Long Period Of Stability Research Articles

Biodiversity and ecosystem purification service in an alluvial wetland

Alluvial wetlands provide an important regulating service, the water purification, through the removal of excess nutrients. In those habitats, nitrogen removal by the denitrifying bacterial community is hypothesized to interact with the co-existing invertebrate communities. Yet, few studies reported the infield relationship between invertebrate and microbial communities, where biotic and abiotic interactions are complex. We aimed at exploring the relationship between the invertebrate diversity and microbial denitrification process involved in the water purification service in an alluvial wetland. Subterranean water samplings were seasonally collected from April 2013 to March 2014. Eleven hyporheic habitats were accessed through piezometers dispersed over a meander located in the alluvial plain of the Garonne River (Southwest of France). Physicochemical, hydraulic characteristics, bacterial and invertebrate communities were simultaneously investigated as related factors for potential denitrification rates.Significant spatial gradients of invertebrate diversity, potential denitrification rates, the concentrations of dissolved oxygen, dissolved organic carbon, ammonium and nitrate ions and conductivity were observed in the groundwater of the Monbequi meander. The autumn campaign (9th October), which was performed after a long period of hydrological stability and low discharge, showed a significantly positive linear relationship between invertebrate diversity and potential denitrification rates. An overall significant and positive correlation between invertebrate and bacterial communities’ compositions was found over the four seasons. When each season was considered independently, this relationship was only significant during the autumn campaign. Such observations indicated the positive cross-communities’ interactions that existed between the invertebrate diversity—bacterial communities’ composition and their activity of denitrification. The autumn campaign was suggested to be regarded as a “hot moment” to observe this biodiversity/function relationship, when biological influences on water purification processes were probably not concealed by stronger influences of physical factors. Furthermore, this study showed that optimal potential nitrate removal was supported by a combination of biotic and abiotic conditions: relatively low temperature, oxygen and nitrate concentrations, diverse invertebrate fauna, relatively high dissolved organic carbon and ammonium concentrations.

Reprint of “Assessing urban growth and rural land use transformations in a cross-border situation in Northern Namibia and Southern Angola”

The Okavango catchment is a hot spot of accelerating land use change. In particular, climate predictions, demographic developments and a growing utilization of ecosystem services and functions are expected to increase pressure on resources and land. Land use conflicts, the sustenance of precarious livelihoods, deforestation of woodland savannahs, upstream–downstream water issues and human–wildlife conflicts are among the processes that are characteristic of policy and management challenges in the region. In the Eastern and Western Kavango regions of Namibia and the Cuando-Cubango province of Angola, a unique cross-border situation exists that allows assessing how the combination of local traditions, regional land management and national policies determines spatial patterns of land use and land cover transformation processes.To map major land use types and change processes we used a set of multi-temporal Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-7 ETM+ data sets, support vector machine (SVM) classification and iterative spectral mixture analysis (ISMA) on images covering the period from 1990 to 2010. Integrating satellite imagery with literature reviews, interviews, census and household survey data, we assessed the contrasting development of resource utilization on both sides of the Okavango River. We investigated if and how policies and regulations at different levels drive land use decisions, and how these decisions manifest spatially.We found a strong and interconnected urban growth on both sides of the river. The area around Rundu has constantly been evolving to become Namibia's second largest city, also functioning as a hub of development and transborder commerce with opposing Calai. This trend was found to affect adjacent settlement areas and cause widespread conversion of woodland savannahs to agricultural land or their utilization for timber extraction. The conversion of woodland savannah to arable land was by far the dominant land use change process on both sides of the river, with a total conversion area of 460km2 (Namibia) and 293km2 (Angola) observed during the observation period. Strong spatial change gradients occurred in relation to determining factors, such as accessibility, proximity to water, urban centres, etc., while relations to settlements where less obvious. Assessing results by country illustrated the difference in land use intensity and resource consumption between Angola and Namibia, which relate directly to historical developments, with a long period of stability in Namibia standing opposed to the recent and ongoing recovery from civil war in Angola. These are added to by statutory and traditional policy frameworks, the national endowment with natural capital (e.g. oil, uranium, diamonds, zinc) and the integration into global markets, which strongly affects national economies of both countries at large.Underlying land use decisions were found to be largely driven by individualized perspectives on growth ideologies, consumerism and wealth-aspirations connected to globalization processes. However, at present the result of these perspectives is still mainly a small-structured conversion to rainfed agriculture as a component of subsistence strategies of local livelihoods, and thus stands opposed to other regions of the world, where change processes are much more driven by large companies or follow national regulations and result in more intensive uses.

Resetting the agenda: the makings of ?A New Era.

The New South Wales Government's NSW HIV Strategy 2012-2015: A New Era represented a punctuated shift of policy direction, and was remarkable for its ground-breaking declaration that HIV transmission could be virtually ended by 2020. This significant policy shift occurred after a long period of stability and only incremental change, some of it represented by policy decline as political and public interest in HIV waned. This article uses punctuated equilibrium theory to explore the conditions that allowed for change, and the roles played by new and long-standing actors in the HIV policy subsystem. It explains the importance of challenges to the policy image and the policy venue as key mechanisms that allowed new possibilities, created by advances in the scientific understanding of HIV, to be incorporated rapidly into government policy.

Development of a novel phase change material emulsion for cooling systems

In this paper, a novel phase change material emulsion (PCE-10) consisting of an organic PCM (RT10) and water has been developed. Its thermophysical properties such as heat of fusion, viscosity and sub-cooling temperature have been established. The chemical stability during both storage and discharge periods have also been evaluated. The results indicate low sub-cooling temperature and relatively long period of stability without any sign of segregation but the viscosity was found to be much higher than that of water.Further improvement and experimental studies into its flow characteristics are therefore being encouraged.

Upper Holocene sea level changes in the West Saronic Gulf, Greece

Along the Peloponnesian coast of the Saronic Gulf and on the coast of Aegina and Poros islands, submerged coastal geomorphological features related directly with submerged ancient coastal constructions, indicate three distinct sea levels. Submerged tidal notches incised on the carbonate basement, beachrocks formed in the intertidal zone and archaeological indicators, such as the ancient harbour installations in Kenchreai and Epidaurus and on Aegina island, the extended coastal buildings and constructions in Agios Vlasis, Psifta and Palaiokastro-Methana, and Vagionia on Poros island, are used to determine the age and magnitude of submersion and the extent of the Upper Holocene marine transgression. By the correlation of geomorphological, historical and archaeological indications three distinct sea levels were identified, at −3.30 ± 0.15 m, −0.90 ± 0.15 m and −0.55 ± 0.05 m. Initial change in sea level occurred definitely after AD 400 ± 100. The intermediate change is dated between AD 1586 and 1839, and the most recent change after 1839. Sea transgression followed a long period of sea level stability, which lasted at least 2200 years, from the Middle Bronze Age to the Late Roman period.

The Economic Record of the Coalition Government: Introduction

First, some context. The 1970s and 1980s were an era of both political polarisation and sharp controversy over economic policy, both macroeconomic and microeconomic. But they were followed, in the UK as elsewhere in most developed economies, by a long period of stability in the general approach to economic management. From 1992 to 2007 there was a remarkable degree of consensus across the political spectrum on economic issues.

The ACNC, the Senate, the Commission of Audit and the Not-for-Profit Sector

Law reform initiatives may take decades to come to fruition. According to Kingdon, a convergence of problems, policies and political streams is needed to open a window of opportunity to initiate major changes to existing laws. Policymaking may, in fact, be characterised by long periods of stability followed by brief periods of major policy shifts that may result in key reforms to existing legal systems. As such, it is not surprising that the not-for-profit sector's reforms have taken decades and countless inquiries to come into effect. These reforms have resulted in the introduction of a new regulatory framework for the sector through the establishment, in 2012, of the Australian Charities and Not-for- Profits Commission ('ACNC').

Spontaneous regression of malignant pleural mesothelioma: A case report

Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is a rare pleural disease with a poor prognosis. Currently treatment options are limited and the outcome is generally quite poor. We report the case of a 76-year-old man diagnosed with locally advanced MPM who had partial spontaneous response for 2 years and remained asymptomatic for more than 3 years. The patient was taking specific herbal and vegetable diet during the course of response. In our review of literature, a number of prognostic factors predict for better survival and response. However our patients did not have any of these factors. There have been reports of immune-induced responses in the literature. Our patient did indeed use some herbal products that might interfere with the immune system and explain his tumour regression and long period of disease stability. Further analyses and studies are needed in this setting to explore and identify specific immune pathways and targets to develop more effective treatment for MPM.

Multi‐level stable and energy‐efficient clustering protocol in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks

Classical clustering protocols in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) assume that all nodes are equipped with the same amount of energy. As a result, they cannot take full advantage of the presence of node heterogeneity. In this study, a stable and energy-efficient clustering (SEEC) protocol for heterogeneous WSNs is proposed. In addition, the extension to multi-level of SEEC is presented. It depends on the network structure that is divided into clusters. Each cluster has a powerful advanced node and some normal nodes deployed randomly in this cluster. In the multi-level architectures, more powerful supper nodes are assigned to cover distant sensing areas. Each type of nodes has its role in the sensing, aggregation or transmission to the base station. At each level of heterogeneity, the optimum number of powerful nodes that achieves the minimum energy consumption of the network is obtained. The proposed protocol is a heterogeneous awareness to prolong the stability period, which is crucial for many applications. The performance of the proposed protocol is compared by existing homogeneous and heterogeneous protocols. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol provides a longer stability period, more energy efficiency and higher average throughput than the existing protocols.

Assessing urban growth and rural land use transformations in a cross-border situation in Northern Namibia and Southern Angola

The Okavango catchment is a hot spot of accelerating land use change. In particular, climate predictions, demographic developments and a growing utilization of ecosystem services and functions are expected to increase pressure on resources and land. Land use conflicts, the sustenance of precarious livelihoods, deforestation of woodland savannahs, upstream–downstream water issues and human–wildlife conflicts are among the processes that are characteristic of policy and management challenges in the region. In the Eastern and Western Kavango regions of Namibia and the Cuando-Cubango province of Angola, a unique cross-border situation exists that allows assessing how the combination of local traditions, regional land management and national policies determines spatial patterns of land use and land cover transformation processes.To map major land use types and change processes we used a set of multi-temporal Landsat-5 TM and Landsat-7 ETM+ data sets, support vector machine (SVM) classification and iterative spectral mixture analysis (ISMA) on images covering the period from 1990 to 2010. Integrating satellite imagery with literature reviews, interviews, census and household survey data, we assessed the contrasting development of resource utilization on both sides of the Okavango River. We investigated if and how policies and regulations at different levels drive land use decisions, and how these decisions manifest spatially.We found a strong and interconnected urban growth on both sides of the river. The area around Rundu has constantly been evolving to become Namibia's second largest city, also functioning as a hub of development and transborder commerce with opposing Calai. This trend was found to affect adjacent settlement areas and cause widespread conversion of woodland savannahs to agricultural land or their utilization for timber extraction. The conversion of woodland savannah to arable land was by far the dominant land use change process on both sides of the river, with a total conversion area of 460km2 (Namibia) and 293km2 (Angola) observed during the observation period. Strong spatial change gradients occurred in relation to determining factors, such as accessibility, proximity to water, urban centres, etc., while relations to settlements where less obvious. Assessing results by country illustrated the difference in land use intensity and resource consumption between Angola and Namibia, which relate directly to historical developments, with a long period of stability in Namibia standing opposed to the recent and ongoing recovery from civil war in Angola. These are added to by statutory and traditional policy frameworks, the national endowment with natural capital (e.g. oil, uranium, diamonds, zinc) and the integration into global markets, which strongly affects national economies of both countries at large.Underlying land use decisions were found to be largely driven by individualized perspectives on growth ideologies, consumerism and wealth-aspirations connected to globalization processes. However, at present the result of these perspectives is still mainly a small-structured conversion to rainfed agriculture as a component of subsistence strategies of local livelihoods, and thus stands opposed to other regions of the world, where change processes are much more driven by large companies or follow national regulations and result in more intensive uses.

How Authoritarianism Intensifies Punctuated Equilibrium: The Dynamics of Policy Attention in Hong Kong

The punctuated equilibrium theory contends that government attention allocation is universally leptokurtic in that long periods of stability are punctuated by bursts of rapid and radical change; the empirical evidence in support of this claim is however exclusively drawn from democratic systems. The absence of electoral politics and institutional decentralization in authoritarian regimes could presumably affect institutional friction; whether and how this might pose as a qualification to the thesis is of major interest. By analyzing four streams of government actions in Hong Kong from 1946 to 2007 straddling the colonial and postcolonial regimes, we have found that government processes are generally leptokurtic even under authoritarian regime institutions, with the degree of the dispersion of decision‐making power across the streams of actions affecting the magnitude of punctuation. We have also found that punctuation was greater when the political system was more centralized but declined as the political system democratized.

Irruptive dynamics of introduced caribou on Adak Island, Alaska: an evaluation of Riney‐Caughley model predictions

Large mammalian herbivores introduced to islands without predators are predicted to undergo irruptive population and spatial dynamics, but only a few well‐documented case studies support this paradigm. We used the Riney‐Caughley model as a framework to test predictions of irruptive population growth and spatial expansion of caribou (Rangifer tarandus granti) introduced to Adak Island in the Aleutian archipelago of Alaska in 1958 and 1959. We utilized a time series of spatially explicit counts conducted on this population intermittently over a 54‐year period. Population size increased from 23 released animals to approximately 2900 animals in 2012. Population dynamics were characterized by two distinct periods of irruptive growth separated by a long time period of relative stability, and the catalyst for the initial irruption was more likely related to annual variation in hunting pressure than weather conditions. An unexpected pattern resembling logistic population growth occurred between the peak of the second irruption in 2005 and the next survey conducted seven years later in 2012. Model simulations indicated that an increase in reported harvest alone could not explain the deceleration in population growth, yet high levels of unreported harvest combined with increasing density‐dependent feedbacks on fecundity and survival were the most plausible explanation for the observed population trend. No studies of introduced island Rangifer have measured a time series of spatial use to the extent described in this study. Spatial use patterns during the post‐calving season strongly supported Riney‐Caughley model predictions, whereby high‐density core areas expanded outwardly as population size increased. During the calving season, caribou displayed marked site fidelity across the full range of population densities despite availability of other suitable habitats for calving. Finally, dispersal and reproduction on neighboring Kagalaska Island represented a new dispersal front for irruptive dynamics and a new challenge for resource managers. The future demography of caribou on both islands is far from certain, yet sustained and significant hunting pressure should be a vital management tool.

What Prevents the Philippines from Undertaking Tax Reform? A Story of the Unravelling State

One of the crucial areas of government policy responsible for the weak development performance of the Philippines is tax policy and administration. By 2011, the tax to GDP ratio had fallen to a meagre 12.3 per cent, 4.6 percentage points below the pre-1997 level and around 7 points below the regional average. The absence of tax reform reflects a set of inter-related factors. First, long periods of political and economic stability have meant that crises have not provided the opportunity for reform that they allowed, for instance, in Latin America. Second, the highest level of income inequality in East Asia has resulted in state capture by the elite, which in turn perpetuates and increases income differences. Third, Filipinos exhibit a marked preference for the state to deliver private over public goods as a modern and legal version of patronage. Fourth, the middle classes, on whose shoulders the tax burden largely falls, aware of the state’s inability to tax the wealthy and the relatively poor quality of public services, opt out of state services and provide privately for education, health and even security. Fifth, the disempowerment of the poor keeps them quiescent, not putting pressure on the state to cater to their needs. Promising avenues for change include: a) academia and development partners to take a more active role in analysing and disseminating the reasons for the poor performance of the Philippine economy; b) stronger leadership by churches in encouraging integrity and pro-poor attitudes, behaviour, institutions and policies; and c) a coalition of all interested stakeholders for a more developmental, clean and pro-poor government, including committed civil servants and politicians, civil society organisations, academia, media, church groups and private sector representatives.

Serial exome analysis of disease progression in premalignant gammopathies

Serial exome analysis of disease progression in premalignant gammopathies

Archaic settlement in El Tebernal, Veracruz: First insights into paleoenvironmental conditions and resource exploitation

We present first results about an Archaic (9000–4000 BP) site, El Tebernal, in the eastern part of Mexico. At El Tebernal, a set of lithic artifacts was found associated with a paleosol (lower paleosol) and buried by an upper paleosol and a modern soil. The artifacts are made from local limestone and chert. Selected paleosol properties were evaluated (total organic carbon, grain size distribution, carbon stable isotope composition, magnetic susceptibility, and micromorphology) that provide information about paleoenvironmental conditions. The lower paleosol is composed of the following horizons: 3E, 3EB, 3BE, 3Btg1, 3Btg2, 3C while the upper paleosol only has a 2A horizon. The lower paleosol is very well developed, with in situ clay coatings, moderate weathering of primary minerals, and a matrix free of carbonates, although the alluvium in the lowermost part of the profile contains a mixture of limestone and volcanic materials. The entire sequence is covered by the modern soil mantle which is formed by an A horizon. Radiocarbon ages determined on soil organic matter from the 3Btg1 and 2A horizons were 5580 to 5320 Cal BP and 2350 to 2320 Cal BP, respectively. We interpret the age of 3Btg1 as close to the final stage of soil formation, because the organic matter content in this horizon is illuviated. Pedogenesis likely began sometime prior to the reported age in the Early Holocene. The paleosol properties indicate a long period of landscape stability (n × 103–104 years) under humid and temperate conditions. It is probable that volcanic events from Pico de Orizaba, located several kilometers from El Tebernal, affected this stability. One of the last eruptions produced a block-and-ash flow of dacitic composition dated at 4100 BP that contributed to the end of pedogenesis. The upper paleosol (2A horizon) as well as the modern soil contain ceramics from the Post-classic period (AD 900–1521). The profile is cut by a channel and infilled by a dark material that dates to 1140 to 970 Cal BP (AD 810–980). In consequence, the area has been strongly affected by human occupations during the Holocene. We suggest these ceramic societies caused erosion and activation of geomorphic processes.

Port Logistics in West and Central Africa: A Strategic Development under Globalization

The main idea of this study is to provide help to West and Central Africa port logistics authorities in making, evaluating and realizing their decisions on port development/management, all in an effort to guaranty port efficiency and operational brilliance to profit the different ports, their hinterlands and their related clients. Consequently, an examination is made as far as port sector is concerned, with an ever more demanding enhancement in operational efficiency. Moreover, a past research on West and Central Africa Ports, as well as an overview on port logistics was made, making it possible to determine what has been done (prospects) and what is still to be done (ineffectiveness), in prospective of a more reformed and efficient port. One of the principles of this paper is also to confer all the aspects that operate as obstacles to the WCA port’s improvement and development; using thus the evaluation model called EWCA (Evaluation of West and Central Africa Ports), which gives a descriptive analysis of the present situation of the latter’s port logistics, including the aid of multiple regression model to determine an impact of explanatory variables on the study probability. Applying the method of strategic development, this paper thus deals with exploring typical problems and quandaries of West and Central Africa ports. The findings suggested how to fight back or overcome the constrictions and strangulations; enabling West and Central Africa port logistics attain their desired strategic development aims, despite the ineffectiveness. Tremendous efforts were made, giving a vital shoot on African economy and development; even though there is still a lot to do, for the data and variables showed how the port logistics augment and descend frequently without a long period of stability.

Chapter 5 Adversarial Relationships between Humans and Weather in Medieval English Literature

Chapter 5 Adversarial Relationships between Humans and Weather in Medieval English Literature Michael W. George The seduction of pleasant weather is seen consistently in the settings of Middle English literature. We need only reflect on the opening of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales to verify this assertion: Whan that Aprill with his shoures sooteThe droghte of march hath perced to the roote,And bathed every veyne in swich licourOf which vertu engendred is the flour;Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breethInspired hath in every holt and heethThe tendre croppes, and the yonge sonneHath in the Ram his half cours yronne,And smale foweles maken melodye…Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. (1, lines 1–12)1 [When April with its sweet showers / Has pierced the dryness of March to the root, / And bathed every vein in such moisture / By which power the flower is engendered: / When the west wind also with its sweet breath / Has breathed life into every grove and field / The tender shoots, and the young sun / Has in the Ram its course half run, / And small birds make melody / … / Then people long to go on pilgrimages.] This spring opening has been considered a standard topos of medieval literature, related to the locus amoenus of classical literature.2 Why is this opening used so often? In this essay, I will offer some speculative insights into the seductiveness [End Page 67] of the spring setting by commenting on its opposite—inclement weather and the hardships it brings with it. In this light, standard literary settings such as spring and its pleasant weather take on an added seductiveness stemming from the writer’s and readers’ experience with actual weather. Pleasant late-spring and summer weather is something on which the medieval reader should be able to count, if we take these spring openings as any indication. After the cold of the winter people desire some relief. However, is this a realistic expectation on the part of the medieval reader, or is it simply wishful thinking? I will argue that in many cases it is the latter. Scholarship dealing with the opening of The Canterbury Tales, for instance, often addresses the perceived realism of the setting. Some critics consider the weather in these lines to be representative of actual weather patterns: following a dry March, April rains nourish the fertile soil in preparation for the flowering of May. Others consider this situation to be more representative of a Mediterranean climate than of weather in England.3 Both positions could be defended using twentieth- and early twenty-first-century climate patterns. However, none of these studies takes into consideration climate change. Paleoclimatology shows us that the medieval climate was different from the climate that twentieth-century scholars experienced. Reconstructing Fourteenth-Century Weather Climate change does happen, and paleoclimatologists use a variety of methods to reconstruct the climate of previous eras. Tree rings, ice cores, peat cores, corals, speleothems (mineral deposits formed from groundwater, found in caves), pollen, and sediment deposits all provide data that can be used to give us a reasonable estimate of past temperatures and precipitation.4 These reconstructions tend to agree on two points. First, during much of the early Middle Ages, Western Europe experienced warmer-than-average temperatures, perhaps about as warm as we are experiencing now. Beginning in around 950 CE, this period has become known as the Medieval Warm Period or Medieval Climate Anomaly.5 The end of the Medieval Climate Anomaly ushered in what has commonly become known as the Little Ice Age. Jean Grove has convincingly argued that the Little Ice Age began around 1300, when the Alpine glaciers began to advance.6 This was not an ice age, of course. Rather, it was a period of average cooling, only 1 to 3 degrees Celsius throughout the period, characterized by expanding glaciers, the main effects of which were not felt until much later.7 Still, we can see some early effects of this cooler weather. After a long period of relative stability (which permitted, among other things, wine production in northern Europe), we begin to see periods of fluctuation in temperature and rainfall. We must resist the idea...

What Is the Anthropocene—and Why Is It Relevant for International Law?

Our Earth is undergoing a shift from the conditions of the most recent officially accepted geological time interval, the Holocene, to a new planetary state. The Holocene is the latest, and formally still current, geological epoch. It comprises the past 11,700 years,1 which have been marked by an exceptionally long period of relative environmental stability and, for approximately the last 7,000 years, of generally stable sea levels. As such, the conditions of the Holocene were a key factor facilitating the development of human civilization. In the early 2000s, Paul Crutzen (Nobel Laureate for his work on atmospheric ozone) suggested that, because of the global environmental effects of economic development and increased human population, the Earth system had already left the Holocene and had entered a new epoch, which he termed the ‘Anthropocene.’2 In the course of the past fifteen years—and since 2009, in particular—the Anthropocene concept has...

The Phylogeography and Spatiotemporal Spread of South-Central Skunk Rabies Virus

The south-central skunk rabies virus (SCSK) is the most broadly distributed terrestrial viral lineage in North America. Skunk rabies has not been efficiently targeted by oral vaccination campaigns and represents a natural system of pathogen invasion, yielding insights to rabies emergence. In the present study we reconstructed spatiotemporal spread of SCSK in the whole territory of its circulation using a combination of Bayesian methods. The analysis based on 241 glycoprotein gene sequences demonstrated that SCSK is much more divergent phylogenetically than was appreciated previously. According to our analyses the SCSK originated in the territory of Texas ~170 years ago, and spread geographically during the following decades. The wavefront velocity in the northward direction was significantly greater than in the eastward and westward directions. Rivers (except the Mississippi River and Rio Grande River) did not constitute significant barriers for epizootic spread, in contrast to deserts and mountains. The mean dispersal rate of skunk rabies was lower than that of the raccoon and fox rabies. Viral lineages circulate in their areas with limited evidence of geographic spread during decades. However, spatiotemporal reconstruction shows that after a long period of stability the dispersal rate and wavefront velocity of SCSK are increasing. Our results indicate that there is a need to develop control measures for SCSK, and suggest how such measure can be implemented most efficiently. Our approach can be extrapolated to other rabies reservoirs and used as a tool for investigation of epizootic patterns and planning interventions towards disease elimination.

Historical coastal evolution of the ancient harbor of Aegina in relation to the Upper Holocene relative sea level changes in the Saronic Gulf, Greece

The extensive ancient harbor installations — today submerged — on the seafront of Kolona in Aegina are associated with the great trading and maritime development of the island from the Middle Bronze Age to the Middle Classical period.Based on geomorphological and archeological indications, three distinct relative sea levels can be defined at depths of 3.17±0.05m, 0.97±0.05m and 0.52±0.05m. The dating of the sea level changes based on archeological evidence and historical sources shows that the initial sea level change in Aegina occurred certainly after AD170 and most likely after AD250. The intermediate change is dated between AD1586 and AD1839, and the most recent change occurred between 1839 and 1999. A transgression followed a long period of sea level stability that lasted at least 2200years, from the Middle Bronze Age (ca. 3900yr BP) to the Late Roman period (ca. 1700yr BP).According to the paleogeographical reconstruction of the coast, the ancient harbor installations stretch along 1600m of coastline. The north harbor is bounded by the north breakwater, the riprap on the once wide sandy coast, the detached west breakwater, and the uplift morphology of the west end of Kolona Hill. On the south coast, the harbor installations comprise the fortified “closed harbor” with the shipsheds, the commercial harbor, which is entirely destroyed by the modern port, the anchorage area that is bounded by the west breakwater and built of cone-shaped piles of stones, the tops of which once projected above the sea level, and the south curved breakwater at its southernmost boundary.