Electromagnetic Meson Production in the Nucleon Resonance Region

Recent experimental and theoretical advances in investigating electromagnetic meson production reactions in the nucleon resonance region are reviewed.Comment: 75 pages, 42 figure

A theoretical foundation for multi-scale regular vegetation patterns

Self-organized regular vegetation patterns are widespread and thought to mediate ecosystem functions such as productivity and robustness, but the mechanisms underlying their origin and maintenance remain disputed. Particularly controversial are landscapes of overdispersed (evenly spaced) elements, such as North American Mima mounds, Brazilian murundus, South African heuweltjies, and, famously, Namibian fairy circles. Two competing hypotheses are currently debated. On the one hand, models of scale-dependent feedbacks, whereby plants facilitate neighbours while competing with distant individuals, can reproduce various regular patterns identified in satellite imagery. Owing to deep theoretical roots and apparent generality, scale-dependent feedbacks are widely viewed as a unifying and near-universal principle of regular-pattern formation despite scant empirical evidence. On the other hand, many overdispersed vegetation patterns worldwide have been attributed to subterranean ecosystem engineers such as termites, ants, and rodents. Although potentially consistent with territorial competition, this interpretation has been challenged theoretically and empirically and (unlike scale-dependent feedbacks) lacks a unifying dynamical theory, fuelling scepticism about its plausibility and generality. Here we provide a general theoretical foundation for self-organization of social-insect colonies, validated using data from four continents, which demonstrates that intraspecific competition between territorial animals can generate the large-scale hexagonal regularity of these patterns. However, this mechanism is not mutually exclusive with scale-dependent feedbacks. Using Namib Desert fairy circles as a case study, we present field data showing that these landscapes exhibit multi-scale patterning-previously undocumented in this system-that cannot be explained by either mechanism in isolation. These multi-scale patterns and other emergent properties, such as enhanced resistance to and recovery from drought, instead arise from dynamic interactions in our theoretical framework, which couples both mechanisms. The potentially global extent of animal-induced regularity in vegetation-which can modulate other patterning processes in functionally important ways-emphasizes the need to integrate multiple mechanisms of ecological self-organization

Experimental Determination of Hydraulic Conductivity at Unsaturated Soil Column

Hydraulic Conductivity (K) is an important hydraulic parameter as it affects the environment by controlling infiltration, irrigation rate, and consequently the water movement through the ground. In order to determine Hydraulic Conductivity in a soil column during unsaturated flow, experiments were performed in the laboratory. A sandy (S) soil sample of known Hydraulic Conductivity at saturation (KS) was placed uniformly in a transparent column. Using a pump, water was applied at the surface of the soil column in certain supplies (Qi), while soil moisture (θ) was measured using TDR probes. At the same time, soil pore pressure (h) was measured using pressure transducers. The cumulative volume of the outgoing water (V) of the column was measured. Experimental data were fitted by Van Genuhten's Hydraulic Conductivity model. The results of the above experimental procedure constitute useful tools for the simulation of water movement in unsaturated soils and can be the outset for further research

Capacity limits of spatially multiplexed free-space communication

Increasing the information capacity per unit bandwidth has been a perennial goal of scientists and engineers. Multiplexing of independent degrees of freedom, such as wavelength, polarization and more recently space, has been a preferred method to increase capacity in both radiofrequency and optical communication. Orbital angular momentum, a physical property of electromagnetic waves discovered recently, has been proposed as a new degree of freedom for multiplexing to achieve capacity beyond conventional multiplexing techniques, and has generated widespread and significant interest in the scientific community. However, the capacity of orbital angular momentum multiplexing has not been established or compared to other multiplexing techniques. Here, we show that orbital angular momentum multiplexing is not an optimal technique for realizing the capacity limits of a free-space communication channel and is outperformed by both conventional line-of-sight multi-input multi-output transmission and spatial-mode multiplexing