Experience-based modulation of behavioural responses to plant volatiles and other sensory cues in insect herbivores

Plant volatiles are important cues for many herbivorous insects when choosing a suitable host plant and finding a mating partner. An appropriate behavioural response to sensory cues from plants and other insects is crucial for survival and fitness. As the natural environment can show both large spatial and temporal variability, herbivores may need to show behavioural plasticity to the available cues. By using earlier experiences, insects can adapt to local variation of resources. Experience is well known to affect sensory-guided behaviour in parasitoids and social insects, but there is also increasing evidence that it influences host plant choice and the probability of finding a mating partner in herbivorous insects. In this review, we will focus upon behavioural changes in holometabolous insect herbivores during host plant choice and localization of mating partners, modulated by experience to sensory cues. The experience can be acquired during both the larval and the adult stage and can influence later responses to plant volatiles and other sensory cues not only within the developmental stage but also after metamorphosis. Furthermore, we will address the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the experience-dependent behavioural adaptations and discuss ecological and evolutionary aspects of insect behavioural plasticity based upon experience

Crucial Role of Quantum Entanglement in Bulk Properties of Solids

We demonstrate that the magnetic susceptibility of strongly alternating antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 chains is an entanglement witness. Specifically, magnetic susceptibility of copper nitrate (CN) measured in 1963 (Berger et al., Phys. Rev. 132, 1057 (1963)) cannot be described without presence of entanglement. A detailed analysis of the spin correlations in CN as obtained from neutron scattering experiments (Xu et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4465 (2000)) provides microscopic support for this interpretation. We present a quantitative analysis resulting in the critical temperature of 5K in both, completely independent, experiments below which entanglement exists.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Unstable fingering patterns of Hele-Shaw flows as a dispersionless limit of the KdV hierarchy

We show that unstable fingering patterns of two dimensional flows of viscous fluids with open boundary are described by a dispersionless limit of the KdV hierarchy. In this framework, the fingering instability is linked to a known instability leading to regularized shock solutions for nonlinear waves, in dispersive media. The integrable structure of the flow suggests a dispersive regularization of the finite-time singularities.Comment: Published versio

Competing orders II: the doped quantum dimer model

We study the phases of doped spin S=1/2 quantum antiferromagnets on the square lattice, as they evolve from paramagnetic Mott insulators with valence bond solid (VBS) order at zero doping, to superconductors at moderate doping. The interplay between density wave/VBS order and superconductivity is efficiently described by the quantum dimer model, which acts as an effective theory for the total spin S=0 sector. We extend the dimer model to include fermionic S=1/2 excitations, and show that its mean-field, static gauge field saddle points have projective symmetries (PSGs) similar to those of `slave' particle U(1) and SU(2) gauge theories. We account for the non-perturbative effects of gauge fluctuations by a duality mapping of the S=0 dimer model. The dual theory of vortices has a PSG identical to that found in a previous paper (L. Balents et al., cond-mat/0408329) by a duality analysis of bosons on the square lattice. The previous theory therefore also describes fluctuations across superconducting, supersolid and Mott insulating phases of the present electronic model. Finally, with the aim of describing neutron scattering experiments, we present a phenomenological model for collective S=1 excitations and their coupling to superflow and density wave fluctuations.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures; part I is cond-mat/0408329; (v2) changed title and added clarification

Improving Postdischarge Outcomes in Acute Heart Failure

The global burden that acute heart failure (AHF) carries has remained unchanged over the past several decades (1). European registries (2–5) showed that 1-year outcome rates remain unacceptably high (Table 1) and confirm that hospitalization for AHF represents a change in the natural history of the disease process(6). As patients hospitalized for HF have a bad prognosis, it is crucial to utilize hospitalization as an opportunity to: 1) assess the individual components of the cardiac substrate; 2) identify and treat comorbidities; 3) identify early, safe endpoints of therapy to facilitate timely hospital discharge and outpatient follow-up; and 4) implement and begin optimization guideline-directed medical therapies (GDMTs). As outcomes are influenced by many factors, many of which are incompletely understood, a systematic approach is proposed that should start with admission and continues through post-discharge (7)

Phenomenological noise model for superconducting qubits: two-state fluctuators and 1=f noise

We present a general phenomenological model for superconducting qubits subject to noise produced by two-state fluctuators whose couplings to the qubit are all roughly the same. In flux qubit experiments where the working point can be varied, it is possible to extract both the form of the noise spectrum and the number of fluctuators. We find that the noise has a broad spectrum consistent with 1=f noise and that the number of fluctuators with slow switching rates is surprisingly small: less than 100. If the fluctuators are interpreted as unpaired surface spins, then the size of their magnetic moments is surprisingly large.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl