The collapse of collective farming in Russia after 1990 and the subsequent economic crisis led to the abandonment of more than 45 million ha of arable lands (23% of the agricultural area). This was the most widespread and abrupt land use change in the 20th century in the northern hemisphere. The withdrawal of land area from cultivation led to several benefits including carbon (C) sequestration....

Combining natural saltmarsh habitats with conventional barriers can provide a sustainable and cost-effective alternative for fully engineered flood protection, provided that minimal salt marsh width be guaranteed long period. Hence, it is essential to understand both the key factors management options driving lateral erodibility/stability of marshes. We aimed determine how (i.e. grazing by larg...

The deterioration of the banana root system and its effect on production is due to climatic, edaphic (physical and chemical) and biological factors. There are two kinds of root deterioration processes: 1) a fast one with accelerated collapse of the root system (days to months) due to site specific characteristics such as limited effective depth of soil, very high sand, gravel or clay content, h...

Non-leptonic D meson decays may provide a reliable testbed for the multiquark interpretation of light scalar mesons. In this letter we consider D s decay and show that a 4-quark f 0 (980) meson could induce a decay pattern, which is forbidden for a q ¯ q constituent structure. Experimental tests to probe such possibilities are within reach in the near future.

The status of CP violation and the CKM matrix is reviewed. Direct CP violation in B decay has been established and the measurement of sin 2β in ψK modes reached 5% accuracy. I discuss the implications of these, and of the possible deviations of the CP asymmetries in b → s modes from that in ψK. The first meaningful measurements of α and γ are explained, together with their significance for cons...

Seafloor diking-eruptive events represent the irreducible, quantum events of upper oceanic crustal accretion. They record events by which a large portion of the oceanic crust has formed through geological history. Since 1993, the U.S. Navy's real-time Sound Surveillance System has allowed location of ongoing acoustic signatures of dike emplacement and basalt eruptions at ridge crests in the nor...

The status of CP violation and the CKM matrix is reviewed. Direct CP violation in B decay has been established and the measurement of sin 2β in ψK modes reached 5% accuracy. I discuss the implications of these, and of the possible deviations of the CP asymmetries in b → s modes from that in ψK. The first meaningful measurements of α and γ are explained, together with their significance for cons...

Natural and technological interdependent systems have been shown to be highly vulnerable due to cascading failures and an abrupt collapse of global connectivity under initial failure. Mitigating the risk by partial disconnection endangers their functionality. Here we propose a systematic strategy of selecting a minimum number of autonomous nodes that guarantee a smooth transition in robustness....

GRW theory offers precise laws for the collapse of the wave function. These collapses are characterized by two new constants, λ and σ. Recent work has put experimental upper bounds on the collapse rate, λ. Lower bounds on λ have been more controversial since GRW begins to take on a many-worlds character for small values of λ. Here I examine GRW in this odd region of parameter space where collap...