The increasing world population is already causing intensive pressure on the most productive areas of the earth's surface. Hopes of improved living standards, if realised, will increase the pressure still further. The need to make better use of less productive areas thus becomes an urgent priority for human endeavour. In this respect, the arid and semi-arid regions of the world, occupying about 11,000 million acres or 4,500 million hectares, roughly one third of the tota11and surface, pose a constant challenge to man's technological skill. Though the possibilities of economic use of the real...

Proceedings of the Fifth International Meiofauna Conference held in Ghent, Belgium, August 16-20, 1983.

What have we learnt about the Nile since the mid-1970s, the moment when Julian Rzoska decided that the time had come to publish a comprehensive volume about the biology, and the geological and cultural history of that great river? And what changes have meanwhile occurred in the basin? The human popu- tion has more than doubled, especially in Egypt, but also in East Africa. Locally, industrial development has taken place, and the Aswan High Dam was clearly not the last major infrastructure work that was carried out. More dams have been built, and some water diversions, like the Toshka lakes,...

Scotland is fortunate in being very richly endowed with natural fresh waters in the form of numerous lochs and rivers. These constitute on the one hand an attractive feature of the landscape and on the other a major resource for industry and recreation. Thus there are about 3800 lochs over4 ha in area and these form approximately 1.0% of the total surface area of Scotland. Com parable figures for England and Wales are 1700 lakes and 0.05% of the land surface, and in terms of volume. Loch Ness contains more water than all the lakes and reservoirs in England and Wales put together (Smith & Lyle...

I have written this book because there is, as in almost all supraspecific ciliate taxa, an ur gent need for an up-to-date revision of the oxytrichids, which are common in terrestrial, limnetic, and marine biotopes. The last comprehensive, illustrated guides to this group of hypotrichs were provided by KAHL (1932) and SmLER (1974b); however, as regards syn onymy and faunistics, these works are outdated and not as detailed as EHRENBERG'S out standing book from 1838. In KAHL's revision, the oxytrichids sensu stricto are described on about 30 pages, whereas in the present book the systematic...

Ischemic Preconditioning: The Concept of Endogenous Cardioprotection consolidates, in one volume, both current knowledge and the most recent advances in ischemic preconditioning. The editors have invited investigators at the forefront of ongoing research to provide their scholarly and candid comments concerning each of these issues. This volume includes a comprehensive review of infarct size reduction with ischemic preconditioning, and the most recent data on the effects of preconditioning on ischemia and reperfusion-induced arrhythmias, myocardial metabolism, contractile function,...

The present monograph is the fourth of six volumes which review the Hypotricha, a major group of the spirotrichs. The book is about the Gonostomatidae, the Kahliellidae, and some taxa of unknown position in the hypotrichs. Gonostomum was previously misclassified in the Oxytrichidae because its type species Gonostomum affine has basically an 18-cirri pattern, which is dominant in the oxytrichids. A new hypothesis, considering also molecular data, postulates that this 18-cirri pattern evolved in the last common ancestor of the hypotrichs and therefore it appears throughout the Hypotricha tree....

Dormancy is a suspension of the vital functions in an organism to overcome harsh environmental conditions, and sometimes can last for centuries. It is a widespread adaptation in many phyla, ranging from bacteria to vertebrates, and may exert a great influence on aquatic communities.

Contributors to this new book are leaders in the field of diapause studies, and many authors were participants at a recent workshop on diapause in aquatic invertebrates (Pallanza, Italy 2003). The book consists of two major parts, as indicated in its title: Phenomenology of diapause and...

Estuaries are highly dynamic systems subject to changes occurring over a spectrum of time scales ranging from very short periods (e. g. over a tidal cycle) to geologic time scales. The nature of an estuary reflects complex responses to many driving forces, each having a characteristic frequency (or frequencies) of change. For example, freshwater inflow to estuaries varies daily in response to short-term events such as storms, seasonally, and between years as a result of longer-term climatic variability. Other important components of weather, e. g. wind speed/ direction and daily insolation,...