7,589 research outputs found
Optimizing passive acoustic sampling of bats in forests
Passive acoustic methods are increasingly used in biodiversity research and monitoring programs because they are cost-effective and permit the collection of large datasets. However, the accuracy of the results depends on the bioacoustic characteristics of the focal taxa and their habitat use. In particular, this applies to bats which exhibit distinct activity patterns in three-dimensionally structured habitats such as forests. We assessed the performance of 21 acoustic sampling schemes with three temporal sampling patterns and seven sampling designs. Acoustic sampling was performed in 32 forest plots, each containing three microhabitats: forest ground, canopy, and forest gap. We compared bat activity, species richness, and sampling effort using species accumulation curves fitted with the clench equation. In addition, we estimated the sampling costs to undertake the best sampling schemes. We recorded a total of 145,433 echolocation call sequences of 16 bat species. Our results indicated that to generate the best outcome, it was necessary to sample all three microhabitats of a given forest location simultaneously throughout the entire night. Sampling only the forest gaps and the forest ground simultaneously was the second best choice and proved to be a viable alternative when the number of available detectors is limited. When assessing bat species richness at the 1-km(2) scale, the implementation of these sampling schemes at three to four forest locations yielded highest labor cost-benefit ratios but increasing equipment costs. Our study illustrates that multiple passive acoustic sampling schemes require testing based on the target taxa and habitat complexity and should be performed with reference to cost-benefit ratios. Choosing a standardized and replicated sampling scheme is particularly important to optimize the level of precision in inventories, especially when rare or elusive species are expected
First experimental evidence for quantum echoes in scattering systems
A self-pulsing effect termed quantum echoes has been observed in experiments
with an open superconducting and a normal conducting microwave billiard whose
geometry provides soft chaos, i.e. a mixed phase space portrait with a large
stable island. For such systems a periodic response to an incoming pulse has
been predicted. Its period has been associated to the degree of development of
a horseshoe describing the topology of the classical dynamics. The experiments
confirm this picture and reveal the topological information.Comment: RevTex 4.0, 5 eps-figure
Interaction of xanthan gums with galacto- and glucomannans. part I: molecular interactions and synergism in cold gelled systems
Interaction of xanthan gums with galacto- and glucomannans. Part II: Heat induced synergistic gelation mechanism and their interaction with salt
Induced Time-Reversal Symmetry Breaking Observed in Microwave Billiards
Using reciprocity, we investigate the breaking of time-reversal (T) symmetry
due to a ferrite embedded in a flat microwave billiard. Transmission spectra of
isolated single resonances are not sensitive to T-violation whereas those of
pairs of nearly degenerate resonances do depend on the direction of time. For
their theoretical description a scattering matrix model from nuclear physics is
used. The T-violating matrix elements of the effective Hamiltonian for the
microwave billiard with the embedded ferrite are determined experimentally as
functions of the magnetization of the ferrite.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Asymptotic Entanglement Dynamics and Geometry of Quantum States
A given dynamics for a composite quantum system can exhibit several distinct
properties for the asymptotic entanglement behavior, like entanglement sudden
death, asymptotic death of entanglement, sudden birth of entanglement, etc. A
classification of the possible situations was given in [M. O. Terra Cunha,
{\emph{New J. Phys}} {\bf{9}}, 237 (2007)] but for some classes there were no
known examples. In this work we give a better classification for the possibile
relaxing dynamics at the light of the geometry of their set of asymptotic
states and give explicit examples for all the classes. Although the
classification is completely general, in the search of examples it is
sufficient to use two qubits with dynamics given by differential equations in
Lindblad form (some of them non-autonomous). We also investigate, in each case,
the probabilities to find each possible behavior for random initial states.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures; revised version accepted for publication in J.
Phys. A: Math. Theo
First Experimental Observation of Superscars in a Pseudointegrable Barrier Billiard
With a perturbation body technique intensity distributions of the electric
field strength in a flat microwave billiard with a barrier inside up to mode
numbers as large as about 700 were measured. A method for the reconstruction of
the amplitudes and phases of the electric field strength from those intensity
distributions has been developed. Recently predicted superscars have been
identified experimentally and - using the well known analogy between the
electric field strength and the quantum mechanical wave function in a
two-dimensional microwave billiard - their properties determined.Comment: 4 pages, 5 .eps figure
In search of virus carriers of the 1988 and 2002 phocine distemper virus outbreaks in European harbour seals
European harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) populations decreased substantially during the phocine distemper virus (PDV) outbreaks of 1988 and 2002. Different hypotheses have stated that various seals and terrestrial carnivore species might be the source of infection. To further analyse these hypotheses, grey (Halichoerus grypus) and ringed (Phoca hispida) seals, polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and minks (Mustela lutreola) were sampled from the North Sea and East Greenland coasts between 1988 and 2004 and investigated by RT-PCR using a panmorbillivirus primer pair. However, all samples were negative for morbillivirus nucleic acid
- …