The Role of Surface Entropy in Statistical Emission of Massive Fragments from Equilibrated Nuclear Systems

Statistical fragment emission from excited nuclear systems is studied within the framework of a schematic Fermi-gas model combined with Weisskopf's detailed balance approach. The formalism considers thermal expansion of finite nuclear systems and pays special attention to the role of the diffuse surface region in the decay of hot equilibrated systems. It is found that with increasing excitation energy, effects of surface entropy lead to a systematic and significant reduction of effective emission barriers for fragments and, eventually, to the vanishing of these barriers. The formalism provides a natural explanation for the occurrence of negative nuclear heat capacities reported in the literature. It also accounts for the observed linearity of pseudo-Arrhenius plots of the logarithm of the fragment emission probability {\it versus} the inverse square-root of the excitation energy, but does not predict true Arrhenius behavior of these emission probabilities

Interacting Arrays of Steps and Lines in Random Media

The phase diagram of two interacting planar arrays of directed lines in random media is obtained by a renormalization group analysis. The results are discussed in the contexts of the roughening of reconstructed crystal surfaces, and the pinning of flux line arrays in layered superconductors. Among the findings are a glassy flat phase with disordered domain structures, a novel second-order phase transition with continuously varying critical exponents, and the generic disappearance of the glassy ``super-rough'' phases found previously for a single array.Comment: 4 pages, REVTEX 3.0, uses epsf,multicol, 3 .eps-figures, submitted to PR

Low Temperature Expansions for Potts Models

On simple cubic lattices, we compute low temperature series expansions for the energy, magnetization and susceptibility of the three-state Potts model in D=2 and D=3 to 45 and 39 excited bonds respectively, and the eight-state Potts model in D=2 to 25 excited bonds. We use a recursive procedure which enumerates states explicitly. We analyze the series using Dlog Pade analysis and inhomogeneous differential approximants.Comment: (17 pages + 8 figures

Correlated percolation and the correlated resistor network

We present some exact results on percolation properties of the Ising model, when the range of the percolating bonds is larger than nearest-neighbors. We show that for a percolation range to next-nearest neighbors the percolation threshold Tp is still equal to the Ising critical temperature Tc, and present the phase diagram for this type of percolation. In addition, we present Monte Carlo calculations of the finite size behavior of the correlated resistor network defined on the Ising model. The thermal exponent t of the conductivity that follows from it is found to be t = 0.2000 +- 0.0007. We observe no corrections to scaling in its finite size behavior.Comment: 16 pages, REVTeX, 6 figures include

Neoisoptera repeatedly colonised Madagascar after the Middle Miocene climatic optimum

Madagascar is home to many endemic plant and animal species owing to its ancient isolation from other landmasses. This unique fauna includes several lineages of termites, a group of insects known for their key role in organic matter decomposition in many terrestrial ecosystems. How and when termites colonised Madagascar remains unknown. In this study, we used 601 mitochondrial genomes, 93 of which were generated from Malagasy samples, to infer the global historical biogeography of Neoisoptera, a lineage containing more than 80% of described termite species. Our results indicate that Neoisoptera colonised Madagascar between 7 and 10 times independently during the Miocene, between 8.4 and 16.6 Ma (95% HPD: 6.1–19.9 Ma). This timing matches that of the colonization of Australia by Neoisoptera. Furthermore, the taxonomic composition of the Neoisopteran fauna of Madagascar and Australia are strikingly similar, with Madagascar harbouring an additional two lineages absent from Australia. Therefore, akin to Australia, Neoisoptera colonised Madagascar during the global expansion of grasslands, possibly helped by the ecological opportunities arising from the spread of this new biome.journal articl

Electrostatic potential in a superconductor

The electrostatic potential in a superconductor is studied. To this end Bardeen's extension of the Ginzburg-Landau theory to low temperatures is used to derive three Ginzburg-Landau equations - the Maxwell equation for the vector potential, the Schroedinger equation for the wave function and the Poisson equation for the electrostatic potential. The electrostatic and the thermodynamic potential compensate each other to a great extent resulting into an effective potential acting on the superconducting condensate. For the Abrikosov vortex lattice in Niobium, numerical solutions are presented and the different contributions to the electrostatic potential and the related charge distribution are discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 11 figure

Wolbachia and DNA barcoding insects: patterns, potential and problems

Wolbachia is a genus of bacterial endosymbionts that impacts the breeding systems of their hosts. Wolbachia can confuse the patterns of mitochondrial variation, including DNA barcodes, because it influences the pathways through which mitochondria are inherited. We examined the extent to which these endosymbionts are detected in routine DNA barcoding, assessed their impact upon the insect sequence divergence and identification accuracy, and considered the variation present in Wolbachia COI. Using both standard PCR assays (Wolbachia surface coding protein – wsp), and bacterial COI fragments we found evidence of Wolbachia in insect total genomic extracts created for DNA barcoding library construction. When >2 million insect COI trace files were examined on the Barcode of Life Datasystem (BOLD) Wolbachia COI was present in 0.16% of the cases. It is possible to generate Wolbachia COI using standard insect primers; however, that amplicon was never confused with the COI of the host. Wolbachia alleles recovered were predominantly Supergroup A and were broadly distributed geographically and phylogenetically. We conclude that the presence of the Wolbachia DNA in total genomic extracts made from insects is unlikely to compromise the accuracy of the DNA barcode library; in fact, the ability to query this DNA library (the database and the extracts) for endosymbionts is one of the ancillary benefits of such a large scale endeavor – for which we provide several examples. It is our conclusion that regular assays for Wolbachia presence and type can, and should, be adopted by large scale insect barcoding initiatives. While COI is one of the five multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) genes used for categorizing Wolbachia, there is limited overlap with the eukaryotic DNA barcode region