109 research outputs found
Water and heat balance during flight in the Rose coloured starling (Sturnus roseus, Linneus).
Water imbalance during flight is considered to be a potentially limiting factor for flight ranges in migrating birds, but empirical data are scarce. We studied flights under controlled ambient conditions with rose-colored starlings in a wind tunnel. In one experiment, we measured water fluxes with stable isotopes at a range of flight speeds (9-14 m s(-1)) at constant temperature (15 degrees C). In a second experiment, we measured evaporation rates at variable ambient temperatures (T-a = 5 degrees-27 degrees C) but constant speed (12 m s(-1)). During all flights, the birds experienced a net water loss. On average, water influx was 0.98 g h(-1) (SD = 0.16; n = 8), and water efflux was 1.29 g h(-1) (SD = 0.16; n = 8) irrespective of flight speed. Evaporation was related to temperature in a biphasic pattern. At temperatures below 18.2 degrees C, net evaporation was constant at 0.36 g h(-1) (SD = 0.14; n = 8)), rising at higher temperatures with a slope of 0.11 per degree to about 1.5 g h(-1) at 27 degrees C. We calculated the relative proportion of dry and evaporative heat loss during flight. Evaporative heat loss at T-a < 18.2 degrees C was 14% of total a heat production during flight, and dry heat loss accounted for 84%. At higher temperatures, evaporative heat loss increased linearly with T-a to about 25% at 27 degrees C. Our data suggest that for prolonged flights, rose-colored starlings should adopt behavioral water-saving strategies and that they cannot complete their annual migration without stopovers to replenish their water reserves
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Farmer experience of pluralistic agricultural extension, Malawi
Purpose: Malawi’s current extension policy supports pluralism and advocates responsiveness to farmer demand. We investigate whether smallholder farmers’ experience supports the assumption that access to multiple service providers leads to extension and advisory services that respond to the needs of farmers.
Design/methodology/approach: Within a case study approach, two villages were purposively selected for in-depth qualitative analysis of available services and farmers’ experiences. Focus group discussions were held separately with male and female farmers in each village, followed by semi-structured interviews with 12 key informants selected through snowball sampling. Transcripts were analysed by themes and summaries of themes were made from cross case analysis.
Findings: Farmers appreciate having access to a variety of sources of technical advice and enterprise specific technology. However, most service providers continue to dominate and dictate what they will offer. Market access remains a challenge, as providers still emphasize pushing a
particular technology to increase farm productivity rather than addressing farmers’ expressed needs. Although farmers work in groups, providers do not seek to strengthen these to enable active interaction and to link them to input and produce markets. This limits farmers’ capacity to continue with innovations after service providers pull out. Poor coordination between providers limits exploitation of potential synergies amongst actors.
Practical implications: Services providers can adapt their approach to engage farmers in discussion of their needs
and work collaboratively to address them. At a system level, institutions that have a coordination function can play a more dynamic role in brokering interaction between
providers and farmers to ensure coverage and responsiveness.
Originality/value: The study provides a new farmer perspective on the implementation of extension reforms
Shell-model calculations of neutrino scattering from 12C
Neutrino reaction cross-sections, , ,
-capture and photoabsorption rates on C are computed within a
large-basis shell-model framework, which included excitations up to
. When ground-state correlations are included with an open
-shell the predictions of the calculations are in reasonable agreement with
most of the experimental results for these reactions. Woods-Saxon radial wave
functions are used, with their asymptotic forms matched to the experimental
separation energies for bound states, and matched to a binding energy of 0.01
MeV for unbound states. For comparison purposes, some results are given for
harmonic oscillator radial functions. Closest agreement between theory and
experiment is achieved with unrestricted shell-model configurations and
Woods-Saxon radial functions. We obtain for the neutrino-absorption inclusive
cross sections: cm for the
decay-in-flight flux in agreement with the LSND datum of
cm; and cm for the decay-at-rest flux, less than the
experimental result of cm.Comment: 19 pages. ReVTeX. No figure
Microscopic theories of neutrino-^{12}C reactions
In view of the recent experiments on neutrino oscillations performed by the
LSND and KARMEN collaborations as well as of future experiments, we present new
theoretical results of the flux averaged and
cross sections. The approaches used are
charge-exchange RPA, charge-exchange RPA among quasi-particles (QRPA) and the
Shell Model. With a large-scale shell model calculation the exclusive cross
sections are in nice agreement with the experimental values for both reactions.
The inclusive cross section for coming from the decay-in-flight of
is to be compared to the experimental value
of , while the one due to
coming from the decay-at-rest of is which
agrees within experimental error bars with the measured values. The shell model
prediction for the decay-in-flight neutrino cross section is reduced compared
to the RPA one. This is mainly due to the different kind of correlations taken
into account in the calculation of the spin modes and partially due to the
shell-model configuration basis which is not large enough, as we show using
arguments based on sum-rules.Comment: 17 pages, latex, 5 figure
A model for net-baryon rapidity distribution
In nuclear collisions, a sizable fraction of the available energy is carried
away by baryons. As the baryon number is conserved, the net-baryon
retains information on the energy-momentum carried by the incoming nuclei. A
simple and consistent model for net-baryon production in high energy
proton-proton and nucleus-nucleus collisions is presented. The basic
ingredients of the model are valence string formation based on standard PDFs
with QCD evolution and string fragmentation via the Schwinger mechanism. The
results of the model are presented and compared with data at different
centre-of-mass energies and centralities, as well as with existing models.
These results show that a good description of the main features of net-baryon
data is possible in the framework of a simplistic model, with the advantage of
making the fundamental production mechanisms manifest.Comment: 9 pages, 12 figures; in fig. 11 a) the vertical scale was correcte
Mapping the Two-Component Atomic Fermi Gas to the Nuclear Shell-Model
The physics of a two-component cold fermi gas is now frequently addressed in
laboratories. Usually this is done for large samples of tens to hundreds of
thousands of particles. However, it is now possible to produce few-body systems
(1-100 particles) in very tight traps where the shell structure of the external
potential becomes important. A system of two-species fermionic cold atoms with
an attractive zero-range interaction is analogous to a simple model of nucleus
in which neutrons and protons interact only through a residual pairing
interaction. In this article, we discuss how the problem of a two-component
atomic fermi gas in a tight external trap can be mapped to the nuclear shell
model so that readily available many-body techniques in nuclear physics, such
as the Shell Model Monte Carlo (SMMC) method, can be directly applied to the
study of these systems. We demonstrate an application of the SMMC method by
estimating the pairing correlations in a small two-component Fermi system with
moderate-to-strong short-range two-body interactions in a three-dimensional
harmonic external trapping potential.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures. Final versio
Ab initio atomistic thermodynamics and statistical mechanics of surface properties and functions
Previous and present "academic" research aiming at atomic scale understanding
is mainly concerned with the study of individual molecular processes possibly
underlying materials science applications. Appealing properties of an
individual process are then frequently discussed in terms of their direct
importance for the envisioned material function, or reciprocally, the function
of materials is somehow believed to be understandable by essentially one
prominent elementary process only. What is often overlooked in this approach is
that in macroscopic systems of technological relevance typically a large number
of distinct atomic scale processes take place. Which of them are decisive for
observable system properties and functions is then not only determined by the
detailed individual properties of each process alone, but in many, if not most
cases also the interplay of all processes, i.e. how they act together, plays a
crucial role. For a "predictive materials science modeling with microscopic
understanding", a description that treats the statistical interplay of a large
number of microscopically well-described elementary processes must therefore be
applied. Modern electronic structure theory methods such as DFT have become a
standard tool for the accurate description of individual molecular processes.
Here, we discuss the present status of emerging methodologies which attempt to
achieve a (hopefully seamless) match of DFT with concepts from statistical
mechanics or thermodynamics, in order to also address the interplay of the
various molecular processes. The new quality of, and the novel insights that
can be gained by, such techniques is illustrated by how they allow the
description of crystal surfaces in contact with realistic gas-phase
environments.Comment: 24 pages including 17 figures, related publications can be found at
http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm
Graph Neural Networks for low-energy event classification & reconstruction in IceCube
IceCube, a cubic-kilometer array of optical sensors built to detect atmospheric and astrophysical neutrinos between 1 GeV and 1 PeV, is deployed 1.45 km to 2.45 km below the surface of the ice sheet at the South Pole. The classification and reconstruction of events from the in-ice detectors play a central role in the analysis of data from IceCube. Reconstructing and classifying events is a challenge due to the irregular detector geometry, inhomogeneous scattering and absorption of light in the ice and, below 100 GeV, the relatively low number of signal photons produced per event. To address this challenge, it is possible to represent IceCube events as point cloud graphs and use a Graph Neural Network (GNN) as the classification and reconstruction method. The GNN is capable of distinguishing neutrino events from cosmic-ray backgrounds, classifying different neutrino event types, and reconstructing the deposited energy, direction and interaction vertex. Based on simulation, we provide a comparison in the 1 GeV–100 GeV energy range to the current state-of-the-art maximum likelihood techniques used in current IceCube analyses, including the effects of known systematic uncertainties. For neutrino event classification, the GNN increases the signal efficiency by 18% at a fixed background rate, compared to current IceCube methods. Alternatively, the GNN offers a reduction of the background (i.e. false positive) rate by over a factor 8 (to below half a percent) at a fixed signal efficiency. For the reconstruction of energy, direction, and interaction vertex, the resolution improves by an average of 13%–20% compared to current maximum likelihood techniques in the energy range of 1 GeV–30 GeV. The GNN, when run on a GPU, is capable of processing IceCube events at a rate nearly double of the median IceCube trigger rate of 2.7 kHz, which opens the possibility of using low energy neutrinos in online searches for transient events.Peer Reviewe
Functional mechanisms underlying pleiotropic risk alleles at the 19p13.1 breast-ovarian cancer susceptibility locus
A locus at 19p13 is associated with breast cancer (BC) and ovarian cancer (OC) risk. Here we analyse 438 SNPs in this region in 46,451 BC and 15,438 OC cases, 15,252 BRCA1 mutation carriers and 73,444 controls and identify 13 candidate causal SNPs associated with serous OC (P=9.2 × 10-20), ER-negative BC (P=1.1 × 10-13), BRCA1-associated BC (P=7.7 × 10-16) and triple negative BC (P-diff=2 × 10-5). Genotype-gene expression associations are identified for candidate target genes ANKLE1 (P=2 × 10-3) and ABHD8 (P<2 × 10-3). Chromosome conformation capture identifies interactions between four candidate SNPs and ABHD8, and luciferase assays indicate six risk alleles increased transactivation of the ADHD8 promoter. Targeted deletion of a region containing risk SNP rs56069439 in a putative enhancer induces ANKLE1 downregulation; and mRNA stability assays indicate functional effects for an ANKLE1 3′-UTR SNP. Altogether, these data suggest that multiple SNPs at 19p13 regulate ABHD8 and perhaps ANKLE1 expression, and indicate common mechanisms underlying breast and ovarian cancer risk
A muon-track reconstruction exploiting stochastic losses for large-scale Cherenkov detectors
IceCube is a cubic-kilometer Cherenkov telescope operating at the South Pole. The main goal of IceCube is the detection of astrophysical neutrinos and the identification of their sources. High-energy muon neutrinos are observed via the secondary muons produced in charge current interactions with nuclei in the ice. Currently, the best performing muon track directional reconstruction is based on a maximum likelihood method using the arrival time distribution of Cherenkov photons registered by the experiment\u27s photomultipliers. A known systematic shortcoming of the prevailing method is to assume a continuous energy loss along the muon track. However at energies >1 TeV the light yield from muons is dominated by stochastic showers. This paper discusses a generalized ansatz where the expected arrival time distribution is parametrized by a stochastic muon energy loss pattern. This more realistic parametrization of the loss profile leads to an improvement of the muon angular resolution of up to 20% for through-going tracks and up to a factor 2 for starting tracks over existing algorithms. Additionally, the procedure to estimate the directional reconstruction uncertainty has been improved to be more robust against numerical errors
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