Environmental, developmental, and genetic factors controlling root system architecture

A better understanding of the development and architecture of roots is essential to develop strategies to increase crop yield and optimize agricultural land use. Roots control nutrient and water uptake, provide anchoring and mechanical support and can serve as important storage organs. Root growth and development is under tight genetic control and modulated by developmental cues including plant hormones and the environment. This review focuses on root architecture and its diversity and the role of environment, nutrient, and water as well as plant hormones and their interactions in shaping root architecture

Herwig++ 2.0 Release Note

A new release of the Monte Carlo program Herwig++ (version 2.0) is now available. This is the first version of the program which can be used for hadron-hadron physics and includes the full simulation of both initial- and final-state QCD radiation.Comment: Source code and additional information available at http://hepforge.cedar.ac.uk/herwig

Gaps between Jets in the High Energy Limit

We use perturbative QCD to calculate the parton level cross section for the production of two jets that are far apart in rapidity, subject to a limitation on the total transverse momentum Q0 in the interjet region. We specifically address the question of how to combine the approach which sums all leading logarithms in Q/Q0 (where Q is the jet transverse momentum) with the BFKL approach, in which leading logarithms of the scattering energy are summed. This paper constitutes progress towards the simultaneous summation of all important logarithms. Using an "all orders" matching, we are able to obtain results for the cross section which correctly reproduce the two approaches in the appropriate limits.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figures, minor corrections to text and improved figure

An FPT 2-Approximation for Tree-Cut Decomposition

The tree-cut width of a graph is a graph parameter defined by Wollan [J. Comb. Theory, Ser. B, 110:47-66, 2015] with the help of tree-cut decompositions. In certain cases, tree-cut width appears to be more adequate than treewidth as an invariant that, when bounded, can accelerate the resolution of intractable problems. While designing algorithms for problems with bounded tree-cut width, it is important to have a parametrically tractable way to compute the exact value of this parameter or, at least, some constant approximation of it. In this paper we give a parameterized 2-approximation algorithm for the computation of tree-cut width; for an input $n$-vertex graph $G$ and an integer $w$, our algorithm either confirms that the tree-cut width of $G$ is more than $w$ or returns a tree-cut decomposition of $G$ certifying that its tree-cut width is at most $2w$, in time $2^{O(w^2\log w)} \cdot n^2$. Prior to this work, no constructive parameterized algorithms, even approximated ones, existed for computing the tree-cut width of a graph. As a consequence of the Graph Minors series by Robertson and Seymour, only the existence of a decision algorithm was known.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure

Deep brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus modulates sensitivity to decision outcome value in Parkinson's disease.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson's disease is known to cause a subtle but important adverse impact on behaviour, with impulsivity its most widely reported manifestation. However, precisely which computational components of the decision process are modulated is not fully understood. Here we probe a number of distinct subprocesses, including temporal discount, outcome utility, instrumental learning rate, instrumental outcome sensitivity, reward-loss trade-offs, and perseveration. We tested 22 Parkinson's Disease patients both on and off subthalamic nucleus deep brain stimulation (STN-DBS), while they performed an instrumental learning task involving financial rewards and losses, and an inter-temporal choice task for financial rewards. We found that instrumental learning performance was significantly worse following stimulation, due to modulation of instrumental outcome sensitivity. Specifically, patients became less sensitive to decision values for both rewards and losses, but without any change to the learning rate or reward-loss trade-offs. However, we found no evidence that DBS modulated different components of temporal impulsivity. In conclusion, our results implicate the subthalamic nucleus in a modulation of outcome value in experience-based learning and decision-making in Parkinson's disease, suggesting a more pervasive role of the subthalamic nucleus in the control of human decision-making than previously thought.GRF gratefully acknowledges support by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, KFO-219). Ray Dolan is supported by the Wellcome Trust (R.J.D., Senior Investigator Award 098362/Z/12/Z) and the the Senate of Berlin (R.J.D., Einstein Fellowship). Ben Seymour is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan; Peter Dayan is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation

The Claims Culture: A Taxonomy of Industry Attitudes

This paper presents an analysis of a familiar aspect of construction industry culture that we have dubbed 'the claims culture'. This is a culture of contract administration that lays a strong emphasis on the planning and management of claims. The principal elements of the analysis are two sets of distinctions. The first comprises economic and occupational orders, referring to two kinds of control that are exercised over the construction process; predicated respectively on economic ownership and occupational competence. The second refers to contrasting attitudes towards relationships and problem solving within these orders: respectively 'distributive' and 'integrative'. The concepts of economic and occupational order entail further sub-categories. The various attitudes associated with these categories and sub-categories are described. They are assessed as to their consequences for change initiatives in the industry

Floral temperature and optimal foraging: is heat a feasible floral reward for pollinators?

As well as nutritional rewards, some plants also reward ectothermic pollinators with warmth. Bumble bees have some control over their temperature, but have been shown to forage at warmer flowers when given a choice, suggesting that there is some advantage to them of foraging at warm flowers (such as reducing the energy required to raise their body to flight temperature before leaving the flower). We describe a model that considers how a heat reward affects the foraging behaviour in a thermogenic central-place forager (such as a bumble bee). We show that although the pollinator should spend a longer time on individual flowers if they are warm, the increase in total visit time is likely to be small. The pollinator's net rate of energy gain will be increased by landing on warmer flowers. Therefore, if a plant provides a heat reward, it could reduce the amount of nectar it produces, whilst still providing its pollinator with the same net rate of gain. We suggest how heat rewards may link with plant life history strategies

QCD

We discuss QCD studies that will be possible at LEP2. We examine both experimental and theoretical aspects of jets, fragmentation functions, multiplicities and particle spectra.Comment: 44 pages, Latex, epsfig, 18 figures, to appear on the Report of the Workshop on Physics at LEP2, CERN 96-01, vol. 1, 199