Environment and density-dependency explain the fine-scale aggregation of tree recruits before and after thinning in a mixed forest of Southern Europe.

Thinning in forest management primarily reduces the density of trees and alters the patchiness and spatial complexity of environmental factors and individual interactions between plant recruits. At fine spatial scales, little is known about the relative weight of ecological processes affecting tree regeneration before and after thinning events. Here we studied the density and aggregation of tree recruits in fully-mapped plots located in mixed forests in Northern Iberian Peninsula (Southern Europe) for over four years, which comprises one year before and three years after a thinning event.

Parker Solar Probe Imaging of the Night Side of Venus.

We present images of Venus from the Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) telescope on board the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) spacecraft, obtained during PSP's third and fourth flybys of Venus on 2020 July 11 and 2021 February 20, respectively. Thermal emission from the surface is observed on the night side, representing the shortest wavelength observations of this emission ever, the first detection of the Venusian surface by an optical telescope observing below 0.8 μm.

The nightside cloud-top circulation of the atmosphere of Venus.

Although Venus is a terrestrial planet similar to Earth, its atmospheric circulation is much different and poorly characterized. Winds at the cloud top have been measured predominantly on the dayside. Prominent poleward drifts have been observed with dayside cloud tracking and interpreted to be caused by thermal tides and a Hadley circulation; however, the lack of nightside measurements over broad latitudes has prevented the unambiguous characterization of these components.

Decoupling of traditional burnings and grazing regimes alters plant diversity and dominant species competition in high-mountain grasslands.

Over millennia, the combination of controlled burnings and extensive grazing has maintained mosaic landscapes and preserved mountain grasslands in southern Europe. In the last century, deep socio-economic changes have led to an abandonment of traditional uses, to a general decline of the domestic herbivory and to a misuse of burning practices. This study aims to quantify how the decoupling of burning and grazing regimes affects in the long-term the structure, diversity and dynamics of high-mountain, shrub-encroached grasslands.

How waves and turbulence maintain the super-rotation of Venus' atmosphere.

Venus has a thick atmosphere that rotates 60 times as fast as the surface, a phenomenon known as super-rotation. We use data obtained from the orbiting Akatsuki spacecraft to investigate how the super-rotation is maintained in the cloud layer, where the rotation speed is highest. A thermally induced latitudinal-vertical circulation acts to homogenize the distribution of the angular momentum around the rotational axis.

Venus looks different from day to night across wavelengths: morphology from Akatsuki multispectral images.

Since insertion into orbit on December 7, 2015, the Akatsuki orbiter has returned global images of Venus from its four imaging cameras at eleven discrete wavelengths from ultraviolet (283 and 365 nm) and near infrared (0.9-2.3 µm), to the thermal infrared (8-12 µm) from a near-equatorial orbit.

Equatorial jet in the lower to middle cloud layer of Venus revealed by Akatsuki.

The Venusian atmosphere is in a state of superrotation where prevailing westward winds move much faster than the planet's rotation. Venus is covered with thick clouds that extend from about 45 to 70 km altitude, but thermal radiation emitted from the lower atmosphere and the surface on the planet's night-side escapes to space at narrow spectral windows of near-infrared. The radiation can be used to estimate winds by tracking the silhouettes of clouds in the lower and middle cloud regions below about 57 km in altitude.

Students' Factors Affecting Undergraduates' Perceptions of their Teaching and Learning Process within ECTS Experience.

Introduction: In the present study, we investigated the potential factors that influenced the level of students satisfaction with the teaching-learning process (TLP), from the perspective of students participating in the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) experience.

Method: A total of 1490 students from the Universities of Almería and Granada (Spain) participated in an evaluation of their class discipline area. They completed the new revised protocol for evaluating the ECTS experience.