It is widely accepted that microarthropods influence decomposition dynamics but we know relatively little about their effects on litter chemistry, extracellular enzyme activities, and other finer-scale decomposition processes. Further, few studies have investigated the role of individual microarthropod species in litter decomposition. The oribatid mite Scheloribates moestus Banks (Acari: Oribat...

Litter quality is often considered the main driver of rates of decomposition. Litter decomposes faster in its home environment than in any other environment, which is called the home-field advantage (HFA). However, evidence for this phenomenon has not been universal. In addition, litter mixtures of different species can induce a non-additive effect (NAE) on decomposition processes. However, the...

BACKGROUND Litter decomposition greatly influences soil structure, nutrient content and carbon sequestration, but how litter decomposition is affected by climate change is still not well understood. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS A field experiment with increased temperature and nitrogen (N) addition was established in April 2007 to examine the effects of experimental warming, N addition and ...

This paperlooks at litter cleanup efforts and associated costs in Michigan, and attempts to determine the proportion of litter composed of discarded beverage containers. A few studies have previously attempted to estimate cost savings from the reduced beverage container litter resulting from container deposit programs. However, the previous studies have looked only at roadway litter. Roadway li...

The ®rst stage of leaf litter decomposition of two eucalyptus hybrids and Acacia auriculiformis was studied in laboratory experiments where the decaying leaves were leached with water. Although the litter of both the species were characterized by a high content of soluble compounds, little soluble organic matter of acacia litter was recovered in litter leachates. By contrast, soluble organic ma...

Poultry litter provides a rich source of nutrients for perennial forages, but the usual practice of surface-applying litter to pastures can degrade water quality by allowing nutrients to be transported from fields in surface runoff, while much of the NH4-N volatilizes. Incorporating litter into the soil can minimize such problems in tilled systems, but has not been used for perennial forage sys...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether indication-based computer order entry alerts intercept wrong-patient medication errors. MATERIALS AND METHODS At an academic medical center serving inpatients and outpatients, we developed and implemented a clinical decision support system to prompt clinicians for indications when certain medications were ordered without an appropriately coded indication on the ...

i-Tree Streets/Design and Eco estimate annual rainfall interception by urban forest based on different physics-based water balance models. Streets/Design is based on Xiao et al. (1998), while Eco is based on Wang et al. (2008) and improved by Hirabayashi (2013). In Xiao et al. (1998), annual rainfall interception percentage against the gross precipitation in Sacramento County, CA was estimated ...

Manual interception, such as catching or hitting an approaching ball, requires the hand to contact a moving object at the right location and at the right time. Many studies have examined the neural mechanisms underlying the spatial aspects of goal-directed reaching, but the neural basis of the spatial and temporal aspects of manual interception are largely unknown. Here, we used repetitive tran...

We tested whether and how biases in visual perception might influence motor actions. To do so, we designed an interception task in which subjects had to indicate the time when a moving object, whose trajectory was occluded, would reach a target-area. Subjects made their judgments based on a brief display of the object’s initial motion at a given starting point. Based on the known illusion that ...