The Phoenix mission, launched on 4 August 2007, landed in the far northern
plains of Mars on 25 May 2008. In order to prepare for the landing events and the
90-sol mission, a significant amount of work has gone into characterizing the atmospheric
environment at this location on Mars for...
In late May of 2008, the NASA/JPL Phoenix spacecraft will touch down near its targeted landing site on Mars (68.2°N, 126.6°W). Entry, descent, and landing (EDL) occurs in the late afternoon (~1630 hours local solar time (LST)) during late northern spring (Ls ~ 78°). Using a mesoscale and a large-eddy...
The advent of high-throughput sequencing (HTS) methods has enabled direct approaches to quantitatively profile small RNA
populations. However, these methods have been limited by several factors, including representational artifacts and lack of
established statistical methods of analysis. Furthermore, massive HTS data sets present new problems related to data processing
and...
Through its role in the energy and water balances at the land surface, soil moisture is a key state variable in surface hydrology and land-atmosphere interactions. Point observations of soil moisture are easy to make using established methods such as time domain reflectometry and gravimetric sampling. However, monitoring large-scale variability...
High seroprevalance for Brucella abortus among elk on Wyoming feedgrounds suggests that supplemental feeding may influence parasite transmission and disease dynamics by altering the rate at which elk contact infectious materials in their environment. We used proximity loggers and video cameras to estimate rates of elk-to-fetus contact (the primary source...
Connectivity models using empirically-derived
landscape resistance maps can predict potential
linkages among fragmented animal and plant populations.
However, such models have rarely been used to
guide systematic decision-making, such as identifying
the most important habitat patches and dispersal corridors
to protect or restore in order to maximize regional
connectivity. Combining...
The last glacial period exhibited abrupt Dansgaard–Oeschger climatic oscillations, evidence of which is preserved in a variety of Northern Hemisphere palaeoclimate archives¹. Ice cores show that Antarctica cooled during the warm phases of the Greenland Dansgaard–Oeschger cycle and vice versa[superscript 2,3], suggesting an interhemispheric redistribution of heat through a mechanism...
Oomycetes form a deep lineage of eukaryotic organisms that includes a large number of plant pathogens which threaten natural and managed ecosystems. We undertook a survey to query the community for their ranking of plant-pathogenic oomycete species based on scientific and economic importance. In total, we received 263 votes from...
The sensations of taste and smell are integral to our perception of food. Because the olfactory and gustatory systems are physiologically separate, scientists were once uncertain of whether information from these two systems interacted at the perceptual level. Recent studies suggest that taste and smell do indeed interact. Two interaction...
Harrat Hutaymah is an alkali basalt volcanic field in north-central Saudi Arabia, at the eastern margin of a large Neogene continental, intraplate magmatic province. Lava flow, tephra and spatter cone compositions in the field include alkali olivine basalts and basanites. These compositions contrast with the predominantly tholeiitic, fissure-fed basalts found...