Aspects of the paleogeography, stratigraphy, and glacial history of Beringia have been greatly revised over the past 15}20 yr. Access to North East Russia, in particular, has provided the opportunity to evaluate the Beringia landscape as a contiguous subcontinent during the Quaternary. For the "rst time, new research has made clearer the connection between tectonic forces and the submergence of...

In preliterate contexts, diverse knowledge was accumulated, processed and communicated orally. Recent research demonstrates that observations of memorable events were transferred in this way for thousands years sometimes. Much information eventually written down to reach literate audiences, which commonly judge such ‘myths legends’ be cultural inventions rather than ancient memories. This study...

Ronald’s laboratory has engineered rice for resistance to disease and tolerance to flooding, which seriously threaten rice crops in Asia and Africa. Ronald led the isolation of the rice XA21 immune receptor, the bacterial Ax21 quorum sensing factor and the rice Sub1A submergence tolerance transcription factor. In 1996, she established the Genetic Resources Recognition fund, a mechanism to recog...

Deep sea exploration and exploitation are of an increasingly interest to human beings in the 21 century. Manned and unmanned deep submergence vehicles are necessary means for deep sea explorations. In order to fulfill the requirements of deep sea explorations of COMRA (China Ocean Mineral Resources R&D Association), a deep manned submersible is developed in China and it is now named “Harmony”. ...

Submergence or flood is one of the major harmful abiotic stresses in the low-lying countries and crop losses due to waterlogging are considerably high. Plant breeding techniques, conventional or genetic engineering, might be an effective and economic way of developing crops to grow successfully in waterlogged condition. Marker assisted selection (MAS) is a new and more effective approach which ...

During diving, marine mammals initiate a series of cardiovascular changes that include bradycardia and decreased peripheral circulation. Because heat transfer from thermal windows located in peripheral sites of these mammals depends on blood flow, such adjustments may limit their thermoregulatory capabilities during submergence. Here, we demonstrate how the thermoregulatory responses of bottlen...

Complete submergence of plants prevents direct O(2) and CO(2) exchange with air. Underwater photosynthesis can result in marked diurnal changes in O(2) supply to submerged plants. Dynamics in pO(2) had not been measured directly for submerged rice (Oryza sativa), but in an earlier study, radial O(2) loss from roots showed an initial peak following shoot illumination. O(2) dynamics in shoots and...

A series of experiments was conducted to investigate the erosion behaviors of the noncohesive sediments downstream of smooth and rough aprons. A total of 33 tests were carried out with five different roughness conditions (k =0, 1, 1.85, 3.35 and 5mm) in a flume 0.5m wide, 0.6m deep and 9m long. For each run, s measurements were taken of the scour-hole profiles at the asymptotic or equilibrium s...

It is known that alcoholic fermentation is important for survival of plants under anaerobic conditions. Acetaldehyde, one of the intermediates of alcoholic fermentation, is not only reduced by alcohol dehydrogenase but also can be oxidized by aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). To determine whether ALDH plays a role in anaerobic metabolism in rice (Oryza sativa L. cv Nipponbare), we characterized a ...