772 research outputs found
Plant evolution can mediate negative effects from honey bees on wild pollinators
Pollinators are introduced to agroecosystems to provide pollination services. Introductions of managed pollinators often promote ecosystem services, but it remains largely unknown whether they also affect evolutionary mutualisms between wild pollinators and plants.
Here, we developed a model to assess effects of managed honey bees on mutualisms between plants and wild pollinators. Our model tracked how interactions among wild pollinators and honey bees affected pollinator and plant populations.
We show that when managed honey bees have a competitive advantage over wild pollinators, or a greater carrying capacity, the honey bees displace the wild pollinator. This leads to reduced plant density because plants benefit less by visits from honey bees than wild pollinators that coevolved with the plants.
As wild pollinators are displaced, plants evolve by increasing investment in traits that are attractive for honey bees but not wild pollinators. This evolutionary switch promotes wild pollinator displacement. However, higher mutualism investment costs by the plant to the honey bee can promote pollinator coexistence.
Our results show plant evolution can promote displacement of wild pollinators by managed honey bees, while limited plant evolution may lead to pollinator coexistence. More broadly, effects of honey bees on wild pollinators in agroecosystems, and effects on ecosystem services, may depend on the capacity of plant populations to evolve
Compact jets as probes for sub-parsec scale regions in AGN
Compact relativistic jets in active galactic nuclei offer an effective tool
for investigating the physics of nuclear regions in galaxies. The emission
properties, dynamics, and evolution of jets in AGN are closely connected to the
characteristics of the central supermassive black hole, accretion disk and
broad-line region in active galaxies. Recent results from studies of the
nuclear regions in several active galaxies with prominent outflows are reviewed
in this contribution.Comment: AASLaTeX, 5 pages, 4 figures. Accepted in Astrophysics and Space
Scienc
Gamma-Ray Bursts: The Underlying Model
A pedagogical derivation is presented of the ``fireball'' model of gamma-ray
bursts, according to which the observable effects are due to the dissipation of
the kinetic energy of a relativistically expanding wind, a ``fireball.'' The
main open questions are emphasized, and key afterglow observations, that
provide support for this model, are briefly discussed. The relativistic outflow
is, most likely, driven by the accretion of a fraction of a solar mass onto a
newly born (few) solar mass black hole. The observed radiation is produced once
the plasma has expanded to a scale much larger than that of the underlying
``engine,'' and is therefore largely independent of the details of the
progenitor, whose gravitational collapse leads to fireball formation. Several
progenitor scenarios, and the prospects for discrimination among them using
future observations, are discussed. The production in gamma- ray burst
fireballs of high energy protons and neutrinos, and the implications of burst
neutrino detection by kilometer-scale telescopes under construction, are
briefly discussed.Comment: In "Supernovae and Gamma Ray Bursters", ed. K. W. Weiler, Lecture
Notes in Physics, Springer-Verlag (in press); 26 pages, 2 figure
Effective Lagrangian Approach to the Theory of Eta Photoproduction in the Region
We investigate eta photoproduction in the resonance region
within the effective Lagrangian approach (ELA), wherein leading contributions
to the amplitude at the tree level are taken into account. These include the
nucleon Born terms and the leading -channel vector meson exchanges as the
non-resonant pieces. In addition, we consider five resonance contributions in
the - and - channel; besides the dominant , these are:
and . The amplitudes for the
and the photoproduction near threshold have significant
differences, even as they share common contributions, such as those of the
nucleon Born terms. Among these differences, the contribution to the
photoproduction of the -channel excitation of the is the most
significant. We find the off-shell properties of the spin-3/2 resonances to be
important in determining the background contributions. Fitting our effective
amplitude to the available data base allows us to extract the quantity
, characteristic of the
photoexcitation of the resonance and its decay into the
-nucleon channel, of interest to precise tests of hadron models. At the
photon point, we determine it to be from
the old data base, and from a
combination of old data base and new Bates data. We obtain the helicity
amplitude for to be from the old data base, and from the combination of the old data base and new Bates
data, compared with the results of the analysis of pion photoproduction
yielding , in the same units.Comment: 43 pages, RevTeX, 9 figures available upon request, to appear in
Phys. Rev.
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Multi-lingual and multi-cultural information literacy; perspectives, models and good practice
Purpose
This paper reviews current approaches to, and good practice, in information literacy development in multi-lingual and multi-cultural settings, with particular emphasis on provision for international students.
Design/methodology/approach
A selective and critical review of published literature is extended by evaluation of examples of multi-lingual information literacy tutorials and MOOCs.
Findings
Multi-lingual and multi-cultural information literacy are umbrella terms covering a variety of situations and issues. This provision is of increasing importance in an increasingly mobile and multi-cultural world. This article evaluates current approaches and good practice, focusing on issues of culture vis a vis language, the balance between individual and group needs, specific and generic information literacy instruction, and models for information literacy, pedagogy and culture. Recommendations for good practice and for further research are given,
Originality/value
This is one of very few articles critically reviewing how information literacy development is affected by linguistic and cultural factors
Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation in Clusters of Galaxies with the Fermi Large Area Telescope
Nearby clusters and groups of galaxies are potentially bright sources of
high-energy gamma-ray emission resulting from the pair-annihilation of dark
matter particles. However, no significant gamma-ray emission has been detected
so far from clusters in the first 11 months of observations with the Fermi
Large Area Telescope. We interpret this non-detection in terms of constraints
on dark matter particle properties. In particular for leptonic annihilation
final states and particle masses greater than ~200 GeV, gamma-ray emission from
inverse Compton scattering of CMB photons is expected to dominate the dark
matter annihilation signal from clusters, and our gamma-ray limits exclude
large regions of the parameter space that would give a good fit to the recent
anomalous Pamela and Fermi-LAT electron-positron measurements. We also present
constraints on the annihilation of more standard dark matter candidates, such
as the lightest neutralino of supersymmetric models. The constraints are
particularly strong when including the fact that clusters are known to contain
substructure at least on galaxy scales, increasing the expected gamma-ray flux
by a factor of ~5 over a smooth-halo assumption. We also explore the effect of
uncertainties in cluster dark matter density profiles, finding a systematic
uncertainty in the constraints of roughly a factor of two, but similar overall
conclusions. In this work, we focus on deriving limits on dark matter models; a
more general consideration of the Fermi-LAT data on clusters and clusters as
gamma-ray sources is forthcoming.Comment: accepted to JCAP, Corresponding authors: T.E. Jeltema and S. Profumo,
minor revisions to be consistent with accepted versio
Search for the Decay
We have searched for the decay of the tau lepton into seven charged particles
and zero or one pi0. The data used in the search were collected with the CLEO
II detector at the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) and correspond to an
integrated luminosity of 4.61 fb^(-1). No evidence for a signal is found.
Assuming all the charged particles are pions, we set an upper limit on the
branching fraction, B(tau- -> 4pi- 3pi+ (pi0) nu_tau) < 2.4 x 10^(-6) at the
90% confidence level. This limit represents a significant improvement over the
previous limit.Comment: 9 page postscript file, postscript file also available through
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLN
Evidence of Color Coherence Effects in W+jets Events from ppbar Collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.8 TeV
We report the results of a study of color coherence effects in ppbar
collisions based on data collected by the D0 detector during the 1994-1995 run
of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, at a center of mass energy sqrt(s) = 1.8
TeV. Initial-to-final state color interference effects are studied by examining
particle distribution patterns in events with a W boson and at least one jet.
The data are compared to Monte Carlo simulations with different color coherence
implementations and to an analytic modified-leading-logarithm perturbative
calculation based on the local parton-hadron duality hypothesis.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to Physics Letters
Search for Higgs bosons decaying to tautau pairs in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV
We present a search for the production of neutral Higgs bosons decaying into
tautau pairs in ppbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. The
data, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb-1, were collected by
the D0 experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. We set upper limits at the
95% C.L. on the product of production cross section and branching ratio for a
scalar resonance decaying into tautau pairs, and we then interpret these limits
as limits on the production of Higgs bosons in the minimal supersymmetric
standard model (MSSM) and as constraints in the MSSM parameter space.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PL
Measurement of the photon-jet production differential cross section in collisions at \sqrt{s}=1.96~\TeV
We present measurements of the differential cross section dsigma/dpT_gamma
for the inclusive production of a photon in association with a b-quark jet for
photons with rapidities |y_gamma|< 1.0 and 30<pT_gamma <300 GeV, as well as for
photons with 1.5<|y_gamma|< 2.5 and 30< pT_gamma <200 GeV, where pT_gamma is
the photon transverse momentum. The b-quark jets are required to have pT>15 GeV
and rapidity |y_jet| < 1.5. The results are based on data corresponding to an
integrated luminosity of 8.7 fb^-1, recorded with the D0 detector at the
Fermilab Tevatron Collider at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV. The measured cross
sections are compared with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations
using different sets of parton distribution functions as well as to predictions
based on the kT-factorization QCD approach, and those from the Sherpa and
Pythia Monte Carlo event generators.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Lett.
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