ALBERT

Beschreibung: The development of new methodologies to affect non– ortho -functionalization of arenes has emerged as a globally important arena for research, which is key to both fundamental studies and applied technologies. A range of simple arene feedstocks (namely, biphenyl, meta -terphenyl, para -terphenyl, 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene, and biphenylene) is transformed to hitherto unobtainable multi-iodoarenes via an s-block metal sodium magnesiate templated deprotonative approach. These iodoarenes have the potential to be used in a whole host of high-impact transformations, as precursors to key materials in the pharmaceutical, molecular electronic, and nanomaterials industries. To prove the concept, we transformed biphenyl to 3,5-bis( N -carbazolyl)-1,1'-biphenyl, a novel isomer of 4,4'-bis( N -carbazolyl)-1,1'-biphenyl (CPB), a compound which is currently widely used as a host material for organic light-emitting diodes.

Beschreibung: The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems ( www.predicts.org.uk )—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used this evidence base to develop global and regional statistical models of how local biodiversity responds to these measures. We describe and make freely available this 2016 release of the database, containing more than 3.2 million records sampled at over 26,000 locations and representing over 47,000 species. We outline how the database can help in answering a range of questions in ecology and conservation biology. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most geographically and taxonomically representative database of spatial comparisons of biodiversity that has been collated to date; it will be useful to researchers and international efforts wishing to model and understand the global status of biodiversity. The collation of biodiversity datasets with broad taxonomic, biogeographic, and spatial extents is necessary to understand historical declines and to project—and hopefully avert—future declines. We describe and make freely available a database of more than 3.2 million biodiversity measurements from 94 countries representing over 47,000 species, collated from 480 existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and pressures relating to land use, from terrestrial sites around the world.

Beschreibung: 〈p〉In organic microcavities, hybrid light-matter states can form with energies that differ from the bare molecular excitation energies by nearly 1 eV. A timely question, given the recent advances in the development of thermally activated delayed fluorescence materials, is whether strong light-matter coupling can be used to invert the ordering of singlet and triplet states and, in addition, enhance reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) rates. Here, we demonstrate a complete inversion of the singlet lower polariton and triplet excited states. We also unambiguously measure the RISC rate in strongly coupled organic microcavities and find that, regardless of the large energy level shifts, it is unchanged compared to films of the bare molecules. This observation is a consequence of slow RISC to the lower polariton due to the delocalized nature of the state across many molecules and an inability to compete with RISC to the dark exciton reservoir.〈/p〉

Beschreibung: Numerous climate change effects on biodiversity have been anticipated and documented, including extinctions, range shifts, phenological shifts, and breakdown of interactions in ecological communities, yet the relative balance of different climate drivers and their relationships to other agents of global change (for example, land use and land-use change) remains relatively poorly understood. This study integrated historical and current biodiversity data on distributions of 115 Mexican endemic bird species to document areas of concentrated gains and losses of species in local communities, and then related those changes to climate and land-use drivers. Of all drivers examined, at this relatively coarse spatial resolution, only temperature change had significant impacts on avifaunal turnover; neither precipitation change nor human impact on landscapes had detectable effects. This study, conducted across species’ geographic distributions, and covering all of Mexico, thanks to two large-scale biodiversity data sets, could discern relative importance of specific climatic drivers of biodiversity change.

Beschreibung: Backarc spreading center characteristics reflect interactions between plate-driven mantle advection and melting and slab-driven hydrous melting and buoyant upwelling in the mantle wedge. At the Fonualei Rift and Spreading Center (FRSC) in the Lau Basin spreading rates decrease from slow to ultraslow, providing an opportunity to examine crustal accretion as the plate-driven component is minimized. A new Lau Basin kinematic analysis predicts FRSC spreading rates of ~32-8 mm/yr southward, much slower than previous estimates of ~95-47 mm/yr. Here we examine FRSC morphology and geophysical characteristics as it approaches the Tofua arc volcanic front southward and spreading rates decrease, minimizing the plate-driven component of mantle advection and maximizing buoyant hydrous flux melting. Axial morphology changes abruptly from a deep, flat, faulted axis ~100 km away from the arc to a volcanic ridge that shoals and increases in relief southward. Within ~50 km of the arc at the south end, the volcanic ridge is abruptly replaced by isolated volcanic cones bisected by volcanic rift zones and surrounded by anomalously deep seafloor. These morphologic changes likely reflect along-axis focusing of mantle upwelling and melting similar to that seen at ultraslow mid-ocean ridges, causing the change in morphology from a segmented ridge to spaced axial cones. We propose that as opening rates slow and the ridge approaches the arc, more of the inherently three-dimensional pattern of hydrous flux melting and buoyant upwelling in the mantle wedge is expressed volcanically. With faster opening, two-dimensional plate-driven mantle advection dominates melt production, favoring ridges over point-source features.

Beschreibung: The ecological consequences of human-driven overexploitation and loss of keystone consumers are still unclear. In intertidal rocky shores over the world, the decrease of keystone macrograzers has resulted in an increase in the dominance of herbivores with smaller body (i.e., “mesograzers”), which could potentially alter community assembly and structure. Here, we experimentally tested whether mesograzers affect the structure of rocky intertidal communities during the period of early colonization after the occurrence of a disturbance. A manipulative field experiment was conducted to exclude mesograzers (i.e., juvenile chitons, small snails, amphipods, and juvenile limpets) from experimental areas in an ecosystem characterized by the overexploitation of keystone macrograzers and predators. The results of multivariate analyses suggest that mesograzers had significant effects on intertidal community structure through negative and positive effects on species abundances. Mesograzers had negative effects on filamentous algae, but positive effects on opportunistic foliose algae and barnacles. Probably, mesograzers indirectly favored the colonization of barnacles and foliose algae by removing preemptive competitors, as previously shown for other meso- and macrograzer species. These results strongly support the idea that small herbivores exert a firm controlling effect on the assembly process of natural communities. Therefore, changes in functional roles of top-down controllers might have significant implications for the structure of intertidal communities. In terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, the human-driven extinction of large consumers has resulted in an increase in the dominance of herbivores with smaller body sizes (i.e., “mesograzers”). We used an intertidal rocky-shore community to determine whether mesograzers (i.e., small snails, amphipods, and juvenile limpets) have significant effects on the structure of a macrobenthic sessile community during its early colonization. Our results showed that small herbivores had significant effects on community structure through direct negative and indirect positive effects on benthic species. Therefore, small herbivores might have a strong controlling effect on community structure potentially due to the functional extinction of larger consumers due to exploitation.

Beschreibung: The study uses a Monte Carlo radiative transfer model to examine the sensitivity of the UV Erythemal radiation (UVER) enhancement to broken liquid water clouds of the cumulus and stratocumulus type. The model uses monochromatic radiation at 310 nm corresponding approximately to the peak of the product between irradiance and the erythemal curve. All scattering, absorption, extinction coefficients and spectral albedos are tuned to this wavelength. In order of importance, fractional cloud cover, the area of individual cloud patches and cloud thickness exert a strong influence on the enhancement, with smaller contributions from cloud optical depth, cloud base height and solar zenith angle. In order to produce realistic enhancements for our study area located in the Valencia region of Spain (39° 30’ N; 0° 25’W), measurements were obtained from a Landsat image of the region in combination with a spectral Fourier transform model. The Monte Carlo model, as applied to the Fourier transform cloud distribution, produced satisfactory results compared to one year of measured UVER enhancement for the study region provided fractional cloud cover was equal to or greater than 3/10. At smaller cloud fractions, the neglect of cloud patches less than 50 m x 50 m in area by the model created significant discrepancies.