CO2 and fire influence tropical ecosystem stability in response to climate change.

Interactions between climate, fire and CO2 are believed to play a crucial role in controlling the distributions of tropical woodlands and savannas, but our understanding of these processes is limited by the paucity of data from undisturbed tropical ecosystems. Here we use a 28,000-year integrated record of vegetation, climate and fire from West Africa to examine the role of these interactions on tropical ecosystem stability. We find that increased aridity between 28-15 kyr B.

Self-Healing of Core-Shell Magnetic Polystyrene Nanocomposites.

High heat generation is reported in core-shell magnetic nanoparticle polystyrene (PS) nanocomposites (3.5, 10 wt %) when they are placed in a high-frequency ac magnetic field. These magnetic nanoparticles with cobalt iron oxide core and manganese iron oxide shell were synthesized and characterized by wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAX), thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and ac field gradient magnetometery.

Transparent large-strain thermoplastic polyurethane magnetoactive nanocomposites.

Organically modified superparamagnetic MnFe(2)O(4)/thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer (TPU) nanocomposites (0.1-8 wt %) were prepared by solvent mixing followed by solution casting. Linear aliphatic alkyl chain modification of spherical MnFe(2)O(4) provided compatibility with the TPU containing a butanediol extended polyester polyol-MDI.

East African megadroughts between 135 and 75 thousand years ago and bearing on early-modern human origins.

The environmental backdrop to the evolution and spread of early Homo sapiens in East Africa is known mainly from isolated outcrops and distant marine sediment cores. Here we present results from new scientific drill cores from Lake Malawi, the first long and continuous, high-fidelity records of tropical climate change from the continent itself. Our record shows periods of severe aridity between 135 and 75 thousand years (kyr) ago, when the lake's water volume was reduced by at least 95%.

Muted climate variations in continental Siberia during the mid-Pleistocene epoch.

The large difference in carbon and oxygen isotope data from the marine record between marine oxygen isotope stage 12 (MIS 12) and MIS 11, spanning the interval between about 480 and 380 kyr ago, has been interpreted as a transition between an extremely cold glacial period and an unusually warm interglacial period, with consequences for global ice volume, sea level and the global carbon cycle. The extent of the change is intriguing, because orbital forcing is predicted to have been relatively weak at that time. Here we analyse a continuous sediment record from Lake Baikal, Siberia, which reveals a virtually continuous interglacial diatom assemblage, a stable littoral benthic diatom assemblage and lithogenic sediments with 'interglacial' characteristics for the period from MIS 15a to MIS 11 (from about 580 to 380 kyr ago).