Watersheds that are flatter, drier and warmer are generally more vulnerable to increases in flooding after trees are harvested. Those with greater variation in elevation spread runoff out over time, reducing flood peaks.
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My family tree doubles at every past ancestor generation, branching back into the past. At what point does it decrease to reflect the size of the smaller historical population?
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As climate change causes water scarcity and temperatures to rise, crops around the world are feeling the heat. How can we prevent severe crop losses in these relentlessly sweltering conditions? An international research team led by Tohoku University has identified a new class of small molecules that enhances plant drought tolerance without any major negative impact on plant growth.
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After tropical cyclones, communities are often left in upheaval. Those that had few resources to begin with tend to be especially vulnerable to external stresses, and people often experience homelessness, health problems and other forms of insecurity as a result. But once the disaster response gets underway, communities recover and tend to become less socially vulnerable than they were before the disaster, new research by Jiang and team suggests. The findings are published in the journal GeoHealth.
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Some mosquitoes really are picky eaters. They will not just stick their proboscis into any old human. We know this anecdotally, with some people claiming they are always bitten while others are completely ignored, though we don't really know why.
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Low river discharge reduces the likelihood of young Atlantic salmon reaching the North Sea. Fewer salmon reach the Haringvliet sluices, and their passage takes longer, making them more likely to fall prey to predators. Using so-called predation tags, researchers were able to demonstrate for the first time that this predation occurs largely before the Haringvliet sluices and is probably mainly caused by predatory fish. The results provide leads for improving the management of the Haringvliet sluices.
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More than 1,000 years ago, two babies were tucked away in an abandoned Roman toilet channel. Yet, despite what the location suggests, they were cherished, not discarded.
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Dark matter is usually described as an invisible substance that responds only to gravity. But scientists are now exploring a more complex possibility: dark matter particles may also interact through a hidden force of their own.
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Mathematicians have concluded that a perfectly fair election system is impossible in a specific mathematical sense. No voting method can always ensure that local victories produce local seats, national seat totals accurately reflect overall vote shares, and the size of parliament remains fixed.
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The rapid intensification of a hurricane ranks among the most dangerous weather events on Earth. Storms such as Hurricane Michael, which crashed ashore in the Florida Panhandle with winds of 160 mph (about 257 km/h), and Hurricane Otis, the costliest hurricane to strike Mexico's Pacific coast, caught communities unawares when they intensified at a rate that computer models failed to anticipate.
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