The effects of El Niño/Southern Oscillation ( ENSO ) under negative Arctic Oscillation ( AO ) phase on the Asian dust activity are investigated for springs of the period 1961–2002. The spring dust index ( DI ) describing the monthly frequencies of three types of dust events (e.g. dust storm, blowing dust, and floating dust) exhibits a significant increase in the years of negative AO phase (hereafter AO −) and El Niño, compared...

Summary Two morphotypes of multicellular magnetotactic prokaryotes ( MMPs ) have been identified: spherical (several species) and ellipsoidal (previously one species). Here, we report novel ellipsoidal MMPs that are ∼ 10 × 8 μm in size, and composed of about 86 cells arranged in six to eight interlaced circles. Each MMP was composed of cells that synthesized either bullet‐shaped magnetite magnetosomes alone, or both bullet‐sha...