Lowland river responses to intraplate tectonism and climate forcing quantified with luminescence and cosmogenic 10Be

Intraplate tectonism has produced large-scale folding that steers regional drainage systems, such as the 1600 km-long Cooper Ck, en route to Australia’s continental depocentre at Lake Eyre. We apply cosmogenic 10Be exposure dating in bedrock, and luminescence dating in sediment, to quantify the erosional and depositional response of Cooper Ck where it incises the rising Innamincka Dome. The detachment of bedrock joint-blocks during extreme floods governs the minimum rate of incision (17.4±6.5 mm/ky) estimated using a numerical model of episodic erosion calibrated with our 10Be measurements. The last big-flood phase occurred no earlier than ~112–121ka. Upstream of the Innamincka Dome long-term rates of alluvial deposition, partly reflecting synclinal-basin subsidence, are estimated from 47 luminescence dates in sediments accumulated since ~270 ka. Sequestration of sediment in subsiding basins such as these may account for the lack of Quaternary accumulation in Lake Eyre, and moreover suggests that notions of a single primary depocentre at base-level may poorly represent lowland, arid-zone rivers. Over the period ~75–55 ka Cooper Ck changed from a bedload- dominant, laterally-active meandering river to a muddy anabranching channel network up to 60 km wide. We propose that this shift in river pattern was a product of base-level rise linked with the slowly deforming syncline–anticline structure, coupled with a climate-forced reduction in discharge. The uniform valley slope along this subsiding alluvial and rising bedrock system represents an adjustment between the relative rates of deformation and the ability of greatly enhanced flows at times during the Quaternary to incise the rising anticline. Hence, tectonic and climate controls are balanced in the long term

Short time decay of the Loschmidt echo

The Loschmidt echo measures the sensitivity to perturbations of quantum evolutions. We study its short time decay in classically chaotic systems. Using perturbation theory and throwing out all correlation imposed by the initial state and the perturbation, we show that the characteristic time of this regime is well described by the inverse of the width of the local density of states. This result is illustrated and discussed in a numerical study in a 2-dimensional chaotic billiard system perturbed by various contour deformations and using different types of initial conditions. Moreover, the influence to the short time decay of sub-Planck structures developed by time evolution is also investigated.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, published versio

Giant Clusters in Random Ad Hoc Networks

The present paper introduces ad hoc communication networks as examples of large scale real networks that can be prospected by statistical means. A description of giant cluster formation based on the single parameter of node neighbor numbers is given along with the discussion of some asymptotic aspects of the giant cluster sizes.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures; typos and correction

Highly clustered scale-free networks

We propose a model for growing networks based on a finite memory of the nodes. The model shows stylized features of real-world networks: power law distribution of degree, linear preferential attachment of new links and a negative correlation between the age of a node and its link attachment rate. Notably, the degree distribution is conserved even though only the most recently grown part of the network is considered. This feature is relevant because real-world networks truncated in the same way exhibit a power-law distribution in the degree. As the network grows, the clustering reaches an asymptotic value larger than for regular lattices of the same average connectivity. These high-clustering scale-free networks indicate that memory effects could be crucial for a correct description of the dynamics of growing networks.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

WISP genes are members of the connective tissue growth factor family that are up-regulated in Wnt-1-transformed cells and aberrantly expressed in human colon tumors

Wnt family members are critical to many developmental processes, and components of the Wnt signaling pathway have been linked to tumorigenesis in familial and sporadic colon carcinomas. Here we report the identification of two genes, WISP-1 and WISP-2, that are up-regulated in the mouse mammary epithelial cell line C57MG transformed by Wnt-1, but not by Wnt-4. Together with a third related gene, WISP-3, these proteins define a subfamily of the connective tissue growth factor family. Two distinct systems demonstrated WISP induction to be associated with the expression of Wnt-1. These included (i) C57MG cells infected with a Wnt-1 retroviral vector or expressing Wnt-1 under the control of a tetracyline repressible promoter, and (ii) Wnt-1 transgenic mice. The WISP-1 gene was localized to human chromosome 8q24.1-8q24.3. WISP-1 genomic DNA was amplified in colon cancer cell lines and in human colon tumors and its RNA overexpressed (2- to >30-fold) in 84% of the tumors examined compared with patient-matched normal mucosa. WISP-3 mapped to chromosome 6q22-6q23 and also was overexpressed (4- to >40-fold) in 63% of the colon tumors analyzed. In contrast, WISP-2 mapped to human chromosome 20q12-20q13 and its DNA was amplified, but RNA expression was reduced (2- to >30-fold) in 79% of the tumors. These results suggest that the WISP genes may be downstream of Wnt-1 signaling and that aberrant levels of WISP expression in colon cancer may play a role in colon tumorigenesis

Mossbauer neutrinos in quantum mechanics and quantum field theory

We demonstrate the correspondence between quantum mechanical and quantum field theoretical descriptions of Mossbauer neutrino oscillations. First, we compute the combined rate $\Gamma$ of Mossbauer neutrino emission, propagation, and detection in quantum field theory, treating the neutrino as an internal line of a tree level Feynman diagram. We include explicitly the effect of homogeneous line broadening due to fluctuating electromagnetic fields in the source and detector crystals and show that the resulting formula for $\Gamma$ is identical to the one obtained previously (Akhmedov et al., arXiv:0802.2513) for the case of inhomogeneous line broadening. We then proceed to a quantum mechanical treatment of Mossbauer neutrinos and show that the oscillation, coherence, and resonance terms from the field theoretical result can be reproduced if the neutrino is described as a superposition of Lorentz-shaped wave packet with appropriately chosen energies and widths. On the other hand, the emission rate and the detection cross section, including localization and Lamb-Mossbauer terms, cannot be predicted in quantum mechanics and have to be put in by hand.Comment: LaTeX, 16 pages, 1 figure; v2: typos corrected; matches published versio

Sensitivity to perturbations in a quantum chaotic billiard

The Loschmidt echo (LE) measures the ability of a system to return to the initial state after a forward quantum evolution followed by a backward perturbed one. It has been conjectured that the echo of a classically chaotic system decays exponentially, with a decay rate given by the minimum between the width $\Gamma$ of the local density of states and the Lyapunov exponent. As the perturbation strength is increased one obtains a cross-over between both regimes. These predictions are based on situations where the Fermi Golden Rule (FGR) is valid. By considering a paradigmatic fully chaotic system, the Bunimovich stadium billiard, with a perturbation in a regime for which the FGR manifestly does not work, we find a cross over from $\Gamma$ to Lyapunov decay. We find that, challenging the analytic interpretation, these conjetures are valid even beyond the expected range.Comment: Significantly revised version. To appear in Physical Review E Rapid Communication

The moral reasoning abilities of Australian and Malaysian accounting students : a comparative analysis

If national culture is a significant determinant of ethical attitudes, it is not unreasonable to expect ethical decision-making to be influenced by one\u27s culture. However, problems arise when the notion of right differs from one culture to another. The question addressed in this paper is whether the moral reasoning abilities of Australian and Malaysian accounting students in their final year of study differ because of their cultural upbringing. This study uses primary data collected from 34 final year accounting students (12 Australian and 22 Malaysian) enrolled in an Australian degree program. The test scores collected at the beginning and end of the academic year indicate that culture and other explanatory variables do not have an affect on students\u27 moral judgment. The findings in this study suggest that culture as an independent variable does not influence the way accounting students analyse and resolve ethical dilemmas.<br /

Cooperation and Self-Regulation in a Model of Agents Playing Different Games

A simple model for cooperation between "selfish" agents, which play an extended version of the Prisoner's Dilemma(PD) game, in which they use arbitrary payoffs, is presented and studied. A continuous variable, representing the probability of cooperation, $p_k(t) \in$ [0,1], is assigned to each agent $k$ at time $t$. At each time step $t$ a pair of agents, chosen at random, interact by playing the game. The players update their $p_k(t)$ using a criteria based on the comparison of their utilities with the simplest estimate for expected income. The agents have no memory and use strategies not based on direct reciprocity nor 'tags'. Depending on the payoff matrix, the systems self-organizes - after a transient - into stationary states characterized by their average probability of cooperation $\bar{p}_{eq}$ and average equilibrium per-capita-income $\bar{p}_{eq},\bar{U}_\infty$. It turns out that the model exhibit some results that contradict the intuition. In particular, some games which - {\it a priory}- seems to favor defection most, may produce a relatively high degree of cooperation. Conversely, other games, which one would bet that lead to maximum cooperation, indeed are not the optimal for producing cooperation.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, keybords: Complex adaptive systems, Agent-based models, Social system

Effect of monomeric immunoglobulin G (IgG) on the clearance of soluble aggregates of IgG in man

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