13,709 research outputs found
Tall Fescue and Orchardgrass Productivity and Persistence Under Grazing Systems in Tennessee
The primary forage species used by cow-calf producers in grazing systems in Tennessee is tall-fescue. Tall fescue is considered an excellent cool-season perennial forage crop due to its high quality, production, and extended growing season. However, most of these tall fescue grazing systems are composed of tall fescue cv. Kentucky 31, which is known for containing a fungus endophyte that can be toxic to animals. Alternatively, orchardgrass is also a vastly used and important perennial cool-season forage in the United States. It can be used as a pasture, hay, and is a high-quality forage that is desirable for most livestock producers, especially dairy, beef and equine industries. The goal of this project was to compare four different cool-season forage species under grazing pressure while increasing productivity and persistence of the paddocks. The project assessed herbage mass, botanical composition, morphological composition, along with persistence of four different cool season grasses. While no statistical difference was seen among treatments within a single year for herbage mass, year did influence herbage mass. Additionally, botanical composition was noted as being significant on the year by treatment interaction
Entropy-induced Microphase Separation in Hard Diblock Copolymers
Whereas entropy can induce phase behavior that is as rich as seen in
energetic systems, microphase separation remains a very rare phenomenon in
entropic systems. In this paper, we present a density functional approach to
study the possibility of entropy-driven microphase separation in diblock
copolymers. Our model system consists of copolymers composed of freely-jointed
slender hard rods. The two types of monomeric segments have comparable lengths,
but a significantly different diameter, the latter difference providing the
driving force for the phase separation. At the same time these systems can also
exhibit liquid crystalline phases. We treat this system in the appropriate
generalization of the Onsager approximation to chain-like particles. Using a
linear stability (bifurcation) analysis, we analytically determine the onset of
the microseparated and the nematic phases for long chains. We find that for
very long chains the microseparated phase always preempts the nematic. In the
limit of infinitely long chains, the correlations within the chain become
Gaussian and the approach becomes exact. This allows us to define a Gaussian
limit in which the theory strongly simplifies and the competition between
microphase separation and liquid crystal formation can be studied essentially
analytically. Our main results are phase diagrams as a function of the
effective diameter difference, the segment composition and the length ratio of
the segments. We also determine the amplitude of the positional order as a
function of position along the chain at the onset of the microphase separation
instability. Finally, we give suggestions as to how this type of
entropy-induced microphase separation could be observed experimentally.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure
External and intrinsic anchoring in nematic liquid crystals: A Monte Carlo study
We present a Monte Carlo study of external surface anchoring in nematic cells
with partially disordered solid substrates, as well as of intrinsic anchoring
at free nematic interfaces. The simulations are based on the simple hexagonal
lattice model with a spatially anisotropic intermolecular potential. We
estimate the corresponding extrapolation length by imposing an elastic
deformation in a hybrid cell-like nematic sample. Our estimates for
increase with increasing surface disorder and are essentially
temperature--independent. Experimental values of are approached only when
both the coupling of nematic molecules with the substrate and the anisotropy of
nematic--nematic interactions are weak.Comment: Revisions primarily in section I
Identifying state and transition models in the mitchell grasslands
The Mitchell grasslands are the most extensive and productive native pastures of semi -arid western Queensland. The grasslands are dominated by the long -lived perennial Astrebla spp. (Mitchell grasses). Rainfall is highly variable, leading to fluctuations in both pasture yield and composition, particularly of annual and ephemeral species growing between these perennial tussocks (Orr and Holmes 1984). These fluctuations create problems when attempting to assess rangeland condition and trend which is often based upon single, or short term, data. Furthermore, Everist and Webb (1975) concluded "the extrapolation from observations made at any one time can be misleading and inaccurate". This paper summarises an approach by which State and Transition theory (Westoby et al. 1989) and the Degradation Gradient Method (Bosch and Kellner 1991) were used to develop models of vegetation change which were able to account for this inherent variability
Probing a non-biaxial behavior of infinitely thin hard platelets
We give a criterion to test a non-biaxial behavior of infinitely thin hard
platelets of symmetry based upon the components of three order
parameter tensors. We investigated the nematic behavior of monodisperse
infinitely thin rectangular hard platelet systems by using the criterion.
Starting with a square platelet system, and we compared it with rectangular
platelet systems of various aspect ratios. For each system, we performed
equilibration runs by using isobaric Monte Carlo simulations. Each system did
not show a biaxial nematic behavior but a uniaxial nematic one, despite of the
shape anisotropy of those platelets. The relationship between effective
diameters by simulations and theoretical effective diameters of the above
systems was also determined.Comment: Submitted to JPS
Shallow Remineralization in the Sargasso Sea Estimated from Seasonal Variations in Oxygen and Dissolved Inorganic Carbon
A diagnostic model of the mean annual cycles of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) and oxygen below the mixed layer at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site is presented and used to estimate organic carbon remineralization in the seasonal thermocline. The model includes lateral and vertical advection as well as vertical, diffusion. Very good agreement is found for the remineralization estimates based on oxygen and DIC. Net remineralization averaged from mid-spring to early fall is found to be a maximum between 120 and 140 in. Remineralization integrated between 100 (the compensation depth) and 250 m during this period is estimated to be about 1 mol C/sq m. This flux is consistent with independent estimates of the loss of particulate and dissolved organic carbon
Continental-scale patterns of pathogen prevalence: a case study on the corncrake
Pathogen infections can represent a substantial threat to wild populations, especially those already limited in size. To determine how much variation in the pathogens observed among fragmented populations is caused by ecological factors, one needs to examine systems where host genetic diversity is consistent among the populations, thus controlling for any potentially confounding genetic effects. Here, we report geographic variation in haemosporidian infection among European populations of corncrake. This species now occurs in fragmented populations, but there is little genetic structure and equally high levels of genetic diversity among these populations. We observed a longitudinal gradient of prevalence from western to Eastern Europe negatively correlated with national agricultural yield, but positively correlated with corncrake census population sizes when only the most widespread lineage is considered. This likely reveals a possible impact of local agriculture intensity, which reduced host population densities in Western Europe and, potentially, insect vector abundance, thus reducing the transmission of pathogens. We conclude that in the corncrake system, where metapopulation dynamics resulted in variations in local census population sizes, but not in the genetic impoverishment of these populations, anthropogenic activity has led to a reduction in host populations and pathogen prevalence
Elephants can determine ethnicity, gender, and age from acoustic cues in human voices
Animals can accrue direct fitness benefits by accurately classifying predatory threat according to the species of predator and the magnitude of risk associated with an encounter. Human predators present a particularly interesting cognitive challenge, as it is typically the case that different human subgroups pose radically different levels of danger to animals living around them. Although a number of prey species have proved able to discriminate between certain human categories on the basis of visual and olfactory cues, vocalizations potentially provide a much richer source of information. We now use controlled playback experiments to investigate whether family groups of free-ranging African elephants (Loxodonta africana) in Amboseli National Park, Kenya can use acoustic characteristics of speech to make functionally relevant distinctions between human subcategories differing not only in ethnicity but also in sex and age. Our results demonstrate that elephants can reliably discriminate between two different ethnic groups that differ in the level of threat they represent, significantly increasing their probability of defensive bunching and investigative smelling following playbacks of Maasai voices. Moreover, these responses were specific to the sex and age of Maasai presented, with the voices of Maasai women and boys, subcategories that would generally pose little threat, significantly less likely to produce these behavioral responses. Considering the long history and often pervasive predatory threat associated with humans across the globe, it is likely that abilities to precisely identify dangerous subcategories of humans on the basis of subtle voice characteristics could have been selected for in other cognitively advanced animal species
New Discoveries from the Arecibo 327 MHz Drift Pulsar Survey Radio Transient Search
We present Clusterrank, a new algorithm for identifying dispersed
astrophysical pulses. Such pulses are commonly detected from Galactic pulsars
and rotating radio transients (RRATs), which are neutron stars with sporadic
radio emission. More recently, isolated, highly dispersed pulses dubbed fast
radio bursts (FRBs) have been identified as the potential signature of an
extragalactic cataclysmic radio source distinct from pulsars and RRATs.
Clusterrank helped us discover 14 pulsars and 8 RRATs in data from the Arecibo
327 MHz Drift Pulsar Survey (AO327). The new RRATs have DMs in the range pc cm and periods in the range s. The new
pulsars have DMs in the range pc cm and periods in the
range s, and include two nullers and a mode-switching object.
We estimate an upper limit on the all-sky FRB rate of day for
bursts with a width of 10 ms and flux density mJy. The DMs of all
new discoveries are consistent with a Galactic origin. In comparing statistics
of the new RRATs with sources from the RRATalog, we find that both sets are
drawn from the same period distribution. In contrast, we find that the period
distribution of the new pulsars is different from the period distributions of
canonical pulsars in the ATNF catalog or pulsars found in AO327 data by a
periodicity search. This indicates that Clusterrank is a powerful complement to
periodicity searches and uncovers a subset of the pulsar population that has so
far been underrepresented in survey results and therefore in Galactic pulsar
population models.Comment: 41 pages, 16 figures, 4 tables, accepted by ApJ; added minor
corrections to final ApJ proo
Domains in Melts of Comb-Coil Diblock Copolymers: Superstrong Segregation Regime
Conditions for the crossover from the strong to the superstrong segregation regime are analyzed for the case of comb-coil diblock copolymers. It is shown that the critical interaction energy between the components required to induce the crossover to the superstrong segregation regime is inversely proportional to mb = 1 + n/m, where n is the degree of polymerization of the side chain and m is the distance between successive grafting points. As a result, the superstrong segregation regime, being rather rare in the case of ordinary block copolymers, has a much better chance to be realized in the case of diblock copolymers with combs grafted to one of the blocks.
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