3,676 research outputs found
Macroecology of parental care in arthropods: higher mortality risk leads to higher benefits of offspring protection in tropical climates
The intensity of biotic interactions varies around the world, in such a way that mortality risk imposed by natural enemies is usually higher in the tropics. A major role of offspring attendance is protection against natural enemies, so the benefits of this behaviour should be higher in tropical regions. We tested this macroecological prediction with a meta-regression of field experiments in which the mortality of guarded and unguarded broods was compared in arthropods. Mortality of unguarded broods was higher, and parental care was more beneficial, in warmer, less seasonal environments. Moreover, in these same environments, additional lines of defence further reduced offspring mortality, implying that offspring attendance alone is not enough to deter natural enemies in tropical regions. These results help to explain the high frequency of parental care among tropical species and how biotic interactions influence the occurrence of parental care over large geographic scales. Finally, our findings reveal that additional lines of defences – an oftentimes neglected component of parental care – have an important effect on the covariation between the benefits of parental care and the climate-mediated mortality risk imposed by natural enemies
A Search for Old Star Clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud
We report the first results of a color-magnitude diagram survey of 25
candidate old LMC clusters. For almost all of the sample, it was possible to
reach the turnoff region, and in many clusters we have several magnitudes of
the main sequence. Age estimates based on the magnitude difference
between the giant branch clump and the turnoff revealed that no new old
clusters were found. The candidates turned out to be of intermediate age (1-3
Gyr) We show that the apparently old ages as inferred from integrated UBV
colors can be explained by a combination of stochastic effects produced by
bright stars and by photometric errors for faint clusters lying in crowded
fields. The relatively metal poor candidates from the CaII triplet spectroscopy
also turned out to be of intermediate age. This, combined with the fact that
they lie far out in the disk, yields interesting constraints regarding the
formation and evolution of the LMC disk. We also study the age distribution of
intermediate age and old clusters This homogeneous set of accurate relative
ages allows us to make an improved study of the history of cluster
formation/destruction for ages Gyr. We confirm previous indications that
there was apparently no cluster formation in the LMC during the period from 3-8
Gyr ago, and that there was a pronounced epoch of cluster formation beginning 3
Gyrs ago that peaked at about 1.5 Gyrs ago. Our results suggest that there are
few, if any, genuine old clusters in the LMC left to be found.Comment: LaTeX, to be published in Nov. 1997 Astronomical Journa
Some applications of quasi-velocities in optimal control
In this paper we study optimal control problems for nonholonomic systems
defined on Lie algebroids by using quasi-velocities. We consider both
kinematic, i.e. systems whose cost functional depends only on position and
velocities, and dynamic optimal control problems, i.e. systems whose cost
functional depends also on accelerations. The formulation of the problem
directly at the level of Lie algebroids turns out to be the correct framework
to explain in detail similar results appeared recently (Maruskin and Bloch,
2007). We also provide several examples to illustrate our construction.Comment: Revtex 4.1, 20 pages. To appear in Int. J. Geom. Meth. Modern Physic
Localized states at zigzag edges of bilayer graphene
We report the existence of zero energy surface states localized at zigzag
edges of bilayer graphene. Working within the tight-binding approximation we
derive the analytic solution for the wavefunctions of these peculiar surface
states. It is shown that zero energy edge states in bilayer graphene can be
divided into two families: (i) states living only on a single plane, equivalent
to surface states in monolayer graphene; (ii) states with finite amplitude over
the two layers, with an enhanced penetration into the bulk. The bulk and
surface (edge) electronic structure of bilayer graphene nanoribbons is also
studied, both in the absence and in the presence of a bias voltage between
planes.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Astrophysical parameters of Small Magellanic Cloud star clusters
We present results obtained from CCD CT1 photometry for a sample of star clusters located in crowded fields in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The targets were studied by using spatial density maps, center finding algorithms, radial density profiles and a decontamination procedure to clean their color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of field stars. The results show that out of 68 objects investigated, only 37 (54 %) present a spatial stellar overdensity. Furthermore, only 8 (12 %) of them
show stellar density profiles to be fitted by a King function. Ages, metallicities
and color excesses of these genuine clusters were also estimated from isochrone fitting on their field decontaminated CMDs.Fil: Maia, F.. Universidade Federal do Minas Gerais; BrasilFil: Santos Jr., J. F. C.. Universidade Federal do Minas Gerais; BrasilFil: Piatti, Andres Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciónes Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio. - Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio; Argentin
Emergence of classicality in small number entangled systems
We show the transition from a fully quantized interaction to a semiclassical
one in entangled small number quantum systems using the quantum trajectories
approach. In particular, we simulate the microwave Ramsey zones used in Rydberg
atom interferometry, filling in the gap between the strongly entangling Jaynes
Cummings evolution and the semiclassical rotation of the atomic internal
states. We also correlate the information flowing with leaking photons to the
entanglement generation between cavity field and flying atom and detail the
roles played by the strong dissipation and the external driving force in
preserving atomic coherence through the interaction.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figure
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