Standard methods for Apis mellifera anatomy and dissection

An understanding of the anatomy and functions of internal and external structures is fundamental to many studies on the honey bee Apis mellifera. Similarly, proficiency in dissection techniques is vital for many more complex procedures. In this paper, which is a prelude to the other papers of the COLOSS BEEBOOK, we outline basic honey bee anatomy and basic dissection techniques

EFFECTS OF TERNARY ADDITIONS OF ALUMINUM-35 w/o URANIUM ALLOYS

The effects of a number of ternary additions on the constitution, casting, and fabricating characteristics and the physical properties of aluminum- 35 wt.% uranium were investigated. Initial investigations were concerned with the effects of 3 at.% ternary additions on the microstructure and press-forging characteristics of the alloy. It was found that additions of this magnitude often introduced extrinsic phases in the alloy. At the 3 wt% level, additions of germanium, silicon, tin, or zirconium inhibited the formation of UAl/sub 4/ and thereby increased the extent of the aluminum matrix in the alloy. It was also noted that these additions decreased the pressures required for extruding, and the tin addition also improved the homogeneity of cast shapes. Lead and palladium also improved the homogeneity of the cast material; however, neither of these was an effective inhibitor of UAl/sub 4/ and free lead was detected in the alloy to which lead had been added as the ternary. From these studies it appears that tin and zirconium are as effective as silicon in enhancing the fabricating characteristics of rior when evaluated on the bases of casting qualities and recycling characteristics. (auth

On the detectability of the CMSSM light Higgs boson at the Tevatron

We examine the prospects of detecting the light Higgs h^0 of the Constrained MSSM at the Tevatron. To this end we explore the CMSSM parameter space with \mu>0, using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo technique, and apply all relevant collider and cosmological constraints including their uncertainties, as well as those of the Standard Model parameters. Taking 50 GeV < m_{1/2}, m_0 < 4 TeV, |A_0| < 7 TeV and 2 < tan(beta) < 62 as flat priors and using the formalism of Bayesian statistics we find that the 68% posterior probability region for the h^0 mass lies between 115.4 GeV and 120.4 GeV. Otherwise, h^0 is very similar to the Standard Model Higgs boson. Nevertheless, we point out some enhancements in its couplings to bottom and tau pairs, ranging from a few per cent in most of the CMSSM parameter space, up to several per cent in the favored region of tan(beta)\sim 50 and the pseudoscalar Higgs mass of m_A\lsim 1 TeV. We also find that the other Higgs bosons are typically heavier, although not necessarily much heavier. For values of the h^0 mass within the 95% probability range as determined by our analysis, a 95% CL exclusion limit can be set with about 2/fb of integrated luminosity per experiment, or else with 4/fb (12/fb) a 3 sigma evidence (5 sigma discovery) will be guaranteed. We also emphasize that the alternative statistical measure of the mean quality-of-fit favors a somewhat lower Higgs mass range; this implies even more optimistic prospects for the CMSSM light Higgs search than the more conservative Bayesian approach. In conclusion, for the above CMSSM parameter ranges, especially m_0, either some evidence will be found at the Tevatron for the light Higgs boson or, at a high confidence level, the CMSSM will be ruled out.Comment: JHEP versio

Constraints on Supersymmetric Flavour Models from b->s gamma

We consider the effects of departures from minimal flavour violations (MFV) in the context of CMSSM-like theories. Second and third generation off-diagonal elements in the Yukawa, sfermion, and trilinear mass matrices are taken to be non-zero at the GUT scale. These are run down together with MSSM parameters to the electroweak scale. We apply constraints from fermion masses and CKM matrix elements to limit the range of the new free parameters of the model. We determine the effect of the departure from MFV on the branching ratio of b->s gamma. We find that only when the expansion parameter in the down-squark sector is relatively large there is a noticeable effect, which tends to relax the lower limit from b->s gamma on the universal gaugino mass. We also find that the expansion parameter associated with the slepton sector needs to be smaller than the corresponding parameter in the down-squark sector in order to be compliant with the bound imposed by the branching ratio of tau-> mu gamma.Comment: Comments: 43 pages, 14 figures. Version accepted for publication: typos corrected, rewritten for better understanding and references adde

Economic development, human development, and the pursuit of happiness, April 1, 2, and 3, 2004

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Conference Series, a publication series that began publishing in 2006 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. This was the Center's spring conference, which took place during April 1, 2, and 3, 2004.The conference asks the questions, how can we make sure that the benefits of economic growth flow into health, education, welfare, and other aspects of human development; and what is the relationship between human development and economic development? Speakers and participants discuss the role that culture, legal and political institutions, the UN Developmental Goals, the level of decision-making, and ethics, play in development

Average luminosity distance in inhomogeneous universes

The paper studies the correction to the distance modulus induced by inhomogeneities and averaged over all directions from a given observer. The inhomogeneities are modeled as mass-compensated voids in random or regular lattices within Swiss-cheese universes. Void radii below 300 Mpc are considered, which are supported by current redshift surveys and limited by the recently observed imprint such voids leave on CMB. The averaging over all directions, performed by numerical ray tracing, is non-perturbative and includes the supernovas inside the voids. Voids aligning along a certain direction produce a cumulative gravitational lensing correction that increases with their number. Such corrections are destroyed by the averaging over all directions, even in non-randomized simple cubic void lattices. At low redshifts, the average correction is not zero but decays with the peculiar velocities and redshift. Its upper bound is provided by the maximal average correction which assumes no random cancelations between different voids. It is described well by a linear perturbation formula and, for the voids considered, is 20% of the correction corresponding to the maximal peculiar velocity. The average correction calculated in random and simple cubic void lattices is severely damped below the predicted maximal one after a single void diameter. That is traced to cancellations between the corrections from the fronts and backs of different voids. All that implies that voids cannot imitate the effect of dark energy unless they have radii and peculiar velocities much larger than the currently observed. The results obtained allow one to readily predict the redshift above which the direction-averaged fluctuation in the Hubble diagram falls below a required precision and suggest a method to extract the background Hubble constant from low redshift data without the need to correct for peculiar velocities.Comment: 34 pages, 21 figures, matches the version accepted in JCA

Inflation and quintessence with nonminimal coupling

The nonminimal coupling (NMC) of the scalar field to the Ricci curvature is unavoidable in many cosmological scenarios. Inflation and quintessence models based on nonminimally coupled scalar fields are studied, with particular attention to the balance between the scalar potential and the NMC term in the action. NMC makes acceleration of the universe harder to achieve for the usual potentials, but it is beneficial in obtaining cosmic acceleration with unusual potentials. The slow-roll approximation with NMC, conformal transformation techniques, and other aspects of the physics of NMC are clarified.Comment: 36 pages, LaTeX. Typos in Eq. (2.5) correcte

What traits are carried on mobile genetic elements, and why?

Although similar to any other organism, prokaryotes can transfer genes vertically from mother cell to daughter cell, they can also exchange certain genes horizontally. Genes can move within and between genomes at fast rates because of mobile genetic elements (MGEs). Although mobile elements are fundamentally self-interested entities, and thus replicate for their own gain, they frequently carry genes beneficial for their hosts and/or the neighbours of their hosts. Many genes that are carried by mobile elements code for traits that are expressed outside of the cell. Such traits are involved in bacterial sociality, such as the production of public goods, which benefit a cell's neighbours, or the production of bacteriocins, which harm a cell's neighbours. In this study we review the patterns that are emerging in the types of genes carried by mobile elements, and discuss the evolutionary and ecological conditions under which mobile elements evolve to carry their peculiar mix of parasitic, beneficial and cooperative genes