The pace of life for forest trees.

Tree growth and longevity trade-offs fundamentally shape the terrestrial carbon balance. Yet, we lack a unified understanding of how such trade-offs vary across the world's forests. By mapping life history traits for a wide range of species across the Americas, we reveal considerable variation in life expectancies from 10 centimeters in diameter (ranging from 1.

The biogeography of the Amazonian tree flora.

We describe the geographical variation in tree species composition across Amazonian forests and show how environmental conditions are associated with species turnover. Our analyses are based on 2023 forest inventory plots (1 ha) that provide abundance data for a total of 5188 tree species. Within-plot species composition reflected both local environmental conditions (especially soil nutrients and hydrology) and geographical regions.

Disentangling the veil line for Brazilian biodiversity: An overview from two long-term research programs reveals huge gaps in ecological data reporting.

The lack of synthesized information regarding biodiversity is a major problem among researchers, leading to a pervasive cycle where ecologists make field campaigns to collect information that already exists and yet has not been made available for a broader audience. This problem leads to long-lasting effects in public policies such as spending money multiple times to conduct similar studies in the same area. We aim to identify this knowledge gap by synthesizing information available regarding two Brazilian long-term biodiversity programs and the metadata generated by them.

Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential.

Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these estimates. Here we combine several ground-sourced and satellite-derived approaches to evaluate the scale of the global forest carbon potential outside agricultural and urban lands.

Mapping density, diversity and species-richness of the Amazon tree flora.

Using 2.046 botanically-inventoried tree plots across the largest tropical forest on Earth, we mapped tree species-diversity and tree species-richness at 0.1-degree resolution, and investigated drivers for diversity and richness.

Long-term Ecological Research: Chasing fashions or being prepared for fashion changes?

Long-term-ecological-research (LTER) faces many challenges, including the difficulty of obtaining long-term funding, changes in research questions and sampling designs, keeping researchers collecting standardized data for many years, impediments to interactions with local people, and the difficulty of integrating the needs of local decision makers with "big science". These issues result in a lack of universally accepted guidelines as to how research should be done and integrated among LTER sites. Here we discuss how the RAPELD (standardized field infrastructure system), can help deal with these issues as a complementary technique in LTER studies, allowing comparisons across landscapes and ecosystems and reducing sampling costs.

The global biogeography of tree leaf form and habit.

Understanding what controls global leaf type variation in trees is crucial for comprehending their role in terrestrial ecosystems, including carbon, water and nutrient dynamics. Yet our understanding of the factors influencing forest leaf types remains incomplete, leaving us uncertain about the global proportions of needle-leaved, broadleaved, evergreen and deciduous trees. To address these gaps, we conducted a global, ground-sourced assessment of forest leaf-type variation by integrating forest inventory data with comprehensive leaf form (broadleaf vs needle-leaf) and habit (evergreen vs deciduous) records.

More than 10,000 pre-Columbian earthworks are still hidden throughout Amazonia.

Indigenous societies are known to have occupied the Amazon basin for more than 12,000 years, but the scale of their influence on Amazonian forests remains uncertain. We report the discovery, using LIDAR (light detection and ranging) information from across the basin, of 24 previously undetected pre-Columbian earthworks beneath the forest canopy. Modeled distribution and abundance of large-scale archaeological sites across Amazonia suggest that between 10,272 and 23,648 sites remain to be discovered and that most will be found in the southwest.

Analysis and implementation of the DynDiff tool when comparing versions of ontology.

Background: Ontologies play a key role in the management of medical knowledge because they have the properties to support a wide range of knowledge-intensive tasks. The dynamic nature of knowledge requires frequent changes to the ontologies to keep them up-to-date. The challenge is to understand and manage these changes and their impact on depending systems well in order to handle the growing volume of data annotated with ontologies and the limited documentation describing the changes.

Native diversity buffers against severity of non-native tree invasions.

Determining the drivers of non-native plant invasions is critical for managing native ecosystems and limiting the spread of invasive species. Tree invasions in particular have been relatively overlooked, even though they have the potential to transform ecosystems and economies. Here, leveraging global tree databases, we explore how the phylogenetic and functional diversity of native tree communities, human pressure and the environment influence the establishment of non-native tree species and the subsequent invasion severity.

Giants of the Amazon: How does environmental variation drive the diversity patterns of large trees?

For more than three decades, major efforts in sampling and analyzing tree diversity in South America have focused almost exclusively on trees with stems of at least 10 and 2.5 cm diameter, showing highest species diversity in the wetter western and northern Amazon forests. By contrast, little attention has been paid to patterns and drivers of diversity in the largest canopy and emergent trees, which is surprising given these have dominant ecological functions.

P2Y12 inhibitor monotherapy versus dual antiplatelet therapy in patients with acute coronary syndromes undergoing coronary stenting: rationale and design of the NEOMINDSET Trial.

Dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) is currently the standard of care after percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Recent studies suggest that reducing DAPT to 1-3 months followed by an aspirin-free single antiplatelet therapy (SAPT) strategy with a potent P2Y inhibitor is safe and associated with less bleeding. However, to date, no randomised trial has tested the impact of initiating SAPT immediately after PCI, particularly in patients with acute coronary syndromes (ACS).

Basin-wide variation in tree hydraulic safety margins predicts the carbon balance of Amazon forests.

Tropical forests face increasing climate risk, yet our ability to predict their response to climate change is limited by poor understanding of their resistance to water stress. Although xylem embolism resistance thresholds (for example, [Formula: see text]) and hydraulic safety margins (for example, HSM) are important predictors of drought-induced mortality risk, little is known about how these vary across Earth's largest tropical forest. Here, we present a pan-Amazon, fully standardized hydraulic traits dataset and use it to assess regional variation in drought sensitivity and hydraulic trait ability to predict species distributions and long-term forest biomass accumulation.

Unraveling Amazon tree community assembly using Maximum Information Entropy: a quantitative analysis of tropical forest ecology.

In a time of rapid global change, the question of what determines patterns in species abundance distribution remains a priority for understanding the complex dynamics of ecosystems. The constrained maximization of information entropy provides a framework for the understanding of such complex systems dynamics by a quantitative analysis of important constraints via predictions using least biased probability distributions. We apply it to over two thousand hectares of Amazonian tree inventories across seven forest types and thirteen functional traits, representing major global axes of plant strategies.

The number of tree species on Earth.

One of the most fundamental questions in ecology is how many species inhabit the Earth. However, due to massive logistical and financial challenges and taxonomic difficulties connected to the species concept definition, the global numbers of species, including those of important and well-studied life forms such as trees, still remain largely unknown. Here, based on global ground-sourced data, we estimate the total tree species richness at global, continental, and biome levels.

Computer Aided Design Modelling and Finite Element Analysis of Premolar Proximal Cavities Restored with Resin Composites.

This study evaluated the stress distribution in five different class II cavities of premolar models restored with conventional or bulk-fill flowable composite by means of finite element analysis (FEA) under shrinkage and occlusal loading. An upper validated premolar model was imported in the software, and five class II cavities with different occlusal extensions and dimensions were prepared: horizontal cavity on the mesial surface (horizontal slot), mesio-occlusal cavity, mesial cavity (vertical slot), tunnel type cavity and direct access cavity. The models were restored with conventional or bulk-fill flowable resin composite.

Non-structural carbohydrates mediate seasonal water stress across Amazon forests.

Non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) are major substrates for plant metabolism and have been implicated in mediating drought-induced tree mortality. Despite their significance, NSC dynamics in tropical forests remain little studied. We present leaf and branch NSC data for 82 Amazon canopy tree species in six sites spanning a broad precipitation gradient.

Influence of the dental implant number and load direction on stress distribution in a 3-unit implant-supported fixed dental prosthesis.

Background: The choice between 2 or 3 implants to support a 3-unit implant-supported fixed dental prosthesis (FDP) still generates doubt in clinical practice.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to evaluate stress distribution in 3-unit implant-supported FDPs according to the implant number and load direction.

Material And Methods: A numerical simulation was performed to analyze stress and strain according to the implant number (2 or 3) and load direction (axial or oblique).

Influence of Polymeric Restorative Materials on the Stress Distribution in Posterior Fixed Partial Dentures: 3D Finite Element Analysis.

Background: This study evaluated the effect of interim restorative materials (acrylic resin (AR), resin composite (RC) or polyetheretherketone (PEEK) for dental computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM)) on the stress distribution of a posterior three-unit fixed partial denture.

Methods: The abutment teeth (first molar and first premolar) were modeled using the BioCAD protocol containing 1.5 mm of axial reduction and converging axial walls.