Repositories of symbiotic fungus in the ambrosia beetle Monarthrum scutellare Lec. (Coleoptera: Scolytidae)

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Repositories of symbiotic fungus in the ambrosia beetle Monarthrum scutellare Lec. (Coleoptera: Scolytidae)

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Does increasing biodiversity in an urban woodland setting promote positive emotional responses in humans? A stress recovery experiment using 360-degree videos of an urban woodland

Green spaces can support human stress reduction and foster positive emotional well-being. Previous research has suggested that biodiversity (i.e. the variety of species of plants and animals in a given location) can enhance recovery from stress even further. However, there is limited experimental evidence testing this hypothesis and results, to date, have been mixed. This study aimed to provide further understanding of the role of biodiversity (actual or perceived) on human well-being by experimentally manipulating species richness and stress. Participants (372 in total) took part in an online experiment, where they received an episode of mild stress before watching a 360-degree video to recover. The video showed the same location, an urban woodland, but at one of four artificially manipulated levels of biodiversity. The participants reported their Positive and Negative Affect before and after the stress induction and after watching the video, providing a measure of their stress and well-being throughout the experiment. Participants also reported their perceptions of biodiversity (i.e. how diverse they thought the location was) and elaborated on their responses with brief comments. Repeated Measure Analysis of Variance revealed that exposure to all levels of biodiversity reduced the participants’ Negative Affect, but with no significant difference between the conditions. However, the analysis showed higher Positive Affect in those participants who perceived the environment as more biodiverse. Comments from participants indicated that those who reported noticing flowers and trees in the environment also showed higher Positive Affect. This suggests that perceiving biodiversity promotes more positive emotions, but critically one needs to actually notice (engage with) the components of biodiversity to elicit these extra benefits

Shearing behavior of polydisperse media

We study the shearing of polydisperse and bidisperse media with a size ratio of 10. Simulations are performed with a the two dimensional shear cell using contact dynamics. With a truncated power law for the polydisperse media we find that they show a stronger dilatancy and greater resistance to shearing than bidisperse mixtures. Motivated by the practical problem of reducing the energy needed to shear granular media, we introduce "point-like particles" representing charged particles in the distribution. Even though changing the kinematic behavior very little, they reduce the force necessary to maintain a fixed shearing velocity.Comment: 17 pages, 15 figure

Three ways to solve the orbit of KIC11558725: a 10 day beaming sdB+WD binary with a pulsating subdwarf

The recently discovered subdwarf B (sdB) pulsator KIC11558725 features a rich g-mode frequency spectrum, with a few low-amplitude p-modes at short periods, and is a promising target for a seismic study aiming to constrain the internal structure of this star, and of sdB stars in general. We have obtained ground-based spectroscopic Balmer-line radial-velocity measurements of KIC11558725, spanning the 2010 and 2011 observing seasons. From these data we have discovered that KIC11558725 is a binary with period P=10.05 d, and that the radial-velocity amplitude of the sdB star is 58 km/s. Consequently the companion of the sdB star has a minimum mass of 0.63 M\odot, and is therefore most likely an unseen white dwarf. We analyse the near-continuous 2010-2011 Kepler light curve to reveal orbital Doppler-beaming light variations at the 238 ppm level, which is consistent with the observed spectroscopic orbital radial-velocity amplitude of the subdwarf. We use the strongest 70 pulsation frequencies in the Kepler light curve of the subdwarf as clocks to derive a third consistent measurement of the orbital radial-velocity amplitude, from the orbital light-travel delay. We use our high signal-to-noise average spectra to study the atmospheric parameters of the sdB star, deriving Teff = 27 910K and log g = 5.41 dex, and find that carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are underabundant relative to the solar mixture. Furthermore, we extract more than 160 significant frequencies from the Kepler light curve. We investigate the pulsation frequencies for expected period spacings and rotational splittings. We find period-spacing sequences of spherical-harmonic degrees \ell=1 and \ell=2, and we associate a large fraction of the g-modes in KIC11558725 with these sequences. From frequency splittings we conclude that the subdwarf is rotating subsynchronously with respect to the orbit

Orbital properties of an unusually low-mass sdB star in a close binary system with a white dwarf

We have used 605 days of photometric data from the Kepler spacecraft to study KIC 6614501, a close binary system with an orbital period of 0.157 497 47(25) days (3.779 939 h), that consists of a low-mass subdwarf B (sdB) star and a white dwarf (WD). As seen in many other similar systems, the gravitational field of the WD produces an ellipsoidal deformation of the sdB which appears in the light curve as a modulation at two times the orbital frequency. The ellipsoidal deformation of the sdB implies that the system has a maximum inclination of ∼40°, with i ≈ 20° being the most likely. The orbital radial velocity (RV) of the sdB star is high enough to produce a Doppler beaming effect with an amplitude of 432 ± 5 ppm, clearly visible in the folded light curve. The photometric amplitude that we obtain, K1 = 85.8 km s-1, is ∼12 per cent less than the spectroscopic RV amplitude of 97.2 ± 2.0 km s-1. The discrepancy is due to the photometric contamination from a close object at about 5 arcsec north-west of KIC 6614501, which is difficult to remove. The atmospheric parameters of the sdB star, Teff = 23 700 ± 500 K and log g = 5.70 ± 0.10, imply that it is a rare object below the extreme horizontal branch (EHB), similar to HD 188112. The comparison with different evolutionary tracks suggests a mass between ∼0.18 and ∼0.25 M⊙, too low to sustain core helium burning. If the mass was close to 0.18-0.19 M⊙, the star could be already on the final He-core WD cooling track. A higher mass, up to ∼0.25 M⊙, would be compatible with a He-core WD progenitor undergoing a cooling phase in a H-shell flash loop. A third possibility, with a mass between ∼0.32 and ∼0.40 M⊙, cannot be excluded and would imply that the sdB is a ‘normal\u27 (but with an unusually low mass) EHB star burning He in its core. In all these different scenarios, the system is expected to merge in less than 3.1 Gyr due to gravitational wave radiation

Parsimony, Synapomorphy, And Explanatory Power: A Reply To Duncan

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149709/1/tax04403.pd

From "retailers" to health care providers: Transforming the role of community pharmacists in chronic disease management

© 2015. Community pharmacists are the third largest healthcare professional group in the world after physicians and nurses. Despite their considerable training, community pharmacists are the only health professionals who are not primarily rewarded for delivering health care and hence are under-utilized as public health professionals. An emerging consensus among academics, professional organizations, and policymakers is that community pharmacists, who work outside of hospital settings, should adopt an expanded role in order to contribute to the safe, effective, and efficient use of drugs-particularly when caring for people with multiple chronic conditions. Community pharmacists could help to improve health by reducing drug-related adverse events and promoting better medication adherence, which in turn may help in reducing unnecessary provider visits, hospitalizations, and readmissions while strengthening integrated primary care delivery across the health system. This paper reviews recent strategies to expand the role of community pharmacists in Australia, Canada, England, the Netherlands, Scotland, and the United States. The developments achieved or under way in these countries carry lessons for policymakers world-wide, where progress thus far in expanding the role of community pharmacists has been more limited. Future policies should focus on effectively integrating community pharmacists into primary care; developing a shared vision for different levels of pharmacist services; and devising new incentive mechanisms for improving quality and outcomes

Synapomorphy, Parsimony, And Evidence

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149682/1/tax02520.pd

Demonstration of Best Management Practices for the Protection and Improvement of the Soil and Water Resources in the Arkansas Delta

This report is the compilation of a multi~year project that was directed at identifying the impact and possible mitigation solutions of non-point pollution from row crop agriculture in a watershed in the Arkansas Delta. The first part of the project involved an inventory of the condition of the major streams that make up the study watershed. The remainder of the project was focused at demonstrating and reporting best management nutrient and sediment runoff control practices (BMP) that could be implemented. The final assessment of the demonstration work is a GIS analysis that provides an overview of the effectiveness of these BMP control measures based on the conditions of the study watershed