The Ranunculales are a hyperdiverse lineage in many aspects of their phenotype, including growth habit, floral and leaf morphology, reproductive mode and specialized metabolism. Many Ranunculales species, such as opium poppy and goldenseal have a high medicinal value. In addition, the order includes a large number of commercially important ornamental plants, such as columbines and larkspurs.

Wind pollination has evolved repeatedly in flowering plants, yet the identification of a wind pollination syndrome as a set of integrated floral traits can be elusive. Thalictrum (Ranunculaceae) comprises temperate perennial herbs that have transitioned repeatedly from insect to wind pollination while also exhibiting mixed pollination, providing an ideal system to test for evolutionary correlation between floral morphology and pollination mode in a biotic to abiotic continuum.

One key piece of evidence for dark matter is the flat rotation curve problem: the disagreement between measured galactic rotation curves and their luminous mass. A novel solution to this problem is presented here. A model of relativistic frame effects on Doppler shifts due to the slightly curved frames of an emitting galaxy and the Milky Way is derived. This model predicts observed Doppler shifted spectra (in excess of the luminous mass) based only on the observed luminous matter profile and one free model parameter.