10,168 research outputs found
The effects of climate change and variation in New Zealand: An assessment using the CLIMPACTS system
Along with a need to better understand the climate and biophysical systems of New Zealand, the need to develop an improved capacity for evaluating possible changes in climate and their effects on the New Zealand environment has been recognised. Since the middle of 1993 the CLIMPACTS programme, has been focused on the development of such a capacity, in the first instance for the agricultural sector. the goals of this present assessment are:
1. To present current knowledge on likely scenarios of climate change and associated uncertainties in New Zealand;
2. To present current knowledge, based on quantitative analyses using a consistent set of scenarios, on the likely effects of climate change on a range of agricultural and horticultural crops of economic importance;
3. To demonstrate, by way of this report and the associated technical report, the capacity that has been developed for ongoing assessments of this kind in New Zealand. This report has been prepared for both the science and policy communities in New Zealand. There are two main components:
1. The detailed findings of the assessment, presented in a series of chapters;
2. An annex, which contains technical details on models used in the assessment
The use of otolith morphology to indicate the stock structure of common coral trout (Plectropomus leopardus) on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia
We investigated the use of otolith morphology to indicate the stock structure of an exploited serranid coral reef fish, Plectropomus leopardus, on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), Australia. Otoliths were measured by traditional one-and two-dimensional measures (otolith length, width, area, perimeter, circularity, and rectangularity), as well as by Fourier analysis to capture the finer details of otolith shape. Variables were compared among four regions of the GBR separated by hundreds of kilometers, as well as among three reefs within each region, hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers apart. The temporal stability in otolith structure was examined by comparing two cohorts of fully recruited four-year-old P. leopardus collected two years before and two years after a signif icant disturbance in the southern parts of the GBR caused by a large tropical cyclone in March 1997. Results indicated the presence of at least two stocks of P. leopardus, although the structure of each stock varied depending on the cohort considered. The results highlight the importance of incorporating data from several years in studies using otolith morphology to discriminate temporary and possibly misleading signals from those that indicate persistent spatial structure in stocks. We conclude that otolith morphology can be used as an initial step to direct further research on groups of P. leopardus that have lived at least a part of their life in different environments
Applications of percolation theory to fungal spread with synergy
There is increasing interest in the use of the percolation paradigm to analyze and predict the progress of disease spreading in spatially-structured populations of animals and plants. The wider utility of the approach has been limited, however, by several restrictive assumptions, foremost of which is a strict requirement for simple nearest-neighbour transmission, in which the disease history of an individual is in uenced only by that of its neighbours. In a recent paper the percolation paradigm has been generalised to incorporate synergistic interactions in host infectivity and susceptibility and the impact of these interactions on the invasive dynamics of an epidemic has been demonstrated. In the current paper we elicit evidence that such synergistic interactions may underlie transmission dynamics in real-world systems by rst formulating a model for the spread of a ubiquitous parasitic and saprotrophic fungus through replicated populations of nutrient sites and subsequently tting and testing the model using data from experimental microcosms. Using Bayesian computational methods for model tting, we demonstrate that synergistic interactions are necessary to explain the dynamics observed in the replicate experiments. The broader implications of this work in identifying disease control strategies that de ect epidemics from invasive to non-invasive regimes are discussed
Parallel Performance for a Real Time Lattice Boltzmann Code
The paper will present the details of a Lattice Boltzmann solver running in real time for unsteady
wake computations. In addition to algorithmic implementation, computational results, single
core and parallel optimization of the methods are also discussed
FIJICLIM description and users guide
The FIJICLIM prototype is based on PACCLIM which was developed by the International Global Change Institute (IGCI) as part of the Pacific Islands Climate Change Assistance Programme (PICCAP) executed by the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).
Both FIJICLIM and PACCLIM build directly on a comparable model development for New Zealand, known as the CLIMPACTS system (Kenny et al., 1995, 1999; Warrick et al., 1996, 1999). The development of CLIMPACTS has been funded by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology since 1993. Its core components, which include a graphic user interface (GUI), a customised geographic information system (GIS), and data compression routines, have provided the basis for the development of FIJICLIM. The development of FIJICLIM is complementary to similar developments that have evolved from CLIMPACTS, for Bangladesh (BDCLIM), Australia (OZCLIM), and for training in climate change V&A assessment (VANDACLIM)
Quantum Operation Time Reversal
The dynamics of an open quantum system can be described by a quantum
operation, a linear, complete positive map of operators. Here, I exhibit a
compact expression for the time reversal of a quantum operation, which is
closely analogous to the time reversal of a classical Markov transition matrix.
Since open quantum dynamics are stochastic, and not, in general, deterministic,
the time reversal is not, in general, an inversion of the dynamics. Rather, the
system relaxes towards equilibrium in both the forward and reverse time
directions. The probability of a quantum trajectory and the conjugate, time
reversed trajectory are related by the heat exchanged with the environment.Comment: 4 page
The correlation of VLF propagation variations with atmospheric planetary-scale waves
Variations in the received daytime phase of long distance, cesium-controlled, VLF transmission were compared to the height variations of the 10-mb isobaric surface during the first three months of 1965 and 1969. The VLF phase values are also compared to height variations of constant electron densities in the E-region and to variations of f-min which have been shown to be well correlated with planetary-scale variations in the stratosphere by Deland and Cavalieri (1973). The VLF phase variations show good correlation with these previous ionospheric measurements and with the 10-mb surfaces. The planetary scale waves in the stratosphere are shown to be travelling on the average eastward in 1965 and westward in 1969. These correlations are interpreted as due to the propagation of travelling planetary scale waves with westward tilted wave fronts. Upward energy transport due to the vertical structure of those waves is also discussed. These correlations provide further evidence for the coupling between the lower ionosphere at about 70 km altitude (the daytime VLF reflection height and the stratosphere, and they demonstrate the importance of planetary wave phenomena to VLF propagation
Near-equilibrium measurements of nonequilibrium free energy
A central endeavor of thermodynamics is the measurement of free energy
changes. Regrettably, although we can measure the free energy of a system in
thermodynamic equilibrium, typically all we can say about the free energy of a
non-equilibrium ensemble is that it is larger than that of the same system at
equilibrium. Herein, we derive a formally exact expression for the probability
distribution of a driven system, which involves path ensemble averages of the
work over trajectories of the time-reversed system. From this we find a simple
near-equilibrium approximation for the free energy in terms of an excess mean
time-reversed work, which can be experimentally measured on real systems. With
analysis and computer simulation, we demonstrate the accuracy of our
approximations for several simple models.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Classical pion fields in the presence of source
Classical pion field similar to Disoriented Chiral Condensate (DCC) is
considered in the presence of the external source. This field is similar to DCC
in the sense that its isotopic orientation is specified with a single vector at
the whole space. We study the classical field solutions in the nonlinear
sigma-model both in the chiral limit with massless pion and for the finite pion
mass. In both cases the field resembles the Coulomb field of charged particle
however the nonlinear pion interactions lead to the existence of several
solutions. In the massless case and for the very small size of the source there
is the lot of classical solutions with finite discrete energies. In the more
realistic situation of large nucleus (heavy ion) there are no stable solutions
of the above type, but there is the possibility for the formation of the
quasistationary states. They can live for a long time slowly decaying through
the emission of very soft pions. The structure and the energies of these
solutions is investigated numerically.Comment: 10 pages, LaTeX, 1 figure, epsfig.sty, corrected typos, added
reference
Variability of the Accretion Stream in the Eclipsing Polar EP Dra
We present the first high time resolution light curves for six eclipses of
the magnetic cataclysmic variable EP Dra, taken using the superconducting
tunnel junction imager S-Cam2. The system shows a varying eclipse profile
between consecutive eclipses over the two nights of observation. We attribute
the variable stream eclipse after accretion region ingress to a variation in
the amount and location of bright material in the accretion stream. This
material creates an accretion curtain as it is threaded by many field lines
along the accretion stream trajectory. We identify this as the cause of
absorption evident in the light curves when the system is in a high accretion
state. We do not see direct evidence in the light curves for an accretion spot
on the white dwarf; however, the variation of the stream brightness with the
brightness of the rapid decline in flux at eclipse ingress indicates the
presence of some form of accretion region. This accretion region is most likely
located at high colatitude on the white dwarf surface, forming an arc shape at
the foot points of the many field lines channeling the accretion curtain.Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS (7 pages
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