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"Timm, Bruce"
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Use sacred writings to assess religions
The Scripture says salvation comes by grace through faith in the sin-atoning death of Jesus Christ on a cross outside Jerusalem.
Newspaper Article
Batman : Harley Quinn
\"Head over heels in her devotion to the Joker, Arkham psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel gave up her career (and her sanity) to transform herself into the ultimate companion for crime's clown prince-- the mad moll Harley Quinn. Of course, Harley's romance with the Joker hasn't been easy. The two are at each other's throats as often as in each other's arms, and that buzzkill Batman is always sticking his nose in just when things are starting to get fun. But what great love story is without the occasional incarceration and life-threating peril?\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Logging increases the functional and phylogenetic dispersion of understorey plant communities in tropical lowland rain forest
1. Logging is a major driver of tropical forest degradation, with severe impacts on plant richness and composition. Rarely have these effects been considered in terms of their impact on the functional and phylogenetic diversity of understorey plant communities, despite the direct relevance to community reassembly trajectories. Here, we test the effects of logging on functional traits and evolutionary relatedness, over and above effects that can be explained by changes in species richness alone. We hypothesised that strong environmental filtering will result in more clustered (under-dispersed) functional and phylogenetic structures within communities as logging intensity increases. 2. We surveyed understorey plant communities at 180 locations across a logging intensity gradient from primary to repeatedly logged tropical lowland rain forest in Sabah, Malaysia. For the 691 recorded plant taxa, we generated a phylogeny to assess plot-level phylogenetic relatedness. We quantified 10 plant traits known to respond to disturbance and affect ecosystem functioning, and tested the influence of logging on functional and phylogenetic structure. 3. We found no significant effect of forest canopy loss or road configuration on species richness. By contrast, both functional dispersion and phylogenetic dispersion (net relatedness index) showed strong gradients from clustered towards more randomly assembled communities at higher logging intensity, independent of variation in species richness. Moreover, there was a significant nonlinear shift in the trait dispersion relationship above a logging intensity threshold of 65% canopy loss (±17% CL). All functional traits showed significant phylogenetic signals, suggesting broad concordance between functional and phylogenetic dispersion, at least below the logging intensity threshold. 4. Synthesis. We found a strong logging signal in the functional and phylogenetic structure of understorey plant communities, over and above species richness, but this effect was opposite to that predicted. Logging increased, rather than decreased, functional and phylogenetic dispersion in understorey plant communities. This effect was particularly pronounced for functional response traits, which directly link disturbance with plant community reassembly. Our study provides novel insights into the way logging affects understorey plant communities in tropical rain forest and highlights the importance of trait-based approaches to improve our understanding of the broad range of logging-associated impacts.
Journal Article
Scooby-Doo! Team-up. Volume 2
\"Is Titans Tower haunted?! Robin calls in some experts--but when will Scooby, Shaggy, Cyborg, and Beast Boy stop chowing down on pizza and start looking for clues?\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Specimen collection is essential for modern science
Natural history museums are vital repositories of specimens, samples and data that inform about the natural world; this Formal Comment revisits a Perspective that advocated for the adoption of compassionate collection practices, querying whether it will ever be possible to completely do away with whole animal specimen collection.
Journal Article
The Batman adventures. Volume 3
\"Mirroring the iconic style of the four-time Emmy Award-winning Batman: The Animated Series, experience the comic that proved as groundbreaking as its television counterpart, in all-ages stories that feature the Dark Knight's fiercest adversaries, greatest allies and all-new threats to Gotham City! THE BATMAN ADVENTURES VOL. 3 collects issues #21-27 and THE BATMAN ADVENTURES ANNUAL #1, featuring stories by writers PAUL DINI (BATMAN: ARKHAM CITY, ZATANNA) and KELLY PUCKETT (BATMAN: NO MAN'S LAND, BATGIRL) and artists BRUCE TIMM (BATMAN ADVENTUES: MAD LOVE) and RICK BURCHETT (SUPERMAN ADVENTURES)\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Logging, exotic plant invasions, and native plant reassembly in a lowland tropical rain forest
Habitat modification and biological invasions are key drivers of global environmental change. However, the extent and impact of exotic plant invasions in modified tropical landscapes remain poorly understood. We examined whether logging drives exotic plant invasions and whether their combined influences alter understory plant community composition in lowland rain forests in Borneo. We tested the relationship between understory communities and local-and landscape-scale logging intensity, using leaf area index (LAI) and aboveground biomass (AGB) data from 192 plots across a logging-intensity gradient from primary to repeatedly logged forests. Overall, we found relatively low levels of exotic plant invasions, despite an intensive logging history. Exotic species were more speciose, had greater cover, and more biomass in sites with more local-scale canopy loss. Surprisingly, though, exotic species invasion was not related to either landscape-scale canopy loss or road configuration. Moreover, logging and invasion did not seem to be acting synergistically on native plant composition, except that seedlings of the canopy-dominant Dipterocarpaceae family were less abundant in areas with higher exotic plant biomass. Current low levels of invasion, and limited association with native understory community change, suggest there is a window of opportunity to manage invasive impacts. We caution about potential lag effects and the possibly severe negative impacts of exotic plant invasions on the long-term quality of tropical forest, particularly where agricultural plantations function as permanent seed sources for recurrent dispersal along logging roads. We therefore urge prioritization of strategic management plans to counter the growing threat of exotic plant invasions in modified tropical landscapes.
Journal Article
Can leaf area index and biomass be estimated from Braun‐Blanquet cover scores in tropical forests?
QUESTIONS: The loss and degradation of tropical forests is having severe impacts on the dynamics of understorey plant communities. Understanding these impacts requires efficient ways to measure vegetation change over broad spatial and temporal scales. Leaf area index (LAI) and above‐ground biomass are preferred quantitative measures of variation in plant community structure. However, their accurate measurement requires destructive sampling, which can be impractical or inappropriate. Here we test whether semi‐quantitative assessment of Braun‐Blanquet vegetation cover scores is a reliable proxy for direct quantitative measures of LAI and above‐ground biomass of differing plant growth forms (PGF) within tropical forests. LOCATION: Six hundred square kilometre area of tropical lowland rain forest in Sabah, Malaysia. METHODS: We sampled understorey rain forest plant communities across a disturbance gradient in 2 × 2 m plots at 301 locations. We used a modified Braun‐Blanquet scale to estimate plant cover, destructively harvested all live above‐ground biomass up to a height of 2 m, calculated the above‐ground biomass of each species from separately processed stem and leaf fractions in each plot, and then calculated LAI using reference measures of specific leaf area for each species. For each of nine PGFs, we regressed LAI and biomass against the nine‐point Braun‐Blanquet ordinal transform scale (OTS) using linear mixed effects models. RESULTS: We found a simple, uniform logarithmic scaling of LAI with increasing Braun‐Blanquet cover classes that was consistent across most PGFs, and with slope estimates close to 1.0. By contrast, no simple scaling relationship was found for above‐ground biomass, with most PGFs exhibiting an asymptotic relationship in which the Braun‐Blanquet estimates across high cover scores provided almost no resolution of observed variation in empirical biomass measures. CONCLUSIONS: We found that the Braun‐Blanquet OTS provides a remarkably simple and accurate logarithmic scaling of LAI, but care should be taken in applying scaling rules uniformly across PGFs. In contrast, the Braun‐Blanquet OTS shows a more complex relationship with plant above‐ground biomass and we caution against its unconditional use for biomass estimation. The findings of this study should be broadly applicable to other ecosystems due to the heterogeneity of plant communities included in this work.
Journal Article