apparent Polar Wander Path (APWP) for Baltica was defined by seven poles almost all from British Islands. Among them only one was obtained for Devonian sediments from Ukraine. The lack of data from other parts of Baltica than Britain makes this segment of the path dubious. To improve this situation we carried out palaeomagnetic study of the Devonian sedim…

The North Atlantic right whale, Eubalaena glacialis (NARW), a critically endangered species that has been under intensive study for nearly four decades, provides an excellent case study for applying modern methods of conservation physiology to large whales. By combining long-term sighting histories of known individuals with physiological data from newer techniques (e.g., body condition estimat…

The growing field of conservation physiology applies a diversity of physiological traits (e.g., immunological, metabolic, endocrine, and nutritional traits) to understand and predict organismal, population, and ecosystem responses to environmental change and stressors. Although the discipline of conservation physiology is gaining momentum, there is still a pressing need to better translate know…

The reflection-transmission coefficients of the stress wave propagating through a jointed rock mass are of great concern in many fields, for example seismology, exploration geophysics and geotechnical engineering. For a natural jointed rock mass, both the rock material and the joints should be treated to be viscous-elastic in the practical dynamic analysis. In this paper, Kelv…

Fermat’s interferometric principle isused to compute interior transmission travel times τpq from exterior transmission traveltimes τsp and τsq. Here, the exterior travel times are computed for sourcess on a boundary B that encloses a volume V of interior points p and q. Once the exterior traveltimes are computed, no further ray tracing is needed to calculate the interior times …

Saxitoxins (STXs) are paralytic alkaloids produced by marine dinoflagellates in response to biotic and abiotic stressors yielding harmful algal blooms. Because STX impacts coastal, near-shore communities to a greater extent than would be predicted by its relative abundance, it has been referred to as a ‘‘molecule of keystone significance’’ in reference to Robert Paine’s Keystone Speci…

Green tides are large growths or accumulations of green seaweeds that have been increasing in magnitude and frequency around the world. Because green tides consist of vast biomasses of algae in a limited area and are often seasonal or episodic, they go through periods of rapid growth in which they take up large amounts of nutrients and dissolved gases and generate bioactive natural products tha…

Many organisms encounter noxious or unpalatable compounds in their diets. Thus, a robust reception-system for aversive taste is necessary for an individual’s survival; however, mechanisms for perceiving aversive taste vary among organisms. Possession of a system sensitive to aversive taste allows for recognition of a vast array of noxious molecules via membrane-bound receptors, co-receptors, …

The availability of accurate and reliable age control is a crucial prerequisite for palaeoclimate studies, particularly when different archives are to be compared. Here we present a detailed depth-to-time transformation for the lacustrine sediments of a∼940-m-long drill core (SG-1) from the western Qaidam Basin (NE Tibetan Plateau). To establish a more precise age model than the one previ…