808 research outputs found
Exposure to boat noise in the field yields minimal stress response in wild reef fish
Aquatic anthropogenic noise is on the rise, with growing concern about its impact on species that are sensitive to low-frequency sounds (e.g. most fish and invertebrates). We investigated whether the reef fish Halichoeres bivittatus living in both noisy and quiet areas had differing levels of baseline stress (measured as whole-body cortisol) and whether they would exhibit a physiological stress response when exposed to boat noise playbacks. While the playback experiments significantly increased cortisol levels in fish from our experiment compared to baseline levels, there were minimal pairwise differences across treatments and no difference in baseline stress for fish living in noisy vs. quiet areas. These results may be explained by low overall auditory sensitivity, habituation to a fairly noisy environment (due to biological sounds), or that boat noise simply may not represent an immediate threat to survival in this species. These findings contrast recent studies that have shown elevated stress responses in fishes when exposed to boat noise and highlights that inter-specific differences must be considered when evaluating potential impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine life
Magnetic switching in granular FePt layers promoted by near-field laser enhancement
Light-matter interaction at the nanoscale in magnetic materials is a topic of
intense research in view of potential applications in next-generation
high-density magnetic recording. Laser-assisted switching provides a pathway
for overcoming the material constraints of high-anisotropy and high-packing
density media, though much about the dynamics of the switching process remains
unexplored. We use ultrafast small-angle x-ray scattering at an x-ray
free-electron laser to probe the magnetic switching dynamics of FePt
nanoparticles embedded in a carbon matrix following excitation by an optical
femtosecond laser pulse. We observe that the combination of laser excitation
and applied static magnetic field, one order of magnitude smaller than the
coercive field, can overcome the magnetic anisotropy barrier between "up" and
"down" magnetization, enabling magnetization switching. This magnetic switching
is found to be inhomogeneous throughout the material, with some individual FePt
nanoparticles neither switching nor demagnetizing. The origin of this behavior
is identified as the near-field modification of the incident laser radiation
around FePt nanoparticles. The fraction of not-switching nanoparticles is
influenced by the heat flow between FePt and a heat-sink layer
e-Social Science and Evidence-Based Policy Assessment : Challenges and Solutions
Peer reviewedPreprin
A Staphylococcus aureus ypfP mutant with strongly reduced lipoteichoic acid (LTA) content: LTA governs bacterial surface properties and autolysin activity
Many Gram-positive bacteria produce lipoteichoic acid (LTA) polymers whose physiological roles have remained a matter of debate because of the lack of LTA-deficient mutants. The ypfP gene responsible for biosynthesis of a glycolipid found in LTA was deleted in Staphylococcus aureus SA113, causing 87% reduction of the LTA content. Mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy revealed that the mutant LTA contained a diacylglycerol anchor instead of the glycolipid, whereas the remaining part was similar to the wild-type polymer except that it was shorter. The LTA mutant strain revealed no major changes in patterns of cell wall proteins or autolytic enzymes compared with the parental strain indicating that LTA may be less important in S. aureus protein attachment than previously thought. However, the autolytic activity of the mutant was strongly reduced demonstrating a role of LTA in controlling autolysin activity. Moreover, the hydrophobicity of the LTA mutant was altered and its ability to form biofilms on plastic was completely abrogated indicating a profound impact of LTA on physicochemical properties of bacterial surfaces. We propose to consider LTA and its biosynthetic enzymes as targets for new antibiofilm strategies
Black Hole, Jet, and Disk: The Universal Engine
In this paper I review the results of our ongoing project to investigate the
coupling between accretion disk and radio jet in galactic nuclei and stellar
mass black holes. We find a good correlation between the UV bump luminosity and
the radio luminosities of AGN, which improves upon the usual [OIII]/radio
correlations. Taking mass and energy conservation in the jet/disk system into
account we can successfully model the correlation for radio-loud and radio-weak
quasars. We find that jets are comparable in power to the accretion disk
luminosity, and the difference between radio-loud and radio-weak may correspond
to two natural stages of the relativistic electron distribution -- assuming
that radio weak quasars have jets as well. The distribution of flat- and
steep-spectrum sources is explained by bulk Lorentz factors gamma_j ~ 5-10. The
absence of radio-loud quasars below a critical optical luminosity coincides
with the FR I/FR II break and could be explained by a powerdependent,
``closing'' torus. This points towards a different type of obscuring torus in
radio-loud host galaxies which might be a consequence of past mergers (e.g. by
the temporary formation of a binary black-hole). Interaction of the jet with
the closing torus might in principle also help to make a jet radio-loud.
Turning to stellar-mass black holes we find that galactic jet sources can be
described with the same coupled jet/disk model as AGN which is suggestive of
some kind of universal coupling between jet and accretion disk around compact
objects.Comment: to appear in ``Jets from Stars and Galactic Nuclei'', Springer
Lecture Notes, plain TeX, 16 pages, also at
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~hfalcke/publications.htm
Exposure to boat noise in the field yields minimal stress response in wild reef fish
Aquatic anthropogenic noise is on the rise, with growing concern about its impact on species that are sensitive to low-frequency sounds (e.g. most fish and invertebrates). We investigated whether the reef fish Halichoeres bivittatus living in both noisy and quiet areas had differing levels of baseline stress (measured as whole-body cortisol) and whether they would exhibit a physiological stress response when exposed to boat noise playbacks. While the playback experiments significantly increased cortisol levels in fish from our experiment compared to baseline levels, there were minimal pairwise differences across treatments and no difference in baseline stress for fish living in noisy vs. quiet areas. These results may be explained by low overall auditory sensitivity, habituation to a fairly noisy environment (due to biological sounds), or that boat noise simply may not represent an immediate threat to survival in this species. These findings contrast recent studies that have shown elevated stress responses in fishes when exposed to boat noise and highlights that inter-specific differences must be considered when evaluating potential impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine life
Pion, kaon, proton and anti-proton transverse momentum distributions from p+p and d+Au collisions at GeV
Identified mid-rapidity particle spectra of , , and
from 200 GeV p+p and d+Au collisions are reported. A
time-of-flight detector based on multi-gap resistive plate chamber technology
is used for particle identification. The particle-species dependence of the
Cronin effect is observed to be significantly smaller than that at lower
energies. The ratio of the nuclear modification factor () between
protons and charged hadrons () in the transverse momentum
range GeV/c is measured to be
(stat)(syst) in minimum-bias collisions and shows little
centrality dependence. The yield ratio of in minimum-bias d+Au
collisions is found to be a factor of 2 lower than that in Au+Au collisions,
indicating that the Cronin effect alone is not enough to account for the
relative baryon enhancement observed in heavy ion collisions at RHIC.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 table. We extended the pion spectra from
transverse momentum 1.8 GeV/c to 3. GeV/
Demonstration of the temporal matter-wave Talbot effect for trapped matter waves
We demonstrate the temporal Talbot effect for trapped matter waves using
ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. We investigate the phase evolution of an
array of essentially non-interacting matter waves and observe matter-wave
collapse and revival in the form of a Talbot interference pattern. By using
long expansion times, we image momentum space with sub-recoil resolution,
allowing us to observe fractional Talbot fringes up to 10th order.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figure
Resonances in the dynamics of kinks perturbed by ac forces
We study the dynamics of kinks perturbed by an ac force, both with
and without damping. We address this issue by using a collective coordinate
theory, which allows us to reduce the problem to the dynamics of the kink
center and width. We carry out a careful analysis of the corresponding ordinary
differential equations, of Mathieu type in the undamped case, finding and
characterizing the resonant frequencies and the regions of existence of
resonant solutions. We verify the accuracy of our predictions by numerical
simulation of the full partial differential equation, showing that the
collective coordinate prediction is very accurate. Numerical simulations for
the damped case establish that the strongest resonance is the one at half the
frequency of the internal mode of the kink. In the conclusion we discuss on the
possible relevance of our results for other systems, especially the sine-Gordon
equation. We also obtain additional results regarding the equivalence between
different collective coordinate methods applied to this problem.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, REVTeX, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
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