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Nutrient Additions Affecting Matter Turnover in Forest and Pasture Ecosystems
2013
Nutrient inputs into ecosystems of the tropical mountain rainforest region are projected to further increase in the next decades. To investigate whether important ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling and matter turnover in native forests and pasture ecosystems show different patterns of response, two nutrient addition experiments have been established: NUMEX in the forest and FERPAST at the pasture. Both ecosystems already responded 1.5 years after the start of nutrient application (N, P, NP, Ca). Interestingly, most nutrients remained in the respective systems. While the pasture grass was co-limited by N and P, most tree species responded to P addition. Soil microbial biomass in the…
Accounting More Precisely for Peat and Other Soil Carbon Resources
2012
In the context of “recarbonization”, it is important to know where the soil C stocks are located and how much of these are prone to emission to the atmosphere. While it may appear to be a trivial question considering available global estimates and maps, yet there is a strong need to emphasize that erroneous estimates are made in assessing the global soil C stocks. Without doubt, peatlands hold the single most important soil C stock at the global scale, and these soils are mostly located in the northern latitudes between 50°N and 70°N. However, there are additional wetlands or other ecosystems which also hold potentially relevant amounts of soil C stocks. From the soil science perspective, i…
The impact of urban development on aquifers in large coastal cities of West Africa: Present status and future challenges
2018
Abstract This paper investigates the coastal cities of Abidjan, Cotonou, Lagos and Douala in West Africa. Published data on these areas were aggregated in order to compare the urban development of some African huge cities and assess their impacts on groundwater. Those urban centers have experienced an exponential demographic expansion since the 1950s, with increased population densities and a geographical coverage expansion as well. The Continental Terminal aquifer, major groundwater resource taped in this region by the national water companies and local populations, shows a continuous downward trend in piezometric levels. Concerning water quality, the evolution up to the current state (sal…
Impact on Air Quality of the COVID-19 Lockdown in the Urban Area of Palermo (Italy).
2020
At the end of 2019, the first cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were reported in Wuhan, China. Thereafter, the number of infected people increased rapidly, and the outbreak turned into a national crisis, with infected individuals all over the country. The COVID-19 global pandemic produced extreme changes in human behavior that affected air quality. Human mobility and production activities decreased significantly, and many regions recorded significant reductions in air pollution. The goal of our investigation was to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on the concentrations of the main air pollutants in the urban area of Palermo (Italy). In this study, the trends in the average…
Dual Careers of Athletes During COVID-19 Lockdown
2021
This study aimed to investigate the student-athletes' capability to face the academic, sport, and social challenges during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown and to disclose novel aspects of dual careers. A 32-item online survey encompassing demographic characteristics, sport and university engagement, support and dual-career benefits, physical activity, sitting time, and the time deemed necessary to recover the previous level of performance was developed. Four hundred sixty-seven student-athletes (males: 57%, females: 43%) from 11 countries, competing in 49 different sports (individual: 63.4%, team: 36.6%) at regional (17.5%), national (43.3%), and international (39.2%) level…
The proof of Birman’s conjecture on singular braid monoids
2003
Let B_n be the Artin braid group on n strings with standard generators sigma_1, ..., sigma_{n-1}, and let SB_n be the singular braid monoid with generators sigma_1^{+-1}, ..., sigma_{n-1}^{+-1}, tau_1, ..., tau_{n-1}. The desingularization map is the multiplicative homomorphism eta: SB_n --> Z[B_n] defined by eta(sigma_i^{+-1}) =_i^{+-1} and eta(tau_i) = sigma_i - sigma_i^{-1}, for 1 <= i <= n-1. The purpose of the present paper is to prove Birman's conjecture, namely, that the desingularization map eta is injective.
Sourcing on the internet: Examining the relations among different phases of online inquiry
2021
This study examined students’ engagement in sourcing throughout online inquiry, that is, when they specified the information need, formulated search queries, evaluated online texts, and composed a written product. Participants were 167 upper secondary school students. Students completed an online inquiry task in a restricted online environment that utilized authentic online texts. Students’ prior topic knowledge and reading fluency was measured and controlled for in the analysis. The results showed that students engaged in sourcing even in the earliest phases of online inquiry. A sequential regression analysis indicated that the more frequently students engaged in sourcing in specifying the…
Enhanced adhesion and in situ photothermal ablation of cancer cells in surface-functionalized electrospun microfiber scaffold with graphene oxide
2017
The physicochemical characteristics of a biomaterial surface highly affect the interaction with living cells. Recently, much attention has been focused on the adhesion properties of functional biomaterials toward cancer cells, since is expected to control metastatic spread of a tumor, which is related to good probability containing the progression of disease burden. Here, we designed an implantable poly(caprolactone)-based electrospun microfiber scaffold, henceforth PCLMF-GO, to simultaneously capture and kill cancer cells by tuning physicochemical features of the hybrid surface through nitrogen plasma activation and hetero-phase graphene oxide (GO) covalent functionalization. The surface i…
Structure of locally convex quasi C * -algebras
2008
There are examples of C*-algebras A that accept a locally convex *-topology τ coarser than the given one, such that Ã[τ] (the completion of A with respect to τ) is a GB*-algebra. The multiplication of A[τ] may be or not be jointly continuous. In the second case, Ã[*] may fail being a locally convex *-algebra, but it is a partial *-algebra. In both cases the structure and the representation theory of Ã[τ] are investigated. If Ã+ τ denotes the τ-closure of the positive cone A+ of the given C*-algebra A, then the property Ā+ τ ∩ (-Ā+ τ) = {0} is decisive for the existence of certain faithful *-representations of the corresponding *-algebra Ã[τ]