Oxford reading tree. Teacher's guide 2 : stages 4-5.

Explicaciones detalladas de cómo sacar el máximo provecho de cada etapa. Las ideas y sugerencias de esta guía mantienen y amplían la filosofía de la lectura, y el programa, según la propuesta de métodos de enseñanza establecidos en la guía del primer nivel, que ayudarán a dar a los niños la confianza, y las habilidades necesarias para hacer frente a historias con textos más extensos y complejos. Contiene actividades de apoyo a una serie de estrategias de lectura, recursos fotocopiables, actividades tranversales de los contenidos curriculares, evaluación con hojas de registro. También incluye material adicional.

Oxford reading tree. Teacher's guide 1 : stages 1-3.

Explicaciones detalladas para ayudar a los niños a aprender a leer en las primeras etapas. Facilita al profesor una serie de estrategias para la enseñanza de la lectura y una amplia variedad de recursos y materiales de apoyo lingüístico. Contiene actividades de apoyo a una serie de estrategias de lectura, recursos fotocopiables, actividades transversales de los contenidos curriculares, evaluación con hojas de registro. También incluye material adicional.

Irrigation performance and gross water productivity in furrow-irrigated ornamental tree production

In the ornamental plant production region of Girona (Spain), which is one of the largest of its kind in southern Europe, most of the surface is irrigated using wide blocked-end furrows. The objectives of this paper were: (1) to evaluate the irrigation scheduling methods used by ornamental plant producers; (2) to analyse different scenarios in order to assess how they affect irrigation performance; (3) to evaluate the risk of deep percolation; and (4) to calculate gross water productivity. A two-year study in a representative commercial field, planted with Prunus cerasifera ‘Nigra’, was carried out. The irrigation dose applied by the farmers was slightly smaller than the required water dose estimated by the use of two different methods: the first based on soil water content, and the second based on evapotranspiration. Distribution uniformity and application efficiency were high, with mean values above 87%. Soil water content measurements revealed that even at the end of the furrow, where the infiltrated water depth was greatest, more than 90% of the infiltrated water was retained in the shallowest 40 cm of the soil; accordingly, the risk of water loss due to deep percolation was minimal. Gross water productivity for ornamental tree production was € 11.70 m–3, approximately 20 times higher than that obtained with maize in the same region

Patterns of pollen and seed dispersal in a small, fragmented population of the wind-pollinated tree Araucaria angustifolia in southern Brazil

Paternity analysis based on eight microsatellite loci was used to investigate pollen and seed dispersal patterns of the dioecious wind- pollinated tree, Araucaria angustifolia. The study sites were a 5.4 ha isolated forest fragment and a small tree group situated 1.7 km away, located in Paran alpha State, Brazil. In the forest fragment, 121 males, 99 females, 66 seedlings and 92 juveniles were mapped and genotyped, together with 210 seeds. In the tree group, nine male and two female adults were mapped and genotyped, together with 20 seeds. Paternity analysis within the forest fragment indicated that at least 4% of the seeds, 3% of the seedlings and 7% of the juveniles were fertilized by pollen from trees in the adjacent group, and 6% of the seeds were fertilized by pollen from trees outside these stands. The average pollination distance within the forest fragment was 83 m; when the tree group was included the pollination distance was 2006m. The average number of effective pollen donors was estimated as 12.6. Mother- trees within the fragment could be assigned to all seedlings and juveniles, suggesting an absence of seed immigration. The distance of seedlings and juveniles from their assigned mother- trees ranged from 0.35 to 291m ( with an average of 83m). Significant spatial genetic structure among adult trees, seedlings, and juveniles was detected up to 50m, indicating seed dispersal over a short distance. The effective pollination neighborhood ranged from 0.4 to 3.3 ha. The results suggest that seed dispersal is restricted but that there is longdistance pollen dispersal between the forest fragment and the tree group; thus, the two stands of trees are not isolated.

A reconstructed Siberian High index since A. D. 1599 from Eurasian and North American tree rings

The long-term variability of the Siberian High, the dominant Northern Hemisphere anticyclone during winter, is largely unknown. To investigate how this feature varied prior to the instrumental record, we present a reconstruction of a Dec-Feb Siberian High (SH) index based on Eurasian and North American tree rings. Spanning 1599-1980, it provides information on SH variability over the past four centuries. A decline in the instrumental SH index since the late 1970s, related to Eurasian warming, is the most striking feature over the past four hundred years. It is associated with a highly significant (p < 0.0001) step change in 1989. Significant similar to 3-4 yr spectral peaks in the reconstruction fall within the range of variability of the East Asian winter monsoon (which has also declined recently) and lend further support to proposed relationships between these largescale features of the climate system.

Wiggle-match dating of tree-ring sequences

Given the non-monotonic form of the radiocarbon calibration curve, the precision of single C-14 dates on the calendar timescale will always be limited. One way around this limitation is through comparison of time-series, which should exhibit the same irregular patterning as the calibration curve. This approach can be employed most directly in the case of wood samples with many years growth present (but not able to be dated by dendrochronology), where the tree-ring series of unknown date can be compared against the similarly constructed C-14 calibration curve built from known-age wood. This process of curve-fitting has come to be called "wiggle-matching." In this paper, we look at the requirements for getting good precision by this method: sequence length, sampling frequency, and measurement precision. We also look at 3 case studies: one a piece of wood which has been independently dendrochronologically dated, and two others of unknown age relating to archaeological activity at Silchester, UK (Roman) and Miletos, Anatolia (relating to the volcanic eruption at Thera).

Tree Inscriptions: restoring a lost facet of the Graeco-Roman epigraphic habit

This article for the first time considers all extant ancient evidence for the habit of carving inscriptions on tree trunks. It emerges a picture that bears remarkable resemblances to what is known from the habit of graffiti writing (with important addition to that latter field to be derived from the findings), for individual and technical texts.

Dynamic load balancing in parallel KD-tree k-means

One among the most influential and popular data mining methods is the k-Means algorithm for cluster analysis. Techniques for improving the efficiency of k-Means have been largely explored in two main directions. The amount of computation can be significantly reduced by adopting geometrical constraints and an efficient data structure, notably a multidimensional binary search tree (KD-Tree). These techniques allow to reduce the number of distance computations the algorithm performs at each iteration. A second direction is parallel processing, where data and computation loads are distributed over many processing nodes. However, little work has been done to provide a parallel formulation of the efficient sequential techniques based on KD-Trees. Such approaches are expected to have an irregular distribution of computation load and can suffer from load imbalance. This issue has so far limited the adoption of these efficient k-Means variants in parallel computing environments. In this work, we provide a parallel formulation of the KD-Tree based k-Means algorithm for distributed memory systems and address its load balancing issue. Three solutions have been developed and tested. Two approaches are based on a static partitioning of the data set and a third solution incorporates a dynamic load balancing policy.