High level of hybridisation in three species of Indian major carps

Thirty individuals of each species of Indian major carps, i.e., Catla catla, Cirrhinus cirrhosus (C. mrigala) and Labeo rohita, obtained from a nursery near Mymensingh, Bangladesh were analysed by means of allozyme electrophoresis. Twenty-one loci were studied. Several loci revealed significant deviation from Hardy-Weinberg expectations caused by deficiency of heterozygotes, indicating Wahlund effects due to problems with species identification. Moreover, bimodal distributions of individual heterozygosity within the three putative species indicated hybridisation. This was confirmed using analysis of individual admixture proportions, as individuals misidentified to species and hybrids between species were observed. Furthermore, factorial correspondence analysis to visualize genetic relationships among individuals revealed three distinct groups containing misclassified individuals, along with some intermediate individuals interpreted as hybrids. Ten per cent of all C. catla and L. rohita had been erroneously identified to species, and 40 per cent of all presumptive C. catla were hybrids between C. catla x C. cirrhosus and C. catla x L. rohita. In the case of C. cirrhosus, 37 per cent of the samples were C. cirrhosus x L. rohita hybrids. Thirty per cent of all presumptive L. rohita turned out to be hybrids between L. rohita x C. catla and L. rohita x C. cirrhosus. The high incidence of hybrids in C. catla might be responsible for slower growth of the fish in aquaculture

SET based experiments for HTSC materials: II

The cuprates seem to exhibit statistics, dimensionality and phase transitions in novel ways. The nature of excitations [i.e. quasiparticle or collective], spin-charge separation, stripes [static and dynamics], inhomogeneities, psuedogap, effect of impurity dopings [e.g. Zn, Ni] and any other phenomenon in these materials must be consistently understood. In this note we further discuss our original suggestion of using Single Electron Tunneling Transistor [SET] based experiments to understand the role of charge dynamics in these systems. Assuming that SET operates as an efficient charge detection system we can expect to understand the underlying physics of charge transport and charge fluctuations in these materials for a range of doping. Experiments such as these can be classed in a general sense as mesoscopic and nano characterization of cuprates and related materials. In principle such experiments can show if electron is fractionalized in cuprates as indicated by ARPES data. In contrast to flux trapping experiments SET based experiments are more direct in providing evidence about spin-charge separation. In addition a detailed picture of nano charge dynamics in cuprates may be obtained.Comment: 10 pages revtex plus four figures; ICMAT 2001 Conference Symposium P: P10-0

High level of hybridisation in three species of Indian major carps

Thirty individuals of each species of Indian major carps, i.e., Catla catla, Cirrhinus cirrhosus (C. mrigala) and Labeo rohita, obtained from a nursery near Mymensingh, Bangladesh were analysed by means of allozyme electrophoresis. Twenty-one loci were studied. Several loci revealed significant deviation from Hardy-Weinberg expectations caused by deficiency of heterozygotes, indicating Wahlund effects due to problems with species identification. Moreover, bimodal distributions of individual heterozygosity within the three putative species indicated hybridisation. This was confirmed using analysis of individual admixture proportions, as individuals misidentified to species and hybrids between species were observed. Furthermore, factorial correspondence analysis to visualize genetic relationships among individuals revealed three distinct groups containing misclassified individuals, along with some intermediate individuals interpreted as hybrids. Ten per cent of all C. catla and L. rohita had been erroneously identified to species, and 40 per cent of all presumptive C. catla were hybrids between C. catla x C. cirrhosus and C. catla x L. rohita. In the case of C. cirrhosus, 37 per cent of the samples were C. cirrhosus x L. rohita hybrids. Thirty per cent of all presumptive L. rohita turned out to be hybrids between L. rohita x C. catla and L. rohita x C. cirrhosus. The high incidence of hybrids in C. catla might be responsible for slower growth of the fish in aquaculture.Hybridization, DNA, Freshwater fish, Fish culture, Allozymes, Growth, Bangladesh, Catla catla, Cirrhinus cirrhosus, Cirrhinus mrigala, Labeo rohita

Quantum effects can render w<-1 on cosmological scales

We report on a revision of our previous computation of the renormalized expectation value of the stress-energy tensor of a massless, minimally coupled scalar with a quartic self-interaction on a locally de Sitter background. This model is important because it demonstrates that quantum effects can lead to violations of the weak energy condition on cosmological scales - on average, not just in fluctuations - although the effect in this particular model is far too small to be observed. The revision consists of modifying the propagator so that dimensional regularization can be used when the dimension of the renormalized theory is not four. Although the finite part of the stress-energy tensor does not change (in D=4) from our previous result, the counterterms do. We also speculate that a certain, finite and separately conserved part of the stress tensor can be subsumed into a natural correction of the initial state from free Bunch-Davies vacuum.Comment: 9 pages, references adde

Does cash for school influence young women's behavior in the longer term ? evidence from Pakistan

The Punjab Female School Stipend Program, a female-targeted conditional cash transfer program in Pakistan, was implemented in response to gender gaps in education. An early evaluation of the program shows that the enrollment of eligible girls in middle school increased in the short term by nearly 9 percentage points. This paper uses regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference analyses to show that five years into the program implementation positive impacts do persist. Beneficiary adolescent girls are more likely to progress through and complete middle school and work less. There is suggestive evidence that participating girls delay their marriage and have fewer births by the time they are 19 years old. Girls who are exposed to the program later, and who are eligible for the benefits given in high school, increase their rates of matriculating into and completing high school. The persistence of impacts can potentially translate into gains in future productivity, consumption, inter-generational human capital accumulation and desired fertility. Lastly, there is no evidence that the program has negative spillover effects on educational outcomes of male siblings.Education For All,Primary Education,Tertiary Education,Gender and Education,Disability

Quantum phase properties of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states

Quantum phase properties of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states (and a set of quantum states which can be obtained as the limiting cases of these states) are investigated from a number of perspectives, and it is shown that the quantum phase properties are dependent on the quantum state engineering operations performed. Specifically, the analytic expressions for quantum phase distributions and angular $Q$ distribution as well as measures of quantum phase fluctuation and phase dispersion are obtained. The uniform phase distribution of the initial Fock states is observed to be transformed by the unitary operation (i.e., displacement operator) into non-Gaussian shape, except for the initial vacuum state. It is observed that the phase distribution is symmetric with respect to the phase of the displacement parameter and becomes progressively narrower as its amplitude increases. The non-unitary (photon addition/subtraction) operations make it even narrower in contrast to the Fock parameter, which leads to broadness. The photon subtraction is observed to be a more powerful quantum state engineering tool in comparison to the photon addition. Further, one of the quantum phase fluctuation parameters is found to reveal the existence of antibunching in both the engineered quantum states under consideration. Finally, the relevance of the engineered quantum states in the quantum phase estimation is also discussed, and photon added displaced Fock state is shown to be preferable for the task.Comment: Quantum phase properties of an engineered quantum state has been studied from various perspective

Lower- and higher-order nonclassical properties of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states

Nonclassical properties of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states have been studied using various witnesses of lower- and higher-order nonclassicality. Compact analytic expressions are obtained for the nonclassicality witnesses. Using those expressions, it is established that these states and the states that can be obtained as their limiting cases (except coherent states) are highly nonclassical as they show the existence of lower- and higher-order antibunching and sub-Poissonian photon statistics, in addition to the nonclassical features revealed through the Mandel $Q_M$ parameter, zeros of Q function, Klyshko's criterion, and Agarwal-Tara criterion. Further, some comparison between the nonclassicality of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states have been performed using witnesses of nonclassicality. This has established that between the two types of non-Gaussianity inducing operations (i.e., photon addition and subtraction) used here, photon addition influences the nonclassical properties more strongly. Further, optical designs for the generation of photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states from squeezed vacuum state have also been proposed.Comment: A comparative study of the nonclassicality present in photon added and subtracted displaced Fock states shows photon addition is generally preferable nonclassicality inducing operation, while subtraction also has advantage in some cases over additio

Supervised machine learning based multi-task artificial intelligence classification of retinopathies

Artificial intelligence (AI) classification holds promise as a novel and affordable screening tool for clinical management of ocular diseases. Rural and underserved areas, which suffer from lack of access to experienced ophthalmologists may particularly benefit from this technology. Quantitative optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) imaging provides excellent capability to identify subtle vascular distortions, which are useful for classifying retinovascular diseases. However, application of AI for differentiation and classification of multiple eye diseases is not yet established. In this study, we demonstrate supervised machine learning based multi-task OCTA classification. We sought 1) to differentiate normal from diseased ocular conditions, 2) to differentiate different ocular disease conditions from each other, and 3) to stage the severity of each ocular condition. Quantitative OCTA features, including blood vessel tortuosity (BVT), blood vascular caliber (BVC), vessel perimeter index (VPI), blood vessel density (BVD), foveal avascular zone (FAZ) area (FAZ-A), and FAZ contour irregularity (FAZ-CI) were fully automatically extracted from the OCTA images. A stepwise backward elimination approach was employed to identify sensitive OCTA features and optimal-feature-combinations for the multi-task classification. For proof-of-concept demonstration, diabetic retinopathy (DR) and sickle cell retinopathy (SCR) were used to validate the supervised machine leaning classifier. The presented AI classification methodology is applicable and can be readily extended to other ocular diseases, holding promise to enable a mass-screening platform for clinical deployment and telemedicine.Comment: Supplemental material attached at the en

Transport coefficients for an inelastic gas around uniform shear flow: Linear stability analysis

The inelastic Boltzmann equation for a granular gas is applied to spatially inhomogeneous states close to the uniform shear flow. A normal solution is obtained via a Chapman-Enskog-like expansion around a local shear flow distribution. The heat and momentum fluxes are determined to first order in the deviations of the hydrodynamic field gradients from their values in the reference state. The corresponding transport coefficients are determined from a set of coupled linear integral equations which are approximately solved by using a kinetic model of the Boltzmann equation. The main new ingredient in this expansion is that the reference state $f^{(0)}$ (zeroth-order approximation) retains all the hydrodynamic orders in the shear rate. In addition, since the collisional cooling cannot be compensated locally for viscous heating, the distribution $f^{(0)}$ depends on time through its dependence on temperature. This means that in general, for a given degree of inelasticity, the complete nonlinear dependence of the transport coefficients on the shear rate requires the analysis of the {\em unsteady} hydrodynamic behavior. To simplify the analysis, the steady state conditions have been considered here in order to perform a linear stability analysis of the hydrodynamic equations with respect to the uniform shear flow state. Conditions for instabilities at long wavelengths are identified and discussed.Comment: 7 figures; previous stability analysis modifie