The origins of early farming and its spread to Europe have been the subject of major interest for some time. The main controversy today is over the nature of the Neolithic transition in Europe: the extent to which the spread was, for the most part, indigenous and animated by imitation (cultural diffusion) or else was driven by an influx of dispersing populations (demic diffusion). We analyze th...

BACKGROUND Quantifying changes in forest bird diversity is an essential task for developing effective conservation actions. When subtle changes in diversity accumulate over time, annual comparisons may offer an incomplete perspective of changes in diversity. In this case, progressive change, the comparison of changes in diversity from a baseline condition, may offer greater insight because chan...

Thanks to its observational frequency of 15 min, the Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) geostationary satellite offers a great potential to monitor dust storms. To explore this potential, an algorithm for the detection and the retrieval of dust aerosol optical properties has been tested. This is a multispectral algorithm based on visible and infrared data which has been applied to 15 case studies...

As widespread deserts is located in west and southwest of Iran plateau, dust storms form due to west andsouthwest systems over Syria or Iraq as well as Arabian Peninsula. These systems severely affect west and southwestregions. Sometimes the fine dusts transmit to central, north east, and east regions. In this study for investigating dustysynoptical patterns, meteorological data at 5 synoptic s...

In a chapter entitled “Spacious Skies and Tilted Axes” Jared Diamond (1997) argues that crops and domestic animals are spread more easily along lines of latitude (along an East-West axis) rather than along lines of longitude (along a North-South axis). Diamond suggests that East-West spread is easier because similar climates and soil types tend to be arranged in east-west oriented bands. Th is ...

Spatial variation in growth is a common feature of demersal fish populations which often exist as discrete adult sub-populations linked by a pelagic larval stage. However, it remains unclear whether variation in growth occurs at similar spatial scales for populations of highly migratory pelagic species, such as tuna. We examined spatial variation in growth of albacore Thunnus alalunga across 90...

This article analyzes the main objectives of the scientific voyage to circumnavigate the earth, undertaken by the United States from 1838 to 1842. Charting was one of the most important of the scientific and strategic goals of the exploratory voyage. The initiative for the undertaking was the search for exact positioning on the high seas after the establishment of the longitude system, when nau...

[1] The relationship between total electron content (TEC) and the solar soft X-ray irradiances is presented. Three bands (2–7 nm, 6–19 nm, and 17–20 nm) of solar soft X-ray measurements from the Student Nitric Oxide Explorer (SNOE) satellite are examined and all show a similar relationship with TEC. The TEC data are from a GPS receiver near Ancon, Peru ( 11.78 degrees latitude, 77.15 degrees lo...

We have observed a stellar occultation of GSC5249-01240 by Saturn's north polar region on November 20, 1995 from NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF). This is the first recorded occultation by the polar region of a giant planet. The occulted region extends 88 km in vertical height and 660 km in horizontal length, over a region from 82.5 to 85 degrees in planetocentric latitude and from 20 ...