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BackgroundThe redundancy hypothesis predicts that the species redundancy in a plant community enhances community stability. However, numerous studies in recent years questioned the positive correlation between redundancy and stability.MethodologyWe explored the relationship between the species redundancy, functional redundancy and community stability in typical steppe grassland in Northern China by sampling grassland vegetation along a gradient of resource availability caused by micro-topography. We aimed to test whether community redundancy enhanced community stability, and to quantify the relative importance of species redundancy and functional redundancy in maintaining community stability.ResultsOur results showed that the spatial stability of plant community production increases with increased supply of soil resources, and the functional redundancy instead of species diversity or species redundancy is correlated with the community stability. Our results supported the redundancy hypothesis and have implications for sustainable grassland management.

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This paper intends to obtain the short-run average cost minimization and capacity utilization over 34 regional public hospitals in South Korea from 2007 to 2010 using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Also, it explores the average cost for each hospital in order to determine whether the cost is increasing or decreasing. The annual capacity utilization rate, using an adjusted number of patients as an output, was 0.49, and by using value added as an output was 0.56, on average. Only Jeju showed the highest level of capacity utilization regardless of output type. It indicates that almost all regional public hospitals, except for Jeju, have not run with full capacity, and have been in the decreasing area in the short-run average cost curve during the same period.

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