Semi-arid ecosystems are key contributors to the global carbon cycle and may even dominate the inter-annual variability (IAV) and trends of the land carbon sink, driven largely by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The linkages between dynamics of semi-arid ecosystems and climate at the hemispheric scale however are not well known. Here, we use satellite data and climate observations from...

On July 17, 2003, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced that the United States economy had troughed in November 2001 following the peak in March 2001. This makes the 2001 recession one of the shortest in U.S. history being only eight months in length. Whereas business cycles are defined in terms of the overall economies the authors of this paper investigate whether this national re...

Today sofhvare organizations f i x e the challenge to develop qualiv products and services to respond to the rising custonier requests arid to sustain the growing of niodeni society. Software crisis, a concept coined many Tears ago but still actuol todqj,, synthesizes the chronic inadequacy of the software jirm to satisjy customer needs. Software develoimetit is a v e n complex process that has...

A model of range expansions during glacial maxima (GM) for cold-adapted species is generally accepted for the Northern Hemisphere. Given that GM in Australia largely resulted in the expansion of arid zones, rather than glaciation, it could be expected that arid-adapted species might have had expanded ranges at GM, as cold-adapted species did in the Northern Hemisphere. For Australian biota, how...

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7 Heihe River Basin is located in the arid inland area of northwest China and is facing 8 serious water shortage problems. Since irrigation is the largest water consumer in the 9 middle reaches of the Basin, it is crucial to study the crop yields and water 10 consumption in order to improve the agricultural water productivity and to support 11 sustainable economic development in this region. Ba...

Arid regions are an important part of the world as they cover more than 40% of the land surface and they can provide sufficient opportunities for extensive development. However, urban development of these regions is facing a set of problems. This is besides the development barriers due to the arid regions climate associated with a set of economical, social, administrative, and physical problems...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The timing of flowering and summer dormancy induction plays a central role in the adaptation of Mediterranean geophytes to changes in the length of the growth season along rainfall gradients. Our aim was to analyse the role of the variation in the responses of flowering and summer dormancy to vernalization, daylength and growth temperature for the adaptation of Poa bulbosa, ...