81 research outputs found
Identifying migratory pathways of Nathusius' pipistrelles (Pipistrellus nathusii) using stable hydrogen and strontium isotopes
Rationale
Identifying migratory corridors of animals is essential for their effective protection, yet the exact location of such corridors is often unknown, particularly for elusive animals such as bats. While migrating along the German coastline, Nathusius' pipistrelles (Pipistrellus nathusii) are regularly killed at wind turbines. Therefore, we explored the paths taken on their annual journey.
Methods
We used isotope ratio mass spectrometry to measure stable hydrogen and strontium isotope ratios in fur keratin of 59 Nathusius' pipistrelles captured on three offshore islands. Samples were pre-treated before analysis to report exclusively stable isotope ratios of non-exchangeable hydrogen. We generated maps to predict summer origins of bats using isoscape models.
Results
Bats were classified as long-distance migrants, mostly originating from Eastern Europe. Hydrogen analysis suggested for some bats a possible Fennoscandian origin, yet additional information from strontium analysis excluded this possibility. Instead, our data suggest that most Nathusius' pipistrelles migrating along the German coastline were of continental European summer origin, but also highlight the possibility that Nathusius' pipistrelles of Baltorussian origin may travel offshore from Fennoscandia to Germany.
Conclusions
Our findings demonstrate the benefit of using complementary isotopic tracers for analysing the migratory pathways of bats and also potentially other terrestrial vertebrate species. Furthermore, data from our study suggest an offset of fur strontium isotope ratios in relation to local bedrock
Post-imperialism, postcolonialism and beyond: towards a periodisation of cultural discourse about colonial legacies
Taking German history and culture as a starting point, this essay suggests a historical approach to reconceptualising different forms of literary engagement with colonial discourse, colonial legacies and (post-) colonial memory in the context of Comparative Postcolonial Studies. The deliberate blending of a historical, a conceptual and a political understanding of the âpostcolonialâ in postcolonial scholarship raises problems of periodisation and historical terminology when, for example, anti-colonial discourse from the colonial period or colonialist discourse in Weimar Germany are labelled âpostcolonialâ. The colonial revisionism of Germanyâs interwar period is more usefully classed as post-imperial, as are particular strands of retrospective engagement with colonial history and legacy in British, French and other European literatures and cultures after 1945. At the same time, some recent developments in Francophone, Anglophone and German literature, e.g. Afropolitan writing, move beyond defining features of postcolonial discourse and raise the question of the post-postcolonial
The Nekrasov Conjecture for Toric Surfaces
The Nekrasov conjecture predicts a relation between the partition function
for N=2 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and the Seiberg-Witten prepotential.
For instantons on R^4, the conjecture was proved, independently and using
different methods, by Nekrasov-Okounkov, Nakajima-Yoshioka, and
Braverman-Etingof. We prove a generalized version of the conjecture for
instantons on noncompact toric surfaces.Comment: 38 pages; typos corrected, references added, minor changes (e.g.
minor change of convention in Definition 5.13, 5.19, 6.5
Enumerative geometry of Calabi-Yau 4-folds
Gromov-Witten theory is used to define an enumerative geometry of curves in
Calabi-Yau 4-folds. The main technique is to find exact solutions to moving
multiple cover integrals. The resulting invariants are analogous to the BPS
counts of Gopakumar and Vafa for Calabi-Yau 3-folds. We conjecture the 4-fold
invariants to be integers and expect a sheaf theoretic explanation.
Several local Calabi-Yau 4-folds are solved exactly. Compact cases, including
the sextic Calabi-Yau in CP5, are also studied. A complete solution of the
Gromov-Witten theory of the sextic is conjecturally obtained by the holomorphic
anomaly equation.Comment: 44 page
D3-instantons, Mock Theta Series and Twistors
The D-instanton corrected hypermultiplet moduli space of type II string
theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau threefold is known in the type IIA picture
to be determined in terms of the generalized Donaldson-Thomas invariants,
through a twistorial construction. At the same time, in the mirror type IIB
picture, and in the limit where only D3-D1-D(-1)-instanton corrections are
retained, it should carry an isometric action of the S-duality group SL(2,Z).
We prove that this is the case in the one-instanton approximation, by
constructing a holomorphic action of SL(2,Z) on the linearized twistor space.
Using the modular invariance of the D4-D2-D0 black hole partition function, we
show that the standard Darboux coordinates in twistor space have modular
anomalies controlled by period integrals of a Siegel-Narain theta series, which
can be canceled by a contact transformation generated by a holomorphic mock
theta series.Comment: 42 pages; discussion of isometries is amended; misprints correcte
N=4 Superconformal Algebra and the Entropy of HyperKahler Manifolds
We study the elliptic genera of hyperKahler manifolds using the
representation theory of N=4 superconformal algebra. We consider the
decomposition of the elliptic genera in terms of N=4 irreducible characters,
and derive the rate of increase of the multiplicities of half-BPS
representations making use of Rademacher expansion. Exponential increase of the
multiplicity suggests that we can associate the notion of an entropy to the
geometry of hyperKahler manifolds. In the case of symmetric products of K3
surfaces our entropy agrees with the black hole entropy of D5-D1 system.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figur
Stability and duality in N=2 supergravity
The BPS-spectrum is known to change when moduli cross a wall of marginal
stability. This paper tests the compatibility of wall-crossing with S-duality
and electric-magnetic duality for N=2 supergravity. To this end, the
BPS-spectrum of D4-D2-D0 branes is analyzed in the large volume limit of
Calabi-Yau moduli space. Partition functions are presented, which capture the
stability of BPS-states corresponding to two constituents with primitive
charges and supported on very ample divisors in a compact Calabi-Yau. These
functions are `mock modular invariant' and therefore confirm S-duality.
Furthermore, wall-crossing preserves electric-magnetic duality, but is shown to
break the `spectral flow' symmetry of the N=(4,0) CFT, which captures the
degrees of freedom of a single constituent.Comment: 25 pages + appendix; v3: final versio
Long-term column-averaged greenhouse gas observations using a COCCON spectrometer at the high-surface-albedo site in Gobabeb, Namibia
In this study, we present column-averaged dry-air mole fractions of CO2 (XCO2), CH4 (XCH4) and CO (XCO) from a recently established measurement site in Gobabeb, Namibia. Gobabeb is a hyperarid desert site at the sharp transition zone between the sand desert and the gravel plains, offering unique characteristics with respect to surface albedo properties. Measurements started in January 2015 and are performed utilizing a ground-based Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) EM27/SUN spectrometer of the COllaborative Carbon Column Observing Network (COCCON). Gobabeb is the first measurement site observing XCO2 and XCH4 on the African mainland and improves the global coverage of ground-based remote-sensing sites. In order to achieve the high level of precision and accuracy necessary for meaningful greenhouse gas observations, we performed calibration measurements for 8âd between November 2015 and March 2016 with the COCCON reference EM27/SUN spectrometer operated at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. We derived scaling factors for XCO2, XCH4 and XCO with respect to the reference instrument that are close to 1.0. We compare the results obtained in Gobabeb to measurements from the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) sites at RĂ©union Island and Lauder. We choose these TCCON sites because, while 4000âkm apart, the instruments at Gobabeb and RĂ©union Island operate at roughly the same latitude. The Lauder station is the southernmost TCCON station and functions as a background site without a pronounced XCO2 seasonal cycle. We find a good agreement for the absolute Xgas values, apart from an expected XCH4 offset between Gobabeb and Lauder due to significantly different tropopause height, as well as representative intraday variability between TCCON and COCCON. Together with the absence of long-term drifts, this highlights the quality of the COCCON measurements. In the southern hemispheric summer, we observe lower XCO2 values at Gobabeb compared to the TCCON stations, likely due to the influence of the African biosphere. We performed coincident measurements with the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT), where GOSAT observed three nearby specific observation points, over the sand desert south of the station, directly over Gobabeb and over the gravel plains to the north. GOSAT H-gain XCO2 and XCH4 agree with the EM27/SUN measurements within the 1Ï uncertainty limit. The number of coincident soundings is limited, but we confirm a bias of 1.2â2.6âppm between GOSAT M-gain and H-gain XCO2 retrievals depending on the target point. This is in agreement with results reported by a previous study and the GOSAT validation team. We also report a bias of 5.9â9.8âppb between GOSAT M-gain and H-gain XCH4 measurements which is within the range given by the GOSAT validation team. Finally, we use the COCCON measurements to evaluate inversion-optimized CAMS model data. For XCO2, we find high biases of 0.9â±â0.5âppm for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) assimilated product and 1.1â±â0.6âppm for the in situ-driven product with R2â>â0.9 in both cases. These biases are comparable to reported offsets between the model and TCCON data. The OCO-2 assimilated model product is able to reproduce the drawdown of XCO2 observed by the COCCON instrument at the beginning of 2017, as opposed to the in situ-optimized product. Also, for XCH4, the observed biases are in line with prior model comparisons with TCCON
Topological String Amplitudes, Complete Intersection Calabi-Yau Spaces and Threshold Corrections
We present the most complete list of mirror pairs of Calabi-Yau complete
intersections in toric ambient varieties and develop the methods to solve the
topological string and to calculate higher genus amplitudes on these compact
Calabi-Yau spaces. These symplectic invariants are used to remove redundancies
in examples. The construction of the B-model propagators leads to compatibility
conditions, which constrain multi-parameter mirror maps. For K3 fibered
Calabi-Yau spaces without reducible fibers we find closed formulas for all
genus contributions in the fiber direction from the geometry of the fibration.
If the heterotic dual to this geometry is known, the higher genus invariants
can be identified with the degeneracies of BPS states contributing to
gravitational threshold corrections and all genus checks on string duality in
the perturbative regime are accomplished. We find, however, that the BPS
degeneracies do not uniquely fix the non-perturbative completion of the
heterotic string. For these geometries we can write the topological partition
function in terms of the Donaldson-Thomas invariants and we perform a
non-trivial check of S-duality in topological strings. We further investigate
transitions via collapsing D5 del Pezzo surfaces and the occurrence of free Z2
quotients that lead to a new class of heterotic duals.Comment: 117 pages, 1 Postscript figur
Calabi-Yau Volumes and Reflexive Polytopes
We study various geometrical quantities for CalabiâYau varieties realized as cones over Gorenstein Fano varieties, obtained as toric varieties from reflexive polytopes in various dimensions. Focus is made on reflexive polytopes up to dimension 4 and the minimized volumes of the SasakiâEinstein base of the corresponding CalabiâYau cone are calculated. By doing so, we conjecture new bounds for the SasakiâEinstein volume with respect to various topological quantities of the corresponding toric varieties. We give interpretations about these volume bounds in the context of associated field theories via the AdS/CFT correspondence
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