30 research outputs found
Plant macrofossil analysis of Holocene alluvium, with special reference to the Lower Thames Basin
Alluvium is an important archaeological and palaeoenvironmental resource in lowland Britain.
The research presented here develops plant macrofossil analysis of alluvial facies, with special
emphasis on the depositional and natural environments of the Lower Thames Basin. Plant
macrofossil analysis is a poorly developed area of alluvial research, usually limited to
superficial description of the fossils seen in section, or detailed analysis of a narrow suite of
remains. A comprehensive, quantitative method of macrofossil analysis using counts and cover
abundance scores is developed. Identification criteria for several groups of macrofossils are
presented, including leaves, rootlets and epidermis.
Potential macrofossil incorporation was investigated at eight wetland and alluvial sites,
including saltmarsh, wet woodland and herb fen environments. Macrofossil collections were
compared to extant vegetation and subject to multivariate analysis. The results showed that
macrofossil assemblages produce spatially and temporally precise data of plant presences,
although spatial and temporal fidelity varies in different depositional environments and between
plant taxa. Vegetation dominants were favoured in the assemblages of all classes of
macrofossils, with bulky Monocotyledons and Therophytes favourably preserved and sparsely
distributed taxa, such as rosette plants, less well favoured. The depositional environment and
position in relation to environmental gradients were also found to affect macrofossil
composition. Multiple approaches to macrofossil analysis using a wide range of macrofossils
were found to produce improved interpretations. The value of different macrofossil classes and
occurrences of the major observed taxa in alluvial sediments are discussed.
The method was applied to samples from the Medway River at Chatham. Vegetation
history, hydrology and traces of human disturbance are discussed from 7000BP to 2000BP.
Analysis showed a gradual increase in human disturbance over time, development of a
distinctive human-influenced upper salt marsh flora from 3000BP and supports the trend across
southern Britain for a change in hydrology by the same period
Dynamics of a large extra dimension inspired hybrid inflation model
In low scale quantum gravity scenarios the fundamental scale of nature can be
as low as TeV, in order to address the naturalness of the electroweak scale. A
number of difficulties arise in constructing specific models; stabilisation of
the radius of the extra dimensions, avoidance of overproduction of Kaluza Klein
modes, achieving successful baryogenesis and production of a close to
scale-invariant spectrum of density perturbations with the correct amplitude.
We examine in detail the dynamics, including radion stabilisation, of a hybrid
inflation model that has been proposed in order to address these difficulties,
where the inflaton is a gauge singlet residing in the bulk. We find that for a
low fundamental scale the phase transition, which in standard four dimensional
hybrid models usually ends inflation, is slow and there is second phase of
inflation lasting for a large number of e-foldings. The density perturbations
on cosmologically interesting scales exit the Hubble radius during this second
phase of inflation, and we find that their amplitude is far smaller than is
required. We find that the duration of the second phase of inflation can be
short, so that cosmologically interesting scales exit the Hubble radius prior
to the phase transition, and the density perturbations have the correct
amplitude, only if the fundamental scale takes an intermediate value. Finally
we comment briefly on the implications of an intermediate fundamental scale for
the production of primordial black holes and baryogenesis.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures version to appear in Phys. Rev. D, additional
references and minor changes to discussio
Cosmology from Rolling Massive Scalar Field on the anti-D3 Brane of de Sitter Vacua
We investigate a string-inspired scenario associated with a rolling massive
scalar field on D-branes and discuss its cosmological implications. In
particular, we discuss cosmological evolution of the massive scalar field on
the ant-D3 brane of KKLT vacua. Unlike the case of tachyon field, because of
the warp factor of the anti-D3 brane, it is possible to obtain the required
level of amplitude of density perturbations. We study the spectra of scalar and
tensor perturbations generated during the rolling scalar inflation and show
that our scenario satisfies the observational constraint coming from the Cosmic
Microwave Background anisotropies and other observational data. We also
implement the negative cosmological constant arising from the stabilization of
the modulus fields in the KKLT vacua and find that this leads to a successful
reheating in which the energy density of the scalar field effectively scales as
a pressureless dust. The present dark energy can be also explained in our
scenario provided that the potential energy of the massive rolling scalar does
not exactly cancel with the amplitude of the negative cosmological constant at
the potential minimum.Comment: RevTex4, 15 pages, 5 eps figures, minor clarifications and few
references added, final version to appear in PR
Search for heavy long-lived charged R-hadrons with the ATLAS detector in 3.2 fb(-1) of proton-proton collision data at root s=13 TeV
A search for heavy long-lived charged R-hadrons is reported using a data sample corresponding to
3.2 fb−1 of proton–proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV collected by the ATLAS experiment at the Large
Hadron Collider at CERN. The search is based on observables related to large ionisation losses and slow
propagation velocities, which are signatures of heavy charged particles travelling significantly slower than
the speed of light. No significant deviations from the expected background are observed. Upper limits at
95% confidence level are provided on the production cross section of long-lived R-hadrons in the mass
range from 600 GeV to 2000 GeV and gluino, bottom and top squark masses are excluded up to 1580 GeV,
805 GeV and 890 GeV, respectively
Host-delivered RNAi: An effective strategy to silence genes in plant parasitic nematodes
Root-knot nematodes (Meloidogyne spp.) are obligate, sedentary endoparasites that infect many plant species causing large economic losses worldwide. Available nematicides are being banned due to their toxicity or ozone-depleting properties and alternative control strategies are urgently required. We have produced transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants expressing different dsRNA hairpin structures targeting a root-knot nematode (Meloidogyne javanica) putative transcription factor, MjTis11. We provide evidence that MjTis11 was consistently silenced in nematodes feeding on the roots of transgenic plants. The observed silencing was specific for MjTis11, with other sequence-unrelated genes being unaffected in the nematodes. Those transgenic plants able to induce silencing of MjTis11, also showed the presence of small interfering RNAs. Even though down-regulation of MjTis11 did not result in a lethal phenotype, this study demonstrates the feasibility of silencing root-knot nematode genes by expressing dsRNA in the host plant. Host-delivered RNA interference-triggered (HD-RNAi) silencing of parasite genes provides a novel disease resistance strategy with wide biotechnological applications. The potential of HD-RNAi is not restricted to parasitic nematodes but could be adapted to control other plant-feeding pests