Soil moisture is the key variable in the hydrological cycle. In the Volta Basin, West Africa, where rainfed agriculture forms the main source of income for the majority of the population; productivity relies on available soil moisture or “green water”. Progress will depend on good management of green water, and will be strongly based on monitoring results. Data scarcity in the Volta Basin empha...

Although previous studies have acknowledged that helping behavior has many potential benefits, little research has aimed at understanding which factors would possibly enhance helping behaviors among team members in CSCL environment. Accordingly, this study was intended to identify underlying factors leading learners to collaborate in virtual CSCL settings. A total of 100 undergraduate students ...

A scientific controversy retains often some controversial sides after its fundamentals have well been explained. This is particularly true for the controversy that arose in Italy in the second half of the eighteen century between the anatomist Luigi Galvani, and the physicist Alessandro Volta, around the intrinsic nature of nerve and muscular function. The two scientists were providing, almost ...

1402 n engl j med 353;13 www.nejm.org september 29, 2005 7. Fioretti P, Benussi B, Scardi S, Klugmann S, Brower RW, Camerini F. Afterload reduction with nifedipine in aortic insufficiency. Am J Cardiol 1982;49:1728-32. 8. Scognamiglio R, Rahimtoola SH, Fasoli G, Nistri S, Dalla Volta S. Nifedipine in asymptomatic patients with severe aortic regurgitation and normal left ventricular function. N ...

Preceded by a companion paper on Galvani's life, this article is written on the occasion of the bicentenary of the death of Luigi Galvani. From his studies on the effects of electricity on frogs, the scientist of Bologna derived the hypothesis that animal tissues are endowed with an intrinsic electricity that is involved in fundamental physiological processes such as nerve conduction and muscle...

sources in print and manuscript command respect. The final two chapters deal with Galvani's publication of his definitive views on animal electricity in 1791 and their reception. Stimulating here is Williams' view that Galvani thought about electricity in anatomical terms (although his model was the Leyden jar) whereas Volta, coming from a different direction, saw it quite otherwise. There are ...

Whether or not reservoirs contain water throughout the dry season is critical to avoiding late season crop failure in seasonally-arid agricultural landscapes. Locations, volumes, and temporal dynamics, particularly of small (<1 Mm3) reservoirs are poorly documented globally, thus making it difficult to identify geographic and intra-annual gaps in reservoir water availability. Yet, small reservo...

A contemporary of such important figures as Laplace, Coulomb, Herschel, Jefferson, Kant and Betancourt, the Spaniard Francisco Salva y Campillo (17511828) was a prominent late Enlightenment scientist who dedicated his whole life to researching on different topics related to diverse fields of knowledge by applying scientific method. Five years before Samuel Thomas von Sómmering (17551830) demons...

J. I. Cirac, A. K. Ekert, S. F. Huelga and C. Macchiavello Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstrasse 25, A-6020, Innsbruck, Austria. Department of Physics, Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PU, U. K. Optics Section, The Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College, London SW7 2BZ, U. K. Dipartimento di Fisica “A. Volta” and INFM Unità di Pavia, Via...

In the first half of the XXth century, while Upper-Volta (now Burkina Faso) was suffering a terrible epidemic of sleeping sickness, the French colonial administration encouraged the movement of people from Upper-Volta to Ivory Coast to meet their demands for labour. This led to the establishment of Mossi villages, such as those of Koudougou, in the Ivorian forest with populations originating fr...