366 research outputs found
The ontogeny of sexual size dimorphism of a moth: when do males and females grow apart?
Sexual dimorphism in body size (sexual size dimorphism) is common in many species. The sources of selection that generate the independent evolution of adult male and female size have been investigated extensively by evolutionary biologists, but how and when females and males grow apart during ontogeny is poorly understood. Here we use the hawkmoth, Manduca sexta, to examine when sexual size dimorphism arises by measuring body mass every day during development. We further investigated whether environmental variables influence the ontogeny of sexual size dimorphism by raising moths on three different diet qualities (poor, medium and high). We found that size dimorphism arose during early larval development on the highest quality food treatment but it arose late in larval development when raised on the medium quality food. This female-biased dimorphism (females larger) increased substantially from the pupal-to-adult stage in both treatments, a pattern that appears to be common in Lepidopterans. Although dimorphism appeared in a few stages when individuals were raised on the poorest quality diet, it did not persist such that male and female adults were the same size. This demonstrates that the environmental conditions that insects are raised in can affect the growth trajectories of males and females differently and thus when dimorphism arises or disappears during development. We conclude that the development of sexual size dimorphism in M. sexta occurs during larval development and continues to accumulate during the pupal/adult stages, and that environmental variables such as diet quality can influence patterns of dimorphism in adults
Shift invariant preduals of ℓ<sub>1</sub>(ℤ)
The Banach space ℓ<sub>1</sub>(ℤ) admits many non-isomorphic preduals, for
example, C(K) for any compact countable space K, along with many more
exotic Banach spaces. In this paper, we impose an extra condition: the predual
must make the bilateral shift on ℓ<sub>1</sub>(ℤ) weak<sup>*</sup>-continuous. This is
equivalent to making the natural convolution multiplication on ℓ<sub>1</sub>(ℤ)
separately weak*-continuous and so turning ℓ<sub>1</sub>(ℤ) into a dual Banach
algebra. We call such preduals <i>shift-invariant</i>. It is known that the
only shift-invariant predual arising from the standard duality between C<sub>0</sub>(K)
(for countable locally compact K) and ℓ<sub>1</sub>(ℤ) is c<sub>0</sub>(ℤ). We provide
an explicit construction of an uncountable family of distinct preduals which do
make the bilateral shift weak<sup>*</sup>-continuous. Using Szlenk index arguments, we
show that merely as Banach spaces, these are all isomorphic to c<sub>0</sub>. We then
build some theory to study such preduals, showing that they arise from certain
semigroup compactifications of ℤ. This allows us to produce a large number
of other examples, including non-isometric preduals, and preduals which are not
Banach space isomorphic to c<sub>0</sub>
LTL Parameter Synthesis of Parametric Timed Automata
The parameter synthesis problem for parametric timed automata is undecidable
in general even for very simple reachability properties. In this paper we
introduce restrictions on parameter valuations under which the parameter
synthesis problem is decidable for LTL properties. The investigated bounded
integer parameter synthesis problem could be solved using an explicit
enumeration of all possible parameter valuations. We propose an alternative
symbolic zone-based method for this problem which results in a faster
computation. Our technique extends the ideas of the automata-based approach to
LTL model checking of timed automata. To justify the usefulness of our
approach, we provide experimental evaluation and compare our method with
explicit enumeration technique.Comment: 23 pages, extended versio
Teachers developing assessment for learning: impact on student achievement
While it is generally acknowledged that increased use of formative assessment (or assessment for learning) leads to higher quality learning, it is often claimed that the pressure in schools to improve the results achieved by students in externally-set tests and examinations precludes its use. This paper reports on the achievement of secondary school students who worked in classrooms where teachers made time to develop formative assessment strategies. A total of 24 teachers (2 science and 2 mathematics teachers, in each of six schools in two LEAs) were supported over a six-month period in exploring and planning their approach to formative assessment, and then, beginning in September 1999, the teachers put these plans into action with selected classes. In order to compute effect sizes, a measure of prior attainment and at least one comparison group was established for each class (typically either an equivalent class taught in the previous year by the same teacher, or a parallel class taught by another teacher). The mean effect size was 0.32
Completely positive multipliers of quantum groups
We show that any completely positive multiplier of the convolution algebra of
the dual of an operator algebraic quantum group \G (either a locally compact
quantum group, or a quantum group coming from a modular or manageable
multiplicative unitary) is induced in a canonical fashion by a unitary
corepresentation of \G. It follows that there is an order bijection between
the completely positive multipliers of L^1(\G) and the positive functionals
on the universal quantum group C_0^u(\G). We provide a direct link between
the Junge, Neufang, Ruan representation result and the representing element of
a multiplier, and use this to show that their representation map is always
weak-weak-continuous.Comment: 18 pages; major rewrit
Ontogeny of NET expression and antidepressant-like response to desipramine in wild-type and SERT mutant mice
Abstract word count: 250 Introduction word count: 74
Efficient Emptiness Check for Timed B\"uchi Automata (Extended version)
The B\"uchi non-emptiness problem for timed automata refers to deciding if a
given automaton has an infinite non-Zeno run satisfying the B\"uchi accepting
condition. The standard solution to this problem involves adding an auxiliary
clock to take care of the non-Zenoness. In this paper, it is shown that this
simple transformation may sometimes result in an exponential blowup. A
construction avoiding this blowup is proposed. It is also shown that in many
cases, non-Zenoness can be ascertained without extra construction. An
on-the-fly algorithm for the non-emptiness problem, using non-Zenoness
construction only when required, is proposed. Experiments carried out with a
prototype implementation of the algorithm are reported.Comment: Published in the Special Issue on Computer Aided Verification - CAV
2010; Formal Methods in System Design, 201
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