Phylogeographical patterns of a generalist acorn weevil: insight into the biogeographical history of broadleaved deciduous and evergreen forests

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Climatic changes during glacial periods have had a major influence on the recent evolutionary history of living organisms, even in temperate forests on islands, where the land was not covered with ice sheets. We investigated the phylogeographical patterns of the weevil <it>Curculio sikkimensis </it>(Curculionidae), a generalist seed predator of Fagaceae plants living in both deciduous oak and evergreen forests of Japan. Its genetic structure was compared to that of another host-specific seed predator, <it>C. hilgendorfi</it>, inhabiting only evergreen forests.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We examined 921 bp of mitochondrial DNA for 115 individuals collected from 33 populations of <it>C. sikkimensis </it>from 11 plant species of three genera, <it>Quercus</it>, <it>Lithocarpus</it>, and <it>Castanopsis</it>. An analysis of molecular variance revealed that a large proportion (almost 50%, <it>P </it>< 0.001) of the total genetic variance could be explained by differences between two geographical regions, the southwestern and northeastern parts of the main islands of Japan. In contrast, no significant genetic differentiation of the weevil was observed among vegetation types of their utilized host plant species. The phylogeographical patterns of the generalist and the host-specific seed predator exhibited a congruent genetic boundary in the Chugoku-Shikoku region.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results suggest that geology and historical environment have contributed to shaping the present genetic structure of <it>C. sikkimensis</it>. The geographical patterns of genetic differentiation in the Chugoku-Shikoku region observed in the two types of Fagaceae-associated <it>Curculio </it>in this study have also been observed in several plant species growing in warm and cool temperate zones of Japan. The occurrence of this common pattern suggests that deciduous oak and evergreen forests of Japan survived together, or adjacent to each other, in small refugia during glacial ages, in the southwestern and northeastern parts of the main islands, although these two types of forests are presently distributed in cool and warm temperate zones of Japan, respectively.</p

Making diabetes education interactive : tangible educational toys for children with type-1 diabetes

Younger children (under 9 years) with type-1 diabetes are often very passive in the management of their condition and can face difficulties in accessing and understanding basic diabetes related information. This can make transitioning to self-management in later years very challenging. Previous research has mostly focused on educational interventions for older children. To create an educational tool which can support the diabetes educational process of younger children, we conducted a multiphase and multi-stakeholder user-centred design process. The result is an interactive tool that illustrates diabetes concepts in an age-appropriate way with the use of tangible toys. The tool was evaluated inside a paediatric diabetes clinic with clinicians, children and parents and was found to be engaging, acceptable and effective. In addition to providing implications for the design and adoption of educational tools for children in a clinical setting, we discuss the challenges for conducting user-centred design in such a setting

Deep simultaneous limits on optical emission from FRB 20190520B by 24.4 fps observations with Tomo-e Gozen

We conduct 24.4~fps optical observations of repeating Fast Radio Burst (FRB) 20190520B using Tomo-e Gozen, a high-speed CMOS camera mounted on the Kiso 105-cm Schmidt telescope, simultaneously with radio observations carried out using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST). We succeeded in the simultaneous optical observations of 11 radio bursts that FAST detected. However, no corresponding optical emission was found. The optical fluence limits as deep as 0.068 Jy ms are obtained for the individual bursts (0.029 Jy ms on the stacked data) corrected for the dust extinction in the Milky Way. The fluence limit is deeper than those obtained in the previous simultaneous observations for an optical emission with a duration $\gtrsim 0.1$ ms. Although the current limits on radio--optical spectral energy distribution (SED) of FRBs are not constraining, we show that SED models based on observed SEDs of radio variable objects such as optically detected pulsars, and a part of parameter spaces of theoretical models in which FRB optical emission is produced by inverse-Compton scattering in a pulsar magnetosphere or a strike of a magnetar blastwave into a hot wind bubble, can be ruled out once a similar fluence limit as in our observation is obtained for a bright FRB with a radio fluence $\gtrsim 5$ Jy ms.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, metadata correcte

O(a)-improved quark action on anisotropic lattices and perturbative renormalization of heavy-light currents

We investigate the Symanzik improvement of the Wilson quark action on anisotropic lattices. Taking first a general action with nearest-neighbor and clover interactions, we study the mass dependence of the ratio of the hopping parameters, the clover coefficients, and an improvement coefficient for heavy-light vector and axial vector currents. We show how tree-level improvement can be achieved. For a particular choice of the spatial Wilson coupling, the results simplify, and $O(m_0a_\tau)$ improvement is possible. (Here $m_0$ is the bare quark mass and $a_\tau$ the temporal lattice spacing.) With this choice we calculate the renormalization factors of heavy-light bilinear operators at one-loop order of perturbation theory employing the standard plaquette gauge action.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figure

Video Observations of Tiny Near-Earth Objects with Tomo-e Gozen

We report the results of video observations of tiny (diameter less than 100 m) near-Earth objects (NEOs) with Tomo-e Gozen on the Kiso 105 cm Schmidt telescope. A rotational period of a tiny asteroid reflects its dynamical history and physical properties since smaller objects are sensitive to the YORP effect. We carried out video observations of 60 tiny NEOs at 2 fps from 2018 to 2021 and successfully derived the rotational periods and axial ratios of 32 NEOs including 13 fast rotators with rotational periods less than 60 s. The fastest rotator found during our survey is 2020 HS7 with a rotational period of 2.99 s. We statistically confirmed that there is a certain number of tiny fast rotators in the NEO population, which have been missed with any previous surveys. We have discovered that the distribution of the tiny NEOs in a diameter and rotational period (D-P) diagram is truncated around a period of 10 s. The truncation with a flat-top shape is not explained well either by a realistic tensile strength of NEOs or suppression of YORP by meteoroid impacts. We propose that the dependence of the tangential YORP effect on the rotational period potentially explains the observed pattern in the D-P diagram.Comment: This article is published in PASJ as open access, published by OUP (https://doi.org/10.1093/pasj/psac043). 27 pages, 16 figure