Estimating the biogenic enhancement factor of weathering using an inverse viability method

To determine the influence of the biosphere on weathering we use a dynamic model of the global carbon cycle. It takes into account the most important processes for the long-term evolution of the Earth. The model is solved under a slowly changing environment of increasing solar luminosity and volcanic activity and continental area. By comparing the model results for the global average temperature with data derived from δ¹⁸O values from cherts it is possible to quantify the biogenic enhancement factor of weathering. For this purpose a newly developed inverse viability method is applied, which allows for calculating the range of possible biogenic enhancement factors consistent with the data. We find that in the Precambrian the weathering was 5.4 times lower than in the Phanerozoic era. This supports the hypothesis that the Cambrian explosion was caused by a positive feedback between the spread of biosphere, increased silicate weathering, and a consequent cooling of the climate.     

The influence of social experience on cooperative behaviour of rats (Rattus norvegicus): direct vs generalised reciprocity

Cooperation among non-kin has been attributed sometimes to reciprocal altruism: Two or more individuals exchange behaviour that benefits the respective partner. According to direct reciprocity, cooperation is based on past behaviour of a known partner. In contrast, in generalised reciprocity, cooperation is based on anonymous social experience where the identity of the partner is irrelevant. In a previous study, female Norway rats (Rattus norvegicus) were found to cooperate according to a generalised reciprocity mechanism. In this study, we tested whether Norway rats would also cooperate as predicted by a direct reciprocity mechanism and whether direct reciprocity would cause a higher propensity to cooperate than generalised reciprocity. Focal animals were experimentally manipulated to receive social experience from known or unknown, helpful or defecting partners in an instrumental cooperative task. Our first experiment shows that rats are more helpful towards a partner from which they had received help before than towards a partner that had not helped (i.e. direct reciprocity). Our second experiment revealed that after receiving help by others, rats were more helpful towards a partner from which they had received help before than towards a new partner (i.e. direct reciprocity generated a higher cooperation propensity than generalised reciprocity). We conclude that in female Norway rats, the tendency to cooperate is influenced by partner-specific information. To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate direct reciprocity in rodents, and it is the first study testing direct vs generalised reciprocity in animals.     

Time stress,predation risk and diurnal–nocturnal foraging trade-offs in larval prey

Insect larvae increase in size with several orders of magnitude throughout development making them more conspicuous to visually hunting predators. This change in predation pressure is likely to impose selection on larval anti-predator behaviour and since the risk of detection is likely to decrease in darkness, the night may offer safer foraging opportunities to large individuals. However, forsaking day foraging reduces development rate and could be extra costly if prey are subjected to seasonal time stress. Here we test if size-dependent risk and time constraints on feeding affect the foraging–predation risk trade-off expressed by the use of the diurnal–nocturnal period. We exposed larvae of one seasonal and one non-seasonal butterfly to different levels of seasonal time stress and time for diurnal–nocturnal feeding by rearing them in two photoperiods. In both species, diurnal foraging ceased at large sizes while nocturnal foraging remained constant or increased, thus larvae showed ontogenetic shifts in behaviour. Short night lengths forced small individuals to take higher risks and forage more during daytime, postponing the shift to strict night foraging to later on in development. In the non-seasonal species, seasonal time stress had a small effect on development and the diurnal–nocturnal foraging mode. In contrast, in the seasonal species, time for pupation and the timing of the foraging shift were strongly affected. We argue that a large part of the observed variation in larval diurnal–nocturnal activity and resulting growth rates is explained by changes in the cost/benefit ratio of foraging mediated by size-dependent predation and time stress.     

A Graph-Theory Framework for Evaluating Landscape Connectivity and Conservation Planning

Abstract:  Connectivity of habitat patches is thought to be important for movement of genes, individuals, populations, and species over multiple temporal and spatial scales. We used graph theory to characterize multiple aspects of landscape connectivity in a habitat network in the North Carolina Piedmont (U.S.A).^. We compared this landscape with simulated networks with known topology, resistance to disturbance, and rate of movement. We introduced graph measures such as compartmentalization and clustering, which can be used to identify locations on the landscape that may be especially resilient to human development or areas that may be most suitable for conservation. Our analyses indicated that for songbirds the Piedmont habitat network was well connected. Furthermore, the habitat network had commonalities with planar networks, which exhibit slow movement, and scale-free networks, which are resistant to random disturbances. These results suggest that connectivity in the habitat network was high enough to prevent the negative consequences of isolation but not so high as to allow rapid spread of disease. Our graph-theory framework provided insight into regional and emergent global network properties in an intuitive and visual way and allowed us to make inferences about rates and paths of species movements and vulnerability to disturbance. This approach can be applied easily to assessing habitat connectivity in any fragmented or patchy landscape.     

低温等离子体技术在环境工程中的研究进展

低温等离子体技术是一种用来处理环境污染问题的高新技术。介绍了低温等离子体的概念和去除污染物的机理,阐述了该技术在国内外环境工程中的应用现状,分析其存在的问题,并指出今后的发展方向。     

Clarifying values,risk perceptions,and attitudes to resolve or avoid social conflicts in invasive species management

Decision makers and researchers recognize the need to effectively confront the social dimensions and conflicts inherent to invasive species research and management. Yet, despite numerous contentious situations that have arisen, no systematic evaluation of the literature has examined the commonalities in the patterns and types of these emergent social issues. Using social and ecological keywords, we reviewed trends in the social dimensions of invasive species research and management and the sources and potential solutions to problems and conflicts that arise around invasive species. We integrated components of cognitive hierarchy theory and risk perceptions theory to provide a conceptual framework to identify, distinguish, and provide understanding of the driving factors underlying disputes associated with invasive species. In the ISI Web of Science database, we found 15,915 peer‐reviewed publications on biological invasions, 124 of which included social dimensions of this phenomenon. Of these 124, 28 studies described specific contentious situations. Social approaches to biological invasions have emerged largely in the last decade and have focused on both environmental social sciences and resource management. Despite being distributed in a range of journals, these 124 articles were concentrated mostly in ecology and conservation‐oriented outlets. We found that conflicts surrounding invasive species arose based largely on differences in value systems and to a lesser extent stakeholder and decision maker's risk perceptions. To confront or avoid such situations, we suggest integrating the plurality of environmental values into invasive species research and management via structured decision making techniques, which enhance effective risk communication that promotes trust and confidence between stakeholders and decision makers. Clarificar los Valores, Percepciones de Riesgo y Actitudes para Resolver o Evitar Conflictos Sociales en el Manejo de Especies Invasoras     

Building robust conservation plans

Systematic conservation planning optimizes trade‐offs between biodiversity conservation and human activities by accounting for socioeconomic costs while aiming to achieve prescribed conservation objectives. However, the most cost‐efficient conservation plan can be very dissimilar to any other plan achieving the set of conservation objectives. This is problematic under conditions of implementation uncertainty (e.g., if all or part of the plan becomes unattainable). We determined through simulations of parallel implementation of conservation plans and habitat loss the conditions under which optimal plans have limited chances of implementation and where implementation attempts would fail to meet objectives. We then devised a new, flexible method for identifying conservation priorities and scheduling conservation actions. This method entails generating a number of alternative plans, calculating the similarity in site composition among all plans, and selecting the plan with the highest density of neighboring plans in similarity space. We compared our method with the classic method that maximizes cost efficiency with synthetic and real data sets. When implementation was uncertain—a common reality—our method provided higher likelihood of achieving conservation targets. We found that χ, a measure of the shortfall in objectives achieved by a conservation plan if the plan could not be implemented entirely, was the main factor determining the relative performance of a flexibility enhanced approach to conservation prioritization. Our findings should help planning authorities prioritize conservation efforts in the face of uncertainty about future condition and availability of sites.     

The theory behind,and the challenges of,conserving nature's stage in a time of rapid change

Most conservation planning to date has focused on protecting today's biodiversity with the assumption that it will be tomorrow's biodiversity. However, modern climate change has already resulted in distributional shifts of some species and is projected to result in many more shifts in the coming decades. As species redistribute and biotic communities reorganize, conservation plans based on current patterns of biodiversity may fail to adequately protect species in the future. One approach for addressing this issue is to focus on conserving a range of abiotic conditions in the conservation‐planning process. By doing so, it may be possible to conserve an abiotically diverse “stage” upon which evolution will play out and support many actors (biodiversity). We reviewed the fundamental underpinnings of the concept of conserving the abiotic stage, starting with the early observations of von Humboldt, who mapped the concordance of abiotic conditions and vegetation, and progressing to the concept of the ecological niche. We discuss challenges posed by issues of spatial and temporal scale, the role of biotic drivers of species distributions, and latitudinal and topographic variation in relationships between climate and landform. For example, abiotic conditions are not static, but change through time—albeit at different and often relatively slow rates. In some places, biotic interactions play a substantial role in structuring patterns of biodiversity, meaning that patterns of biodiversity may be less tightly linked to the abiotic stage. Furthermore, abiotic drivers of biodiversity can change with latitude and topographic position, meaning that the abiotic stage may need to be defined differently in different places. We conclude that protecting a diversity of abiotic conditions will likely best conserve biodiversity into the future in places where abiotic drivers of species distributions are strong relative to biotic drivers, where the diversity of abiotic settings will be conserved through time, and where connectivity allows for movement among areas providing different abiotic conditions.     

Ca~(2+)对煤中含氮活性基团阻化效应研究

为揭示CaCl2抑制煤炭自燃发生的机理,提高阻化效果,采用Gaussian03软件包,对Ca2+与煤中含N活性基团形成的配位体的结构及分子前沿轨道、稳定化能、自然键轨道和净电荷布居、电荷转移进行系统研究。结果表明,Ca2+能够与煤中含N活性基团形成二配体、三配体及四配体配合物,形成四配体的稳定化能与前沿轨道能级能隙差较大,说明四配体配合物最为稳定,而且形成配合物后,煤含N活性结构中的-NH2基团对前沿轨道的贡献大大减少,同时轨道能级大幅增加,增加了煤活性结构的稳定性,提高了煤活性结构的抗氧化性。     

The ripple effect: A spillover model of the detrimental impact of work–family conflict on job success

Exploring the role of both the employee and supervisor, we tested a model of how cognition‐based work‐to‐family conflict manifests itself in the workplace, impacting employee job success. Based on conservation of resources theory and the concept of loss spirals, we hypothesized that when an employee's work interferes with family demands, the resulting work‐to‐family conflict spills over to the work domain via employee emotional exhaustion. We further argued that the behavioral manifestation of employee emotional exhaustion in the workplace is low employee engagement, as assessed by the supervisor. Drawing on signaling theory, we proposed that supervisor assessments of employee engagement are related to promotability, performance ratings, and salary. Work scheduling autonomy, as a boundary condition, is examined as a resource that attenuates these relationships. Data collected from 192 employee–supervisor dyads of a Fortune 1000 company, as well as performance ratings and salary obtained from company records 9 months later, indicated support for our conceptual model. Future research examining employee work–family conflict and job outcomes is discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.