East Asian summer monsoon (EASM) precipitation received by northern China over the past 800 thousand years (ky) is characterized by dominant 100-ky periodicity, mainly attributed to CO2 and Northern Hemisphere insolation-driven ice sheet forcing. We established an EASM record in the Late Miocene from lacustrine sediments in the Qaidam Basin, northern China, which appears to exhibit a dominant 1...

Phylogenetic relationships of Iranian Acanthodactylus species were investigated using 1407 bp of mitochondrial DNA including 606 bp of cytochrome b and 801 bp of NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4 (ND4). Analyses done with maximum parsimony, maximum-likelihood, and Bayesian inference included 67 specimens from 27 geographically distinct localities in Iran. Our molecular results proposed three clear a...

The agricultural transition profoundly changed human societies. We sequenced and analysed the first genome (1.39x) of an early Neolithic woman from Ganj Dareh, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran, a site with early evidence for an economy based on goat herding, ca. 10,000 BP. We show that Western Iran was inhabited by a population genetically most similar to hunter-gatherers from the Caucasus, but ...

The present study investigates the occurrence of wild grasses at Epipalaeolithic and aceramic Neolithic sites in the Near East in order to assess their role in subsistence economies alongside the emergence of cereal cultivation. We use Chogha Golan in the foothills of the central Zagros Mountains (ca. 11.7-9.6 ka cal. BP) as a case study, where the archaeobotanical data suggest the frequent exp...

The emergence of farming during the Neolithic transition, including the domestication of livestock, was a critical point in the evolution of human kind. The goat (Capra hircus) was one of the first domesticated ungulates. In this study, we compared the genetic diversity of domestic goats to that of the modern representatives of their wild ancestor, the bezoar, by analyzing 473 samples collected...

The objective of this study is to provide estimates of price elasticities of irrigation water demands in Zhangye Basin (ZB), an inland river basin in China, with the most recent data and to compare the values of marginal product (VMPs) of water to the prices of water farmers are currently paying. With a set of village and household survey data collected in 2009 and 2014, household fixed effects...

Track and cladistic biogeographic analyses based on insect taxa are used as a framework to interpret patterns of the Latin American and Caribbean entomofauna by identifying biogeographic areas on the basis of endemicity and arranging them hierarchically in a system of regions, subregions, dominions, and provinces. The Nearctic region, inhabited by Holarctic insect taxa, comprises five provinces...

Distinct cyclicity in lithology and microfaunal distribution in sediment cores from the Mendeleev Ridge in the western Arctic Ocean (water depths ca. 1.5 km) reflects contrasting glacial/interglacial sedimentary patterns. We conclude that during major glaciations extremely thick pack ice or ice shelves covered the western Arctic Ocean and its circulation was restricted in comparison with interg...

Delineating hydrologic and pedogenic factors influencing groundwater flow in riparian zones is central in understanding pathways of water and nutrient transport. In this study, we combined two-dimensional time-lapse electrical resistivity imaging (ERI) (depth of investigation approximately 2 m) with hydrometric monitoring to examine hydrological processes in the riparian area of FD-36, a small ...

Mycobacterium parascrofulaceum was found in Norris Geyser Basin, Yellowstone National Park, in a system composed of two acidic (pH 3.0) springs with temperatures between 56 degrees C at the source and 40 degrees C at the confluence of both springs. Growth and survival assays at 56 degrees C for 60 days were performed, confirming the origin of the strain.