13,617 research outputs found
Distribution, morphology, and genetic affinities of dwarf embedded Fucus populations from the Northwest Atlantic Ocean
Dwarf embedded Fucus populations in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean are restricted to the upper intertidal zone in sandy salt marsh environments; they lack holdfasts and are from attached parental populations of F. spiralis or F. spiralis x F. vesiculosus hybrids after breakage and entanglement with halophytic marsh grasses. Dwarf forms are dichotomously branched, flat, and have a mean overall length and width of 20.3 and 1.3 mm, respectively. Thus, they are longer than Irish (mean 9.3 mm) and Alaskan (mean 15.0 mm) populations identified as F cottonii. Reciprocal transplants of different Fucus taxa in a Maine salt marsh confirm that F spiralis can become transformed into dwarf embedded thalli within the high intertidal zone, while the latter can grow into F. s. ecad lutarius within the mid intertidal zone. Thus, vertical transplantation can modify fucoid morphology and result in varying ecads. Microsatellite markers indicate that attached F spiralis and F vesiculosus are genetically distinct, while dwarf forms may arise via hybridization between the two taxa. The ratio of intermediate to species-specific-genotypes decreased with larger thalli. Also, F s. ecad lutarius consists of a mixture of intermediate and pure genotypes, while dwarf thalli show a greater frequency of hybrids
Threading hook facilitates safe recovery of heavy loads
A C-shaped threading hook and shuttle mounted on a spring-loaded driving rod located inside the long-handled pole are developed for recovering massive loads afloat in the sea
Darwinian Selection and Non-existence of Nash Equilibria
We study selection acting on phenotype in a collection of agents playing
local games lacking Nash equilibria. After each cycle one of the agents losing
most games is replaced by a new agent with new random strategy and game
partner. The network generated can be considered critical in the sense that the
lifetimes of the agents is power law distributed. The longest surviving agents
are those with the lowest absolute score per time step. The emergent ecology is
characterized by a broad range of behaviors. Nevertheless, the agents tend to
be similar to their opponents in terms of performance.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Chemical Abundances of the Damped Lya Systems at z>1.5
We present chemical abundance measurements for 19 damped lya systems observed
with HIRES on the 10m W.M. Keck Telescope. Our principal goal is to investigate
the abundance patterns of the damped systems and thereby determine the
underlying physical processes which dominate their chemical evolution. We place
particular emphasis on gauging the relative importance of two complementary
effects often invoked to explain the damped lya abundances: (1) nucleosynthetic
enrichment from Type II supernovae and (2) an ISM-like dust depletion pattern.
Similar to the principal results of Lu et al. (1996), our observations lend
support both for dust depletion and Type II SN enrichment. Specifically, the
observed overabundance of Zn/Fe and underabundance of Ni/Fe relative to solar
abundances suggest significant dust depletion within the damped lya systems.
Meanwhile, the relative abundances of Al, Si, and Cr vs. Fe are consistent with
both dust depletion and Type II supernova enrichment. Our measurements of Ti/Fe
and the Mn/Fe measurements from Lu et al. (1996), however, cannot be explained
by dust depletion and indicate an underlying Type II SN pattern. Finally, the
observed values of [S/Fe] are inconsistent with the combined effects of dust
depletion and the nucleosynthetic yields expected for Type II supernovae. This
last result emphasizes the need for another physical process to explain the
damped lya abundance patterns.
We also examine the metallicity of the damped lya systems both with respect
to Zn/H and Fe/H. Our results confirm previous surveys by Pettini and
collaborators, i.e., [] = -1.15 +/- 0.15 dex. [abridged]Comment: 18 pages, 4 embedded figures, 20 additional figures. Accepted to the
Astrophysical Journal 10/20/98. Uses Latex2e, emualteapj.sty, and
onecolfloat.st
Ten myths about character, virtue and virtue education – plus three well-founded misgivings
Initiatives to cultivate character and virtue in moral education at school continue to provoke sceptical responses. Most of those echo familiar misgivings about the notions of character, virtue and education in virtue – as unclear, redundant, old-fashioned, religious, paternalistic, anti-democratic, conservative, individualistic, relative and situation dependent. I expose those misgivings as ‘myths’, while at the same time acknowledging three better-founded historical, methodological and practical concerns about the notions in question
Suppression of Bremsstrahlung at Non-Zero Temperature
The first-order bremsstrahlung emission spectrum is
at zero temperature. If the radiation is emitted into a region that contains a
thermal distribution of photons, then the rate is increased by a factor
where is the Bose-Einstein function. The stimulated
emission changes the spectrum to for . If this were correct, an infinite amount of energy would be radiated in the
low frequency modes. This unphysical result indicates a breakdown of
perturbation theory. The paper computes the bremsstrahlung rate to all orders
of perturbation theory, neglecting the recoil of the charged particle. When the
perturbation series is summed, it has a different low-energy behavior. For
, the spectrum is independent of and has a value
proportional to .Comment: 16 pages (plain TeX), figures available on reques
Gravitational Leakage into Extra Dimensions: Probing Dark Energy Using Local Gravity
The braneworld model of Dvali-Gabadadze-Porrati (DGP) is a theory where
gravity is modified at large distances by the arrested leakage of gravitons off
our four-dimensional universe. Cosmology in this model has been shown to
support both "conventional" and exotic explanations of the dark energy
responsible for today's cosmic acceleration. We present new results for the
gravitational field of a clustered matter source on the background of an
accelerating universe in DGP braneworld gravity, and articulate how these
results differ from those of general relativity. In particular, we show that
orbits nearby a mass source suffer a universal anomalous precession as large as
5 microarcseconds/year, dependent only on the graviton's effective linewidth
and the global geometry of the full, five-dimensional universe. Thus, this
theory offers a local gravity correction sensitive to factors that dictate
cosmological history.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure, revtex. Reference updated. Footnote change
Dirac cohomology, elliptic representations and endoscopy
The first part (Sections 1-6) of this paper is a survey of some of the recent
developments in the theory of Dirac cohomology, especially the relationship of
Dirac cohomology with (g,K)-cohomology and nilpotent Lie algebra cohomology;
the second part (Sections 7-12) is devoted to understanding the unitary
elliptic representations and endoscopic transfer by using the techniques in
Dirac cohomology. A few problems and conjectures are proposed for further
investigations.Comment: This paper will appear in `Representations of Reductive Groups, in
Honor of 60th Birthday of David Vogan', edited by M. Nervins and P. Trapa,
published by Springe
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