Lattice structure and magnetization of LaCoO3 thin films

We investigate the structure and magnetic properties of thin films of the LaCoO$_{3}$ compound. Thin films are deposited by pulsed laser deposition on various substrates in order to tune the strain from compressive to tensile. Single-phase (001) oriented LaCoO$_{3}$ layers were grown on all substrates despite large misfits. The tetragonal distortion of the films covers a wide range from -2% to 2.8%. Our LaCoO$_{3}$ films are ferromagnetic with Curie temperature around 85 K, contrary to the bulk. The total magnetic moment is below $1\mu_{B}$/Co$^{3+}$, a value relatively small for an exited spin-state of the Co$^{3+}$ ions, but comparable to values reported in literature. A correlation of strain states and magnetic moment of Co$^{3+}$ ions in LaCoO$_{3}$ thin films is observed.Comment: submitted tu European Phys. J.

Bounding Bloat in Genetic Programming

While many optimization problems work with a fixed number of decision variables and thus a fixed-length representation of possible solutions, genetic programming (GP) works on variable-length representations. A naturally occurring problem is that of bloat (unnecessary growth of solutions) slowing down optimization. Theoretical analyses could so far not bound bloat and required explicit assumptions on the magnitude of bloat. In this paper we analyze bloat in mutation-based genetic programming for the two test functions ORDER and MAJORITY. We overcome previous assumptions on the magnitude of bloat and give matching or close-to-matching upper and lower bounds for the expected optimization time. In particular, we show that the (1+1) GP takes (i) $\Theta(T_{init} + n \log n)$ iterations with bloat control on ORDER as well as MAJORITY; and (ii) $O(T_{init} \log T_{init} + n (\log n)^3)$ and $\Omega(T_{init} + n \log n)$ (and $\Omega(T_{init} \log T_{init})$ for $n=1$) iterations without bloat control on MAJORITY.Comment: An extended abstract has been published at GECCO 201

A new code for Fourier-Legendre analysis of large datasets: first results and a comparison with ring-diagram analysis

Fourier-Legendre decomposition (FLD) of solar Doppler imaging data is a promising method to estimate the sub-surface solar meridional flow. FLD is sensible to low-degree oscillation modes and thus has the potential to probe the deep meridional flow. We present a newly developed code to be used for large scale FLD analysis of helioseismic data as provided by the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG), the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) instrument, and the upcoming Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) instrument. First results obtained with the new code are qualitatively comparable to those obtained from ring-diagram analyis of the same time series.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 4th HELAS International Conference "Seismological Challenges for Stellar Structure", 1-5 February 2010, Arrecife, Lanzarote (Canary Islands

«da kniff mich eine Idee». Anmerkungen zur getauschten Haut in Irmgard Keuns Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932)

Um des Auswegs aus der Misere der kleinen Angestellten willen etwas erscheinen müssen, nicht etwas exemplarisch verkörpern, Mode- oder Fremdbildern unterworfen sein, nicht für sich selbst stehen, darunter leiden und scheitern _ Doris, die Heldin aus Irmgard Keuns Roman Das kunstseidene Mädchen, wird von einer Idee gekniffen, inszeniert ihre eigene Person zwischen den Selbst- und Fremdbildern des glamourösen Girls, als sie beschließt ihr Leben in einem Filmskript festzuhalten. Sie will schreiben wie Film, denn so will ihr das eigene Leben erscheinen und wird umso weniger so sein: Wie das Filmskript den Misserfolg ihrer Flucht chronometriert, so bezeichnet ein enteigneter Pelzmantel als Dingsymbol zugleich den Glanz eines Fremdbildes und einer Falle im Abseits der Weimarer Republik.Fretting and failing because she wants an image that will enable her to escape from a drab office-girl's existence, because she is not what she would like to be, because she is a slave to fashion and other people's perceptions, because she is not her true self. Such is the plight of Doris: the protagonist of Irmgard Keun's novel, The Artificial Silk Girl, has had a bright idea: she will cast herself as a glamour girl, mid-way between her own self-perception and the way she is perceived by others. She decides to turn her life into a movie script. She will write it as if her life were a film, because that is how she sees it, although in fact her life turns out to be anything but that. Just as the script gives a blow by blow account of her failure to escape, a stolen fur coat comes to embody, like a Dingsymbol, the glamorous image of herself as perceived by others, and is, in its turn, a trap which ensnares her on the margins of society in the Weimar Republic.Sufrimiento y fracaso por querer aparentar algo que le permita escapar de las penurias de las pequeñas oficinistas, por no ser lo que le gustaría, por estar supeditada a las modas o percepciones ajenas, por no ser ella misma. Esto es lo que le ocurre a Doris. A la protagonista de la novela de Irmgard Keun, La chica de seda artificial, se le ha antojado una idea: escenificarse como chica glamorosa, en un terreno que se encuentra entre su propia percepción y la ajena. Decide que va afijar su vida en un guión de cine. Quiere escribir como si su vida fuese una película, pero por más que quiera, sólo será un espejismo. De la misma manera que el guión cronometra el fracaso de su huida, un abrigo de piel expropiado encarna _como símbolo objeto_, el fulgor de una percepción ajena, y a su vez, una trampa que la remite a las márgenes de la sociedad de la República de Weimar.Um des Auswegs aus der Misere der kleinen Angestellten willen etwas erscheinen müssen, nicht etwas exemplarisch verkörpern, Mode- oder Fremdbildern unterworfen sein, nicht für sich selbst stehen, darunter leiden und scheitern _ Doris, die Heldin aus Irmgard Keuns Roman Das kunstseidene Mädchen, wird von einer Idee gekniffen, inszeniert ihre eigene Person zwischen den Selbst- und Fremdbildern des glamourösen Girls, als sie beschließt ihr Leben in einem Filmskript festzuhalten. Sie will schreiben wie Film, denn so will ihr das eigene Leben erscheinen und wird umso weniger so sein: Wie das Filmskript den Misserfolg ihrer Flucht chronometriert, so bezeichnet ein enteigneter Pelzmantel als Dingsymbol zugleich den Glanz eines Fremdbildes und einer Falle im Abseits der Weimarer Republik

National Agri-Marketing Association Membership Provides Professional Growth Opportunities for Nebraska Students

The National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA) is comprised of over 25 chapters in six regions nationwide, and has more than 3,500 professional and student members. Nebraska’s Midlands Chapter of about 70 professionals works closely with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) student chapter to foster professional growth for student members

A semantic web approach for built heritage representation

In a built heritage process, meant as a structured system of activities aimed at the investigation, preservation, and management of architectural heritage, any task accomplished by the several actors involved in it is deeply influenced by the way the knowledge is represented and shared. In the current heritage practice, knowledge representation and management have shown several limitations due to the difficulty of dealing with large amount of extremely heterogeneous data. On this basis, this research aims at extending semantic web approaches and technologies to architectural heritage knowledge management in order to provide an integrated and multidisciplinary representation of the artifact and of the knowledge necessary to support any decision or any intervention and management activity. To this purpose, an ontology-based system, representing the knowledge related to the artifact and its contexts, has been developed through the formalization of domain-specific entities and relationships between them

Habitat Selection and Post-Release Movement of Reintroduced Brown Treecreeper Individuals in Restored Temperate Woodland

It is essential to choose suitable habitat when reintroducing a species into its former range. Habitat quality may influence an individual's dispersal decisions and also ultimately where they choose to settle. We examined whether variation in habitat quality (quantified by the level of ground vegetation cover and the installation of nest boxes) influenced the movement, habitat choice and survival of a reintroduced bird species. We experimentally reintroduced seven social groups (43 individuals) of the brown treecreeper (Climacteris picumnus) into two nature reserves in south-eastern Australia. We radio-tracked 18 brown treecreepers from release in November 2009 until February 2010. We observed extensive movements by individuals irrespective of the release environment or an individual's gender. This indicated that individuals were capable of dispersing and actively selecting optimum habitat. This may alleviate pressure on wildlife planners to accurately select the most optimum release sites, so long as the species' requirements are met. There was significant variation in movement between social groups, suggesting that social factors may be a more important influence on movement than habitat characteristics. We found a significant effect of ground vegetation cover on the likelihood of settlement by social groups, with high rates of settlement and survival in dry forests, rather than woodland (where the species typically resides), which has implications for the success of woodland restoration. However, overall the effects of variation in habitat quality were not as strong as we had expected, and resulted in some unpredicted effects such as low survival and settlement in woodland areas with medium levels of ground vegetation cover. The extensive movement by individuals and unforeseen effects of habitat characteristics make it difficult to predict the outcome of reintroductions, the movement behaviour and habitat selection of reintroduced individuals, particularly when based on current knowledge of a species' ecology.The project has been made possible by funding from:Birding NSW (www.birdingnsw.org.au), Birdlife Australia – Stuart Leslie Bird Research Award (www.birdlife.org.au), Canberra Ornithologists Group, Canberra Birds Conservation Fund (www.canberrabirds.org.au),The Conservation and Landscape Ecology Group within the Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University (http://fennerschool-research.anu.edu.au/​cle/), The Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University (http://fennerschool.anu.edu.au/), The Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife (www.fnpw.org.au), Gould League of NSW 2010 Centenary Year Cayley Memorial Scholarship (www.gould.edu.au), The Mulligans Flat-Goorooyarroo Woodland Experiment (ARC Linkage Project LP0561817) (http://www.mfgowoodlandexperiment.org.au​/),The Norman Wettenhall Foundation (reference 20108002) (www.nwf.org.au), In-kind contribution was greatly appreciated from CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences (http://www.csiro.au/Organisation-Structu​re/Divisions/Ecosystem-Sciences.aspx) and The Parks and Conservation Service within the Australian Capital Territory Government Department of Territory and Municipal Services (http://www.tams.act.gov.au/play/pcl). One field assistant was employed (Jenny Newport) using funds from Conservation and Landscape Ecology Group and the Mulligans Flat-Goorooyarroo Woodland Experiment to assist in collecting data obtained through radio-tracking reintroduced brown treecreepers

Evolutionary Algorithms with Self-adjusting Asymmetric Mutation

Evolutionary Algorithms (EAs) and other randomized search heuristics are often considered as unbiased algorithms that are invariant with respect to different transformations of the underlying search space. However, if a certain amount of domain knowledge is available the use of biased search operators in EAs becomes viable. We consider a simple (1+1) EA for binary search spaces and analyze an asymmetric mutation operator that can treat zero- and one-bits differently. This operator extends previous work by Jansen and Sudholt (ECJ 18(1), 2010) by allowing the operator asymmetry to vary according to the success rate of the algorithm. Using a self-adjusting scheme that learns an appropriate degree of asymmetry, we show improved runtime results on the class of functions OneMax$_a$ describing the number of matching bits with a fixed target $a\in\{0,1\}^n$.Comment: 16 pages. An extended abstract of this paper will be published in the proceedings of PPSN 202

Habitat Selection and Behaviour of a Reintroduced Passerine: Linking Experimental Restoration, Behaviour and Habitat Ecology

Habitat restoration can play an important role in recovering functioning ecosystems and improving biodiversity. Restoration may be particularly important in improving habitat prior to species reintroductions. We reintroduced seven brown treecreeper (Climacteris picumnus) social groups into two nature reserves in the Australian Capital Territory in south-eastern Australia. This study provided a unique opportunity to understand the interactions between restoration ecology, behavioural ecology and habitat ecology. We examined how experimental restoration treatments (addition of coarse woody debris, variations in ground vegetation cover and nest box installation) influenced the behaviour and microhabitat use of radio-tracked individuals to evaluate the success of restoration treatments. The addition of coarse woody debris benefited the brown treecreeper through increasing the probability of foraging on a log or on the ground. This demonstrated the value of using behaviour as a bio-indicator for restoration success. Based on previous research, we predicted that variations in levels of ground vegetation cover would influence behaviour and substrate use, particularly that brown treecreepers would choose sites with sparse ground cover because this allows better access to food and better vigilance for predators. However, there was little effect of this treatment, which was likely influenced by the limited overall use of the ground layer. There was also little effect of nest boxes on behaviour or substrate use. These results somewhat confound our understanding of the species based on research from extant populations. Our results also have a significant impact regarding using existing knowledge on a species to inform how it will respond to reintroduction and habitat restoration. This study also places great emphasis on the value of applying an experimental framework to ecological restoration, particularly when reintroductions produce unexpected outcomes.The project has been made possible by funding from Birding NSW (www.birdingnsw.org.au), Birdlife Australia – Stuart Leslie Bird Research Award (www.birdlife.org.au), Canberra Ornithologists Group, Canberra Birds Conservation Fund (www.canberrabirds.org.au), the Conservation and Landscape Ecology Group within the Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University (http://fennerschool-research.anu.edu.au/cle/), the Fenner School of Environment and Society at The Australian National University (http://fennerschool.anu.edu.au/), the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife (www.fnpw.org.au), Gould League of NSW 2010 Centenary Year Cayley Memorial Scholarship (www.gould.edu.au), the Mulligans Flat-Goorooyarroo Woodland Experiment (ARC Linkage Project LP0561817) (http://www.mfgowoodlandexperiment.org.au/), and the Norman Wettenhall Foundation (reference 20108002) (www.nwf.org.au). In-kind contribution was greatly appreciated from CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences (http://www.csiro.au/Organisation-Structure/Divisions/Ecosystem-Sciences.aspx) and The Parks and Conservation Service within the Australian Capital Territory Government Department of Territory and Municipal Services (http://www.tams.act.gov.au/parks-recreation). One field assistant was employed (Jenny Newport) using funds from Conservation and Landscape Ecology Group and the Mulligans Flat-Goorooyarroo Woodland Experiment to assist in collecting data obtained through radio-tracking reintroduced brown treecreepers. Otherwise, individuals that were employed or contracted by the funders (other than the named authors) did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript