Topological Entanglement of Polymers and Chern-Simons Field Theory

In recent times some interesting field theoretical descriptions of the statistical mechanics of entangling polymers have been proposed by various authors. In these approaches, a single test polymer fluctuating in a background of static polymers or in a lattice of obstacles is considered. The extension to the case in which the configurations of two or more polymers become non-static is not straightforward unless their trajectories are severely constrained. In this paper we present another approach, based on Chern--Simons field theory, which is able to describe the topological entanglements of two fluctuating polymers in terms of gauge fields and second quantized replica fields.Comment: 16 pages, corrected some typos, added two new reference

Butterfly abundance in a warming climate: patterns in space and time are not congruent

We present a model of butterfly abundance on transects in England. The model indicates a significant role for climate, but the direction of association is counter to expectation: butterfly population density is higher on sites with a cooler climate. However, the effect is highly heterogeneous, with one in five species displaying a net positive association. We use this model to project the population-level effects of climate warming for the year 2080, using a medium emissions scenario. The results suggest that most populations and species will decline markedly, but that the total number of butterflies will increase as communities become dominated by a few common species. In particular, Maniola jurtina is predicted to make up nearly half of all butterflies on UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS) transects by 2080. These results contradict the accepted wisdom that most insect populations will grow as the climate becomes warmer. Indeed, our predictions contrast strongly with those derived from inter-annual variation in abundance, emphasizing that we lack a mechanistic understanding about the factors driving butterfly population dynamics over large spatial and temporal scales. Our study underscores the difficulty of predicting future population trends and reveals the naivety of simple space-for-time substitutions, which our projections share with species distribution modelling

The Public Papers of Governor Brereton C. Jones, 1991-1995

In his inaugural address, Governor Brereton C. Jones proclaimed, This administration is committed to having the most positive, progressive, exciting four years in our state\u27s history. Through speeches and press releases, this volume reflects the principal concerns of Jones’s time in office. Thematically organized, the more than two hundred public statements included here present the public face of the Jones administration on such issues as health care, education, economic development, the environment, and governmental reform. Nowhere else has the full text of these speeches and press releases been printed. Governor Jones, born in 1939, was elected to the West Virginia legislature in 1964, where he served for four years before retiring from politics. After moving to Kentucky and switching allegiance from the Republican to the Democratic Party, he re-entered politics with a successful campaign to become lieutenant governor in 1987. He was elected the Commonwealth\u27s fifty-fourth governor in 1991 by a record margin of nearly two to one. Jones initiated a number of reforms once in office. He turned a $400 million budget deficit into a$300 million surplus in four years, and he passed dramatic ethics reform in both the executive and legislative branches. Health-care issues were also of great importance to Jones, who spent the years before his election working with the Kentucky Health Care Access Foundation in addition to farming. After surviving a helicopter crash in 1992, he turned the main focus of his administration toward health-care reform and initiatives. Though he met with legislative opposition when he proposed universal health care for all Kentuckians, he did help pass legislation in 1994 that would serve as a solid beginning on the issue for future governors. Penny M. Miller, a professor of political science at the University of Kentucky, is the author of Kentucky Politics and Government: Do We Stand United?, and the co-author of two other books, The Kentucky Legislature: Two Decades of Change and Political Parties and Primaries in Kentucky. Her articles have appeared in leading professional journals such as Journal of Politics, Western Politics Quarterly, Women & Politics, Kentucky Law Journal, and Political Science & Politics. She serves as a board member of the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center and Kids Voting Kentucky. She also served as Chair of the Kentucky Commission on Women, and as a board member of the Kentucky Center for Public Issues and the White House Commission on Presidential Scholars. A good starting point for those interested in late-twentieth-century Kentucky politics. It deserves a place on every Kentucky bookshelf. —Filson History Quarterly Reflects the principal concerns of Jones’s administration through speeches and press releases. —Documentary Editing A useful resource for anyone interested in the main issues during his term as governor. . . . A valuable reference tool. —Northern Kentucky Heritage Contains the essence of the legacy of Brereton C. Jones. It is indispensable to research libraries and all who would know it, while understanding the art of politics and the power of the spoken word. —Register of the Kentucky Historical Societyhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_political_science_papers/1010/thumbnail.jp

Pleasure and pedagogy: the consumption of DVD add-ons among Irish teenagers

This article addresses the issue of young people and media use in the digital age, more specifically the interconnection between new media pleasures and pedagogy as they relate to the consumption of DVD add-ons. Arguing against the view of new media as having predominantly detrimental effects on young people, the authors claim that new media can enable young people to develop media literacy skills and are of the view that media literacy strategies must be based on an understanding and legitimating of young people's use patterns and pleasures. The discussion is based on a pilot research project on the use patterns and pleasures of use with a sample of Irish teenagers. They found that DVDs were used predominantly in the home context, and that, while there was variability in use between the groups, overall they developed critical literacy skills and competences which were interwoven into their social life and projects of identity construction. The authors suggest that these findings could be used to develop DVDs and their add-on features as a learning resource in the more formal educational setting and they go on to outline the potential teaching benefits of their use across a range of pedagogical areas

Quantum state preparation in semiconductor dots by adiabatic rapid passage

Preparation of a specific quantum state is a required step for a variety of proposed practical uses of quantum dynamics. We report an experimental demonstration of optical quantum state preparation in a semiconductor quantum dot with electrical readout, which contrasts with earlier work based on Rabi flopping in that the method is robust with respect to variation in the optical coupling. We use adiabatic rapid passage, which is capable of inverting single dots to a specified upper level. We demonstrate that when the pulse power exceeds a threshold for inversion, the final state is independent of power. This provides a new tool for preparing quantum states in semiconductor dots and has a wide range of potential uses.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Irish Dairy Farming: Effects of Introducing a Maize Component on Grassland Management Over the Next 50 Years

Typical management of Irish dairy units is based on a low-cost spring-calving strategy with 90% of annual feed derived from grass grown on the farm. Almost 70% of feed is from grazed grass managed by rotational grazing, the remainder is conserved forage and concentrates. The objectives of the work were to examine how the management system has to be modified when part of the dairy unit land is allocated to maize silage instead of grass silage production, and to examine how climate change over the next 50 years will impact on grass and maize management within the production system

Increasing intake by the development of optimal grazing management in relation to animal behaviour at pasture.

End of Project ReportIn each month from July to December, grazing activity for each of 12 animals was recorded over a number of days continuously using vibrarecorders. The work was done at Killarney National Park and the animals were heifers of the Kerry breed living under semi-natural conditions with abundant pasture available. In July (16 hour day-length) - all animals began grazing at dawn and grazed for about 2.5 hours. This first bout was followed at intervals of about 2 hours by shorter bouts each about one hour in duration. In late afternoon another bout commenced which continued for 4 to 5 hours through until after dusk. During darkness, about midnight, there was a short bout of grazing. All of the animals behaved thus and the pattern was repeated each day. Total grazing time was near 11 hours each day. By October day-length had decreased. There was still a bout at dawn and a bout at sunset. As in July there were three smaller bouts but all occurred during darkness. The total grazing time was close to 11 hours as before. The pattern of grazing was consistent between animals and days. In August-September-October and November there were always two major bouts of grazing related to dawn and dusk. Grazing total time was always near 11 hours. As day-length decreased the smaller daylight bouts were progressively replaced by bouts during darkness. Similar patterns were also found in studies of grazing Holstein/Friesian heifers and of housed non-lactating cows at Moorepark. The primary feature of the grazing pattern is the bout. The bout implies that there is a control that determines when grazing commences and ends. Rumen capacity plays a part but does not explain why minor bouts are only one hour and major bouts are more than 4 hours. The rigid association of the two major bouts with dawn and dusk implies that light also plays a part. That the total grazing time is constant suggests that yet another control is operating that is related to the state of the animal relative to a target state. And this control relates to a 24-hour period. Domestic bovines do not display any patterns of behaviour related to seasonal or lunar cycles. The patterns appear to be circadian and in that case it would not be surprising to find that the suggested light cue was present as a means of measuring the day.EU Structural Funds (EAGGF

Entangled Polymer Rings in 2D and Confinement

The statistical mechanics of polymer loops entangled in the two-dimensional array of randomly distributed obstacles of infinite length is discussed. The area of the loop projected to the plane perpendicular to the obstacles is used as a collective variable in order to re-express a (mean field) effective theory for the polymer conformation. It is explicitly shown that the loop undergoes a collapse transition to a randomly branched polymer with $R\propto lN^\frac{1}{4}$.Comment: 17 pages of Latex, 1 ps figure now available upon request, accepted for J.Phys.A:Math.Ge

Are neonicotinoid insecticides driving declines of widespread butterflies?

There has been widespread concern that neonicotinoid pesticides may be adversely impacting wild and managed bees for some years, but recently attention has shifted to examining broader effects they may be having on biodiversity. For example in the Netherlands, declines in insectivorous birds are positively associated with levels of neonicotinoid pollution in surface water. In England, the total abundance of widespread butterfly species declined by 58% on farmed land between 2000 and 2009 despite both a doubling in conservation spending in the UK, and predictions that climate change should benefit most species. Here we build models of the UK population indices from 1985 to 2012 for 17 widespread butterfly species that commonly occur at farmland sites. Of the factors we tested, three correlated significantly with butterfly populations. Summer temperature and the index for a species the previous year are both positively associated with butterfly indices. By contrast, the number of hectares of farmland where neonicotinoid pesticides are used is negatively associated with butterfly indices. Indices for 15 of the 17 species show negative associations with neonicotinoid usage. The declines in butterflies have largely occurred in England, where neonicotinoid usage is at its highest. In Scotland, where neonicotinoid usage is comparatively low, butterfly numbers are stable. Further research is needed urgently to show whether there is a causal link between neonicotinoid usage and the decline of widespread butterflies or whether it simply represents a proxy for other environmental factors associated with intensive agriculture