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The state of paleolimnology in the tropics was analyzed using articles published between 1997 and 2015 in the Journal of Paleolimnology, and in other international and tropical-country-based journals. Results showed that most paleolimnological studies have been carried out in high-latitude regions. About 40% of the lakes on Earth, representing almost one-third of global lake surface area, lie within tropical latitudes. Yet in comparison to the number of paleolimnological investigations in higher-latitude lakes, there have been relatively few studies in the tropics. Our goal was to evaluate whether there has been a shift in the relative amount of effort directed toward paleolimnological work in tropical regions over the last quarter century, and if not, to call for more paleolimnological studies in the tropics and suggest ways to remedy the geographic disparity. Our analysis showed that paleolimnological studies in the tropics still lag far behind efforts at higher latitudes, prompting us to encourage more work focusing in tropical regions. To do so will require more funding from local research agencies to support paleolimnological work and train local scientists. We recommend that funded investigators from extra-tropical, developed countries should work in close collaboration with local scientists in the nations where studies are carried out, and that local students should be involved. Steps should also be taken to encourage students from tropical countries to attend international scientific meetings that focus on paleolimnology. Lastly, more such symposia should be held in tropical countries. Paleolimnological research at low latitudes can address pressing environmental issues in tropical environments, such as the effects of rapid land-use change, the eutrophication and pollution of local water bodies, and recent climate change.

Based on considerable archival research in Switzerland and France, this article considers the creation of specialised institutions and centres for scientific research, discussion and information on international questions after the First World War. It analyses the origins and development of the International Studies Conference from 1928 until 1946, and it pays particular attention to the institutional setting provided by the ISC. With the help of an international questionnaire of the League of Nations from the early 1930s the article also discusses the university teaching of IR in the US, Great Britain and on the European continent in the interwar period, and it looks at some of the institutional settings, especially academic institutions (departments, chairs, schools and so on), that were available at the time.

This article briefly recounts the history of the International Symposia on Mathematical Programming from the 0th in 1949 to the 19th in 2006. Included in the summary are the dates, locations, organizers, sponsors, award winners, and special characteristics of each Symposium.

Responding to the challenges of fostering regional growth and employment in an increasingly competitive global economy, many U.S. states and regions have developed programs to attract and grow companies as well as attract the talent and resources necessary to develop innovation clusters. These state and regionally based initiatives have a broad range of goals and increasingly include significant resources, often with a sectoral focus and often in partnership with foundations and universities. These are being joined by recent initiatives to coordinate and concentrate investments from a variety of federal agencies that provide significant resources to develop regional centers of innovation, business incubators, and other strategies to encourage entrepreneurship and high-tech development. This has led to renewed interest in understanding the nature of innovation clusters and public policies associated with successful cluster development. The Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP), conducted a symposium which brought together state and federal government officials, leading analysts, congressional staff, and other stakeholders to explore the role of clusters in promoting economic growth, the government's role in stimulating clusters, and the role of universities and foundations in their development. Growing Innovation Clusters for American Prosperity captures the presentations and discussions of the 2009 STEP symposium on innovation clusters. It includes an overview highlighting key issues raised at the meeting and a summary of the meeting's presentations. This report has been prepared by the workshop rapporteur as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop.

The recent experimental data suggest that lattice defects in transition-metal oxides tend to be aligned into chains, which can promote pairing of charge carriers with subsequent formation of bosonic stripes. In this study, possible relationship between the extraordinary manifestations of electronic properties, observed by different methods in niobium oxides, and the processes of formation of metastable nanochannels from bosonic stripes are discussed.

Possible mechanisms of plastic deformation and failure of nanostructured and cluster amorphous materials have been considered. It is shown that the most probable carriers of plastic deformation in these materials are macrodislocations—linear topological defects of the regular nanocrystallite packing in the nanostructure or cluster packing in amorphous materials. Continuum models are proposed to describe the processes of plastic deformation and failure of nanostructured and cluster amorphous materials.

The oxygen isotope effect in ceramic samples of bilayer manganites (La 1− z Pr z ) 1.2 Sr 1.8 Mn 2 16–18 O 7 ( z = 0, 0.3) has been investigated. The real and imaginary parts of the magnetic susceptibility have been measured and a significant (more than 20 K) decrease in the ferromagnetic transition temperature upon oxygen isotope substitution 16 O— 18 O is found. At temperatures T > 170 K, a number of additional ferromagnetic transitions are observed, whose critical temperatures also shift as a result of the isotope substitution. The obtained results are compared from the data for other manganite systems where giant isotope effect is observed.

It is established that, as a result of application of even a small (∼0.5 kV cm −1 ) bias field E , the maximum of the piezoelectric coefficient d 31 in (1 − x )Pb(Mg 1/3 Nb 2/3 )O 3 − x PbTiO 3 ( x = 0.06, 0.13) crystals shifts from the Vogel-Fulcher temperature to the critical point in the E - T phase diagram of a given composition. The field dependence of the d 31 ( T ) peak magnitude has a maximum near the E values corresponding to the critical point.

Complex investigation of the physical properties and structure of sintered powder materials of the Fe-Si system after grinding of a mixture of powders in two different mechanical aggregates has been performed. It is shown that fragmentation of powders in both a BW-micro vibration grinder and in a Fritsch-type centrifugal planetary mill leads to a nonmonotonic change in the properties of sintered materials. This result is explained by mechanical activation of powders during grinding.

The IR reflection and Raman spectra of β-Tl 1 − x Cu x InS 2 (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.015) single crystals have been studied in the temperature range 84–300 K. It is shown that partial replacement of thallium by copper atoms leads to a decrease in the frequencies of the corresponding oscillations in the frequency range 40–500 cm −1 and does not induce (at given concentrations) local oscillations. Analysis of the transformation of the IR reflection spectra at T 2 ≈ 185 K revealed a ferroelectric phase transition.