The northernmost conifers in the world are located well above the Arctic Circle in the Taymir region of northern Siberia and have been recording the thermal environment for centuries to millennia. The trees respond to temperatures beyond the narrow season of actual cambial cell division by means of root growth, photosynthesis, lignification of cell walls, and other biochemical processes. Data from annual tree-ring widths are used to reconstruct May–September mean temperatures for the past four centuries. These warm-season temperatures correlate with annual temperatures and indicate unusual warming in the 20th century. However, there is a loss of thermal response in ring widths since about 1970. Previously the warmer temperatures induced wider rings. Most major warming and cooling trends are in agreement with other high-latitude temperature reconstructions based on tree-ring analyses with some regional differences in timing of cooling in the late 18th century and of warming in the late 19th century.

The goals of these experiments were to describe the morphology and synapticconnections of amacrine cells in the baboon retina that contain immunoreactivevesicular glutamate transporter 3 (vGluT3). These amacrine cells had themorphology characteristic of knotty bistratified type 1 cells, and theirdendrites formed two plexuses on either side of the center of the innerplexiform layer. The primary dendrites received large synapses from amacrinecells, and the higher-order dendrites were both pre- and postsynaptic to otheramacrine cells. Based on light microscopic immunolabeling results, these includeAII cells and starburst cells, but not the polyaxonal amacrine cellstracer-coupled to ON parasol ganglion cells. The vGluT3 cells received inputfrom ON bipolar cells at ribbon synapses and made synapses onto OFF bipolarcells, including the diffuse DB3a type. Many synapses from vGluT3 cells ontoretinal ganglion cells were observed in both plexuses. At synapses where vGluT3cells were presynaptic, two types of postsynaptic densities were observed; therewere relatively thin ones characteristic of inhibitory synapses and relativelythick ones characteristic of excitatory synapses. In the light microscopicexperiments with Neurobiotin-injected ganglion cells, vGluT3 cells made contactswith midget and parasol ganglion cells, including both ON and OFF types. Punctacontaining immunoreactive gephyrin, an inhibitory synapse marker, were found atappositions between vGluT3 cells and each of the four types of labeled ganglioncells. The vGluT3 cells did not have detectable levels of immunoreactiveγ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) or immunoreactive glycine transporter 1.Thus, the vGluT3 cells would be expected to have ON responses to light and makesynapses onto neurons in both the ON and the OFF pathways. Taken with previousresults, these findings suggest that vGluT3 cells release glycine at some oftheir output synapses and glutamate at others.

Recent Hα surveys such as SHS and IPHAS have improved the completeness of the Galactic planetary nebula (PN) census. We now know of ∼3000 PNe in the Galaxy, but this is far short of most estimates, typically ~25 000 or more for the total population. The size of the Galactic PN population is required to derive an accurate estimate of the chemical enrichment rates of nitrogen, carbon, and helium. In addition, a high PN count (>20 000) is strong evidence that most main-sequence stars of mass 1–8 M⊙ will go through a PN phase, while a low count (<10 000) argues that special conditions (e.g. close binary interactions) are required to form a PN. We describe a technique for finding hundreds more PNe using the existing data collections of the digital sky surveys, thereby improving the census of Galactic PNe.

Having surveyed ≈ 10% of the sky, we have identified more than 130 PN candidates by surveying multicolour Digitized Sky Survey (DSS), Sloan Digitized Sky Survey (SDSS), and combined [O III], Hα and [S II] images. In a first imaging and spectroscopy campaign, 51 objects were identified as true and probable PNe. This work presents an additional 17 probable or possible PNe identified since that study. The majority of these candidates are situated at Galactic latitudes |b| > 5^, with the exception of seven objects located closer to the Galactic plane. Using the techniques described here that do not require any new survey data, we anticipate that many more PNe are waiting to be found, perhaps as many as 90.

Programs that disseminate information to health care practitioners often do so partly to encourage appropriate changes in practice. However, merely providing information is seldom enough to accomplish such changes. If information transfer programs are to influence practice, they must be designed to maximize the conditions facilitating change. Reliance on a diffusion model for thinking about how information reaches practitioners has led researchers to over-emphasize the importance of exposure to information and ignore other factors that determine whether change will occur, such as practitioners' motivation to change, the context in which clinical decisions are made, and how information is presented. The fact that successful dissemination will not necessarily produce change also has implications for how information transfer programs should be monitored and evaluated.

Conversation Analysis (CA) as a mode of inquiry is addressed to all forms of talk and other conduct in interaction, and, accordingly, touches on the concerns of applied linguists at many points. This review sketches and offers bibliographical guidance on several of the major relevant areas of conversation-analytic work—turn-taking, repair, and word selection—and indicates past or potential points of contact with applied linguistics. After covering these areas, we include a brief discussion of some key themes in CA's treatment of talk in institutional contexts. Finally, we discuss several established areas of applied linguistic work in which conversation analytic work is being explored—native, nonnative, and multilingual talk; talk in educational institutions; grammar and interaction; intercultural communication and comparative CA; and implications for designing language teaching tasks, materials, and assessment tasks. We end with some cautions on applying CA findings to other applied linguistic research contexts.