Two lectures on color superconductivity

The first lecture provides an introduction to the physics of color superconductivity in cold dense quark matter. The main color superconducting phases are briefly described and their properties are listed. The second lecture covers recent developments in studies of color superconducting phases in neutral and beta-equilibrated matter. The properties of gapless color superconducting phases are discussed.Comment: 56 pages, 9 figures. Minor corrections and references added. Lectures delivered at the IARD 2004 conference, Saas Fee, Switzerland, June 12 - 19, 2004, and at the Helmholtz International Summer School and Workshop on Hot points in Astrophysics and Cosmology, JINR, Dubna, Russia, August 2 - 13, 200

Lake pH and aluminum concentration: Consequences for developmental stability of the water strider Rheumatobates rileyi (Hemiptera: Gerridae)

Lake acidity and metal contamination are environmental stresses that negatively affect many aquatic organisms in lakes in eastern Canada. Developmental stability, as indexed by fluctuating asymmetry (FA), is a putative cost-effective measure of environmental stress. In this study, we measured FA of the water strider Rheumatobates rileyi (L.) in lakes in the Sudbury area in relation to lake acidity (pH) and aluminum concentration. We did this to test the prediction that water striders inhabiting degraded lakes (low pH or high Al concentration) would exhibit decreased developmental stability (increased FA) compared with water striders from circumneutral lakes. As predicted we found that Al concentration (corrected for pH) was positively related to the average FA of samples. Contrary to expectation we found that pH (corrected for Al concentration) was also positively related to FA; thus, for a given Al concentration, more acid lakes had more symmetrical water striders than expected. We discuss the importance of our findings in relation to the use of FA as an index of environmental stress, for both water striders and other organisms