Lightning is one of the major threats to multimegawatt wind turbines and a concern for modern aircraft due to the use of lightweight composite materials. Both wind turbines and aircraft can initiate lightning, and very favorable conditions for lightning initiation occur in winter thunderstorms. Moreover, winter thunderstorms are characterized by a relatively high production of very energetic lightning. This paper reviews the different types of lightning interactions and summarizes the well-known winter thunderstorm areas.

Long-distance migration can be seen throughout the animal kingdom and can have large impacts on population dynamics and species distributions. The act of migration itself also affects the evolution of a species, as evolutionary forces select for certain characteristics in animals conducting long-distance migration. Monarch butterflies are best known for their annual migration from Canada and the northern United States to central Mexico, but some populations of monarchs have lost the ability to migrate.

Since amphibian declines were first proposed as a global phenomenon over a quarter century ago, the conservation community has made little progress in halting or reversing these trends. The early search for a “smoking gun” was replaced with the expectation that declines are caused by multiple drivers. While field observations and experiments have identified factors leading to increased local extinction risk, evidence for effects of these drivers is lacking at large spatial scales.

Cryptosporidium is a leading cause of childhood diarrhea in low-resource settings, and has been repeatedly associated with impaired physical and cognitive development. In May 2013, an outbreak of diarrhea caused by Cryptosporidium hominis was identified in the Arctic region of Nunavik, Quebec. Human cryptosporidiosis transmission was previously unknown in this region, and very few previous studies have reported it elsewhere in the Arctic. The researchers report clinical, molecular, and epidemiologic details of a multi-village Cryptosporidium outbreak in the Canadian Arctic.

Chicken meat has the highest per capita consumption among all meat types in North America. The practice of feeding 3-nitro-4-hydroxyphenylarsonic acid (Roxarsone, Rox) to chickens lasted for over 60 years. However, the fate of Rox and arsenic metabolites remaining in chicken are poorly understood. Researchers aimed to determine the elimination of Rox and metabolites from chickens and quantify the remaining arsenic species in chicken meat, providing necessary information for meaningful exposure assessment.

Air pollution is associated with morbidity and premature mortality. Satellite remote sensing provides globally consistent decadal-scale observations of ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO2) pollution. The researchers determined global population-weighted annual mean NO2 concentrations from 1996 through 2012.

Original Source

Grassland productivity is regulated by both temperature and the amount and timing of precipitation. Future climate change is therefore expected to influence grassland phenology and growth, with consequences for ecosystems and economies. However, the interacting effects of major shifts in temperature and precipitation on grasslands remain poorly understood and existing modelling approaches, although typically complex, do not extrapolate or generalize well and tend to disagree under future scenarios.

The identification of properties that contribute to the persistence and resilience of ecosystems despite climate change constitutes a research priority of global relevance. Here the researchers present a novel, empirical approach to assess the relative sensitivity of ecosystems to climate variability, one property of resilience that builds on theoretical modelling work recognizing that systems closer to critical thresholds respond more sensitively to external perturbations.