623 research outputs found
Patterns of organic contaminants in marine mammals with reference to sperm whale strandings
Discriminant analysis has been applied to organochlorine contaminant data from a small number (ca 3-25) of 12 different marine mammal species to discriminate between the species on the basis of the chlorobiphenyls (CB) patterns in blubber and account for the effects of age, sex, condition and location of the mammals. The raw data are normalised to a single congener, CB 153, to reduce the effects of life history and sex, after which the discriminant factors are plotted to display the differences between species in relation to the intake and the metabolism of chlorobiphenyls. An understanding of these differences gives a better knowledge of the relative sensibility of these species. The sperm whales were found to have the least ability to metabolise CBs when compared with other cetaceans, although the concentration range observed for total CB was relatively low (265-6,313 µg/kg lipid weight)
The Rise and Fall of Water Net (Hydrodictyon reticulatum) in New Zealand
During the late 1980s to early 1990s a range of aquatic habitats in the central North Island of New Zealand were invaded by the filamentous green alga, water net Hydrodictyon reticulatum (Linn. Lagerheim). The alga caused significant economic and recreational impacts at major sites of infestation, but it was also associated with enhanced invertebrate numbers and was the likely cause of an improvement in the trout fishery. The causes of prolific growth of water net and the range of control options pursued are reviewed. The possible causes of its sudden decline in 1995 are considered, including physical factors, increase in grazer pressure, disease, and loss of genetic vigour
Abelian D-terms and the superpartner spectrum of anomaly-mediated supersymmetry breaking
We address the tachyonic slepton problem of anomaly mediated supersymmetry
breaking using abelian D-terms. We demonstrate that the most general extra U(1)
symmetry that does not disrupt gauge coupling unification has a large set of
possible charges that solves the problem. It is shown that previous studies in
this direction that added both an extra hypercharge D-term and another D-term
induced by B-L symmetry (or similar) can be mapped into a single D-term of the
general ancillary U(1)_a. The U(1)_a formalism enables identifying the sign of
squark mass corrections which leads to an upper bound of the entire
superpartner spectrum given knowledge of just one superpartner mass.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, [v2] reference added, [v3] Eq. (9) corrected,
results unaffected, [v4] version to be published in Phys. Rev. D, expanded
parameter space for figures to match tex
The Superpartner Spectrum of Gaugino Mediation
We compute the superpartner masses in a class of models with gaugino
mediation (or no-scale) boundary conditions at a scale between the GUT and
Planck scales. These models are compelling because they are simple, solve the
supersymmetric flavor and CP problems, satisfy all constraints from colliders
and cosmology, and predict the superpartner masses in terms of very few
parameters. Our analysis includes the renormalization group evolution of the
soft-breaking terms above the GUT scale. We show that the running above the GUT
scale is largely model independent and find that a phenomenologically viable
spectrum is obtained.Comment: 15 page
TomograPy: A Fast, Instrument-Independent, Solar Tomography Software
Solar tomography has progressed rapidly in recent years thanks to the
development of robust algorithms and the availability of more powerful
computers. It can today provide crucial insights in solving issues related to
the line-of-sight integration present in the data of solar imagers and
coronagraphs. However, there remain challenges such as the increase of the
available volume of data, the handling of the temporal evolution of the
observed structures, and the heterogeneity of the data in multi-spacecraft
studies.
We present a generic software package that can perform fast tomographic
inversions that scales linearly with the number of measurements, linearly with
the length of the reconstruction cube (and not the number of voxels) and
linearly with the number of cores and can use data from different sources and
with a variety of physical models: TomograPy
(http://nbarbey.github.com/TomograPy/), an open-source software freely
available on the Python Package Index. For performance, TomograPy uses a
parallelized-projection algorithm. It relies on the World Coordinate System
standard to manage various data sources. A variety of inversion algorithms are
provided to perform the tomographic-map estimation. A test suite is provided
along with the code to ensure software quality. Since it makes use of the
Siddon algorithm it is restricted to rectangular parallelepiped voxels but the
spherical geometry of the corona can be handled through proper use of priors.
We describe the main features of the code and show three practical examples
of multi-spacecraft tomographic inversions using STEREO/EUVI and STEREO/COR1
data. Static and smoothly varying temporal evolution models are presented.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figures, 5 table
Supersymmetric Unification Without Low Energy Supersymmetry And Signatures for Fine-Tuning at the LHC
The cosmological constant problem is a failure of naturalness and suggests
that a fine-tuning mechanism is at work, which may also address the hierarchy
problem. An example -- supported by Weinberg's successful prediction of the
cosmological constant -- is the potentially vast landscape of vacua in string
theory, where the existence of galaxies and atoms is promoted to a vacuum
selection criterion. Then, low energy SUSY becomes unnecessary, and
supersymmetry -- if present in the fundamental theory -- can be broken near the
unification scale. All the scalars of the supersymmetric standard model become
ultraheavy, except for a single finely tuned Higgs. Yet, the fermions of the
supersymmetric standard model can remain light, protected by chiral symmetry,
and account for the successful unification of gauge couplings. This framework
removes all the difficulties of the SSM: the absence of a light Higgs and
sparticles, dimension five proton decay, SUSY flavor and CP problems, and the
cosmological gravitino and moduli problems. High-scale SUSY breaking raises the
mass of the light Higgs to about 120-150 GeV. The gluino is strikingly long
lived, and a measurement of its lifetime can determine the ultraheavy scalar
mass scale. Measuring the four Yukawa couplings of the Higgs to the gauginos
and higgsinos precisely tests for high-scale SUSY. These ideas, if confirmed,
will demonstrate that supersymmetry is present but irrelevant for the hierarchy
problem -- just as it has been irrelevant for the cosmological constant problem
-- strongly suggesting the existence of a fine-tuning mechanism in nature.Comment: Typos and equations fixed, references adde
Higgs boson mass limits in perturbative unification theories
Motivated in part by recent demonstrations that electroweak unification into
a simple group may occur at a low scale, we detail the requirements on the
Higgs mass if the unification is to be perturbative. We do this for the
Standard Model effective theory, minimal supersymmetry, and next-to-minimal
supersymmetry with an additional singlet field. Within the Standard Model
framework, we find that perturbative unification with sin2(thetaW)=1/4 occurs
at Lambda=3.8 TeV and requires mh<460 GeV, whereas perturbative unification
with sin2(thetaW)=3/8 requires mh<200 GeV. In supersymmetry, the presentation
of the Higgs mass predictions can be significantly simplified, yet remain
meaningful, by using a single supersymmetry breaking parameter Delta_S. We
present Higgs mass limits in terms of Delta_S for the minimal supersymmetric
model and the next-to-minimal supersymmetric model. We show that in
next-to-minimal supersymmetry, the Higgs mass upper limit can be as large as
500 GeV even for moderate supersymmetry masses if the perturbative unification
scale is low (e.g., Lambda=10 TeV).Comment: 20 pages, latex, 6 figures, references adde
British airways’ move to Terminal 5 at London Heathrow airport: A statistical analysis of transfer baggage performance
This article was published in the serial, Journal of Air Transport Management [© Elsevier]. The definitive version is available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969699710000876This paper investigates transfer baggage performance when British Airways’ occupancy of Terminal 5 at London Heathrow Airport took place. Operational data on transfer baggage performance are collated from BA performance scorecards and the Gini coefficient is used as a measure of consolidation of flight operations within a single terminal and in the investigation of correlation of consolidated flights in Terminal 5 with transfer baggage performance variation. The relationship between consolidation of operations in the terminal and improving transfer baggage performance is found to be significant. In addition, there is evidence of significant changes in transfer baggage performance on switch phases of flights as they were moved to Terminal 5 in steps. The exclusive use of a terminal gives improved performance
The position of graptolites within Lower Palaeozoic planktic ecosystems.
An integrated approach has been used to assess the palaeoecology of graptolites both as a discrete group and also as a part of the biota present within Ordovician and Silurian planktic realms. Study of the functional morphology of graptolites and comparisons with recent ecological analogues demonstrates that graptolites most probably filled a variety of niches as primary consumers, with modes of life related to the colony morphotype. Graptolite coloniality was extremely ordered, lacking any close morphological analogues in Recent faunas. To obtain maximum functional efficiency, graptolites would have needed varying degrees of coordinated automobility. A change in lifestyle related to ontogenetic changes was prevalent within many graptolite groups. Differing lifestyle was reflected by differing reproductive strategies, with synrhabdosomes most likely being a method for rapid asexual reproduction. Direct evidence in the form of graptolithophage 'coprolitic' bodies, as well as indirect evidence in the form of probable defensive adaptations, indicate that graptolites comprised a food item for a variety of predators. Graptolites were also hosts to a variety of parasitic organisms and provided an important nutrient source for scavenging organisms
Spectral and transport properties of doped Mott-Hubbard systems with incommensurate magnetic order
We present spectral and optical properties of the Hubbard model on a
two-dimensional square lattice using a generalization of dynamical mean-field
theory to magnetic states in finite dimension. The self-energy includes the
effect of spin fluctuations and screening of the Coulomb interaction due to
particle-particle scattering. At half-filling the quasiparticles reduce the
width of the Mott-Hubbard `gap' and have dispersions and spectral weights that
agree remarkably well with quantum Monte Carlo and exact diagonalization
calculations. Away from half-filling we consider incommensurate magnetic order
with a varying local spin direction, and derive the photoemission and optical
spectra. The incommensurate magnetic order leads to a pseudogap which opens at
the Fermi energy and coexists with a large Mott-Hubbard gap. The quasiparticle
states survive in the doped systems, but their dispersion is modified with the
doping and a rigid band picture does not apply. Spectral weight in the optical
conductivity is transferred to lower energies and the Drude weight increases
linearly with increasing doping. We show that incommensurate magnetic order
leads also to mid-gap states in the optical spectra and to decreased scattering
rates in the transport processes, in qualitative agreement with the
experimental observations in doped systems. The gradual disappearence of the
spiral magnetic order and the vanishing pseudogap with increasing temperature
is found to be responsible for the linear resistivity. We discuss the possible
reasons why these results may only partially explain the features observed in
the optical spectra of high temperature superconductors.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figure
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