A Census of the Avifauna of the FAP 301 Project Area Addenda 1 and 2

Report issued on: issued July 25, 1996INHS Technical Report prepared for Illinois Department of Transportatio

Study of sampling systems for comets and Mars

Several aspects of the techniques that can be applied to acquisition and preservation of samples from Mars and a cometary nucleus were examined. Scientific approaches to sampling, grounded in proven engineering methods are the key to achieving the maximum science value from the sample return mission. If development of these approaches for collecting and preserving does not preceed mission definition, it is likely that only suboptimal techniques will be available because of the constraints of formal schedule timelines and the normal pressure to select only the most conservative and least sophisticated approaches when development has lagged the mission milestones. With a reasonable investment now, before the final mission definition, the sampling approach can become highly developed, ready for implementation, and mature enough to help set the requirements for the mission hardware and its performance

Effects of Site Management on the Avian Fauna of the Babe Woodyard State Natural Area, Vermilion County, Illinois

Report issued on: issued December 8, 2000INHS Technical Report prepared for Division of Natural Hertiage, Illinois Department of Natural Resource

Fingering convection and cloudless models for cool brown dwarf atmospheres

This work aims to improve the current understanding of the atmospheres of brown dwarfs, especially cold ones with spectral type T and Y, whose modeling is a current challenge. Silicate and iron clouds are believed to disappear at the photosphere at the L/T transition, but cloudless models fail to reproduce correctly the spectra of T dwarfs, advocating for the addition of more physics, e.g. other types of clouds or internal energy transport mechanisms. We use a one-dimensional (1D) radiative/convective equilibrium code ATMO to investigate this issue. This code includes both equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium chemistry and solves consistently the PT structure. Included opacity sources are H2-H2, H2-He, H2O, CO, CO2, CH4, NH3, K, Na, and TiO, VO if they are present in the atmosphere. We show that the spectra of Y dwarfs can be accurately reproduced with a cloudless model if vertical mixing and NH3 quenching are taken into account. T dwarf spectra still have some reddening in e.g. J - H compared to cloudless models. This reddening can be reproduced by slightly reducing the temperature gradient in the atmosphere. We propose that this reduction of the stabilizing temperature gradient in these layers, leading to cooler structures, is due to the onset of fingering convection, triggered by the destabilizing impact of condensation of very thin dust.Comment: Accepted in ApJ

The ground state of relativistic ions in the limit of high magnetic fields

We consider the pseudorelativistic no-pair Brown-Ravenhall operator for the description of relativistic one-electron ions in a homogeneous magnetic field B. It is shown for central charge not exceeding Z=87 that their ground state energy decreases according to the square root of B as B tends to infinity, in contrast to the nonrelativistic behaviour.Comment: 15 page

Radiation of Neutron Stars Produced by Superfluid Core

We find that neutron star interior is transparent for collisionless electron sound, the same way as it is transparent for neutrinos. In the presence of magnetic field the electron sound is coupled with electromagnetic radiation and form the fast magnetosonic wave. We find that electron sound is generated by superfluid vortices in the stellar core. Thermally excited helical vortex waves produce fast magnetosonic waves in the stellar crust which propagate toward the surface and transform into outgoing electromagnetic radiation. The vortex radiation has the spectral index -0.45 and can explain nonthermal radiation of middle-aged pulsars observed in the infrared, optical and hard X-ray bands. The radiation is produced in the stellar interior which allows direct determination of the core temperature. Comparing the theory with available spectra observations we find that the core temperature of the Vela pulsar is T=8*10^8K, while the core temperature of PSR B0656+14 and Geminga exceeds 2*10^8K. This is the first measurement of the temperature of a neutron star core. The temperature estimate rules out equation of states incorporating Bose condensations of pions or kaons and quark matter in these objects. Based on the temperature estimate and cooling models we determine the critical temperature of triplet neutron superfluidity in the Vela core Tc=(7.5\pm 1.5)*10^9K which agrees well with recent data on behavior of nucleon interactions at high energies. Another finding is that in the middle aged neutron stars the vortex radiation, rather then thermal conductivity, is the main mechanism of heat transfer from the stellar core to the surface. Electron sound opens a perspective of direct spectroscopic study of superdense matter in the neutron star interiors.Comment: 43 pages, 7 figures, to appear in Astrophysical Journa

Multiple mating and a low incidence of cuckoldry for nest-holding males in the two-spotted goby, Gobiusculus flavescens

Background: A major question in behavioural ecology concerns the relationship between genetic mating systems and the strength of sexual selection. In this study, we investigated the genetic mating system of the two-spotted goby (Gobiusculus flavescens), a useful fish model for the study of sexual selection whose genetic mating system remains uncharacterized. We developed four polymorphic microsatellite markers and used them to conduct parentage analyses on 21 nests collected during the breeding season to examine the rates of multiple mating by males and to test for evidence of alternative mating strategies.Results: Results of this study indicate that male G. flavescens mate with multiple females and enjoy confidence of paternity. We detected only one instance of sneaking, so cuckoldry contributed a very small percentage (~0.1%) of the total fertilizations in this population. Nests were nearly full and males that maintain larger nests have higher mating and reproductive success, irrespective of body size.Conclusion: Overall, our investigation shows that G. flavescens is similar to other, related gobies in that the nests of care-giving males often contain eggs from multiple females. However, G. flavescens differs from other gobies in displaying an extremely low rate of cuckoldry. The study of ecological factors responsible for this important<br /

Heat kernel estimates and spectral properties of a pseudorelativistic operator with magnetic field

Based on the Mehler heat kernel of the Schroedinger operator for a free electron in a constant magnetic field an estimate for the kernel of E_A is derived, where E_A represents the kinetic energy of a Dirac electron within the pseudorelativistic no-pair Brown-Ravenhall model. This estimate is used to provide the bottom of the essential spectrum for the two-particle Brown-Ravenhall operator, describing the motion of the electrons in a central Coulomb field and a constant magnetic field, if the central charge is restricted to Z below or equal 86