The native plants of remote tropical islands have been frequently characterized as poor competitors against seemingly more aggressive alien species. Does this "weak competitor" characterization relate to some real adaptive consequences of island isolation and endemism, or does the generally concurrent presence of introduced ungulates and other forms of recurrent human disturbance also act to en...

Copernican Cosmography was used to discover the path linking Cebu islands and Acapulco via Kuro-Shivo Stream, as registered in Physica Speculatio, first physics book written in New Spain. Teaching and practice of Copernican theory were an outcome of both Spanish expansion into the Pacific Ocean and native elite instruction devised by Augustinian friars. Copernican cosmography was explained in P...

Vegetation is one of the most important components of the terrestrial ecosystem and, thus, monitoring the spatial and temporal dynamics of vegetation has become the key to exploring the basic process of the terrestrial ecosystem. Vegetation change studies have focused on the relationship between climatic factors and vegetation dynamics. However, correlations among the climatic factors always di...

The effects of differential recovery have been documented and discussed for almost a century. Screening experiments using comparative collections are one avenue for understanding recovery bias because they develop expectations about what is likely to be recovered. In this study, modern reference specimens of Pacific Island fish were screened through 1/4 inch (6.4 mm) and 1/8 inch (3.2 mm) mesh....

Double skin façade systems are employed increasingly in high profile buildings, designed by famous Architects, using acclaimed engineering consultants, and being touted as an exemplary “green” building strategy. It is a new technology that is more often found in high-end European and Pacific Rim architecture, and far less often in North American building. For the majority of mainstream architec...

Declines in fertility and population growth rates in the Pacific have lagged behind trends in other developing countries. In Pacific countries, most of which lack policy and public support for effective family planning and emigration outlets, rates of population growth remain among the highest in the world. The effect that high population growth rates have had in slowing economic growth appears...

Hausmann et al. (2004, 2005 and 2006) provide an important reminder of the implications of the theory of the ‘second best’. In the economist’s world of ‘first best’, an economic distortion is analysed as if it were the only distortion, and its removal can be assumed to increase community welfare (barring adverse equity effects). In the world of the second best, however, there are many distortio...

Introduction Conclusions References

PSB brings together top researchers from around the world to exchange research results and address open issues in all aspects of computational biology. PSB 2015 marks the twentieth anniversary of PSB. Reaching a milestone year is an accomplishment well worth celebrating. It is long enough to have seen big changes occur, but recent enough to be relevant for today. As PSB celebrates twenty years ...

the japanese threadfin bream, nemipterus japonicus, the most abundant and crucially economic nemipterus species is widespread throughout the indo-west pacific. the species has been studied widely for various aspects but genetic studies are scanty. this preliminary study contributes to the species phylogeography through the study of the genetic diversity and historical demography of n. japonicus...