Development and Sex Ratio of \u3ci\u3eMelittobia Australica\u3c/i\u3e and \u3ci\u3eM. Digitata\u3c/i\u3e (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) on \u3ci\u3eMegachile Rotundata\u3c/i\u3e (Hymenoptera: Megachilidae) and \u3ci\u3eTrypoxylon Politum\u3c/i\u3e (Hymenoptera: Sphecidae)

Life history, development time, and sex ratio of Melittobia australica Girault and M. digitata Dahms on Megachile rotundata (Fabricius) and Trypoxylon politum Say are presented and compared with previous reports. Total development time and sex ratio differs slightly among the different hosts but falls within the expected range reported for different hosts and Melittobia species. The slightly longer development times and higher proportion of males recorded for both species on M. rotundata hosts probably reflects poorer host nutritional quality, relative to T. politum. We confirm that the one unusually extended development time reported by Schmieder for Melittobia chalybii Ashmead collected in New Jersey, can be accounted for as likely having represented a previously unknown species since described as M. femorata Dahms

Radiatively Induced Lorentz and CPT Violation in Schwinger Constant Field Approximation

The Schwinger proper-time method is an effective calculation method, explicitly gauge invariant and nonperturbative. We make use of this method to investigate the radiatively induced Lorentz and CPT-violating effects in quantum electrodynamics when an axial vector interaction term is introduced in the fermionic sector. The induced Lorentz and CPT-violating Chern-Simons term coincides with the one obtained using a covariant derivative expansion but differs from the result usually obtained in other regularization schemes. A possible ambiguity in the approach is also discussed.Comment: 11 pages, REVTeX, typos and a few equations corrected, a comment added to the conclusions, acknowledgments adde

The role of slip transfer at grain boundaries in the propagation of microstructurally short fatigue cracks in Ni-based superalloys

Crack initiation and propagation under high-cycle fatigue conditions have been investigated for a polycrystalline Ni-based superalloy by in-situ synchrotron assisted diffraction and phase contrast tomography. The cracks nucleated along the longest coherent twin boundaries pre-existing on the specimen surface, that were well oriented for slip and that presented a large elastic incompatibility across them. Moreover, the propagation of microstructurally short cracks was found to be determined by the easy slip transfer paths across the pre-existing grain boundaries. This information can only be obtained by characterization techniques like the ones presented here that provide the full set of 3D microstructural information

Parent Stars of Extrasolar Planets. XI. Trends with Condensation Temperature Revisited

We report the results of abundance analyses of new samples of stars with planets and stars without detected planets. We employ these data to compare abundance-condensation temperature trends in both samples. We find that stars with planets have more negative trends. In addition, the more metal-rich stars with planets display the most negative trends. These results confirm and extend the findings of Ramirez et al. (2009) and Melendez et al. (2009), who restricted their studies to solar analogs. We also show that the differences between the solar photospheric and CI meteoritic abundances correlate with condensation temperature.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figures; to be published in MNRA

On the Interpretation of the Atmospheric Neutrino Data in Terms of Flavor Changing Neutrino Interactions

Flavour changing (FC) neutrino-matter interactions have been proposed as a solution to the atmospheric neutrino anomaly. Here we perform the analysis of the full set of the recent 52 kTy Super-Kamiokande atmospheric neutrino data, including the zenith angle distribution of the contained events as well as the higher energy upward-going stopping and through-going muon events. Our results show that the FC mechanism can describe the full data sample with a chi^2_{min}=44/(33 d.o.f) which is acceptable at the 90% confidence level. The combined analysis confines the amount of FC to be either close to maximal or to the level of about (10-50)%.Comment: 15 pages, 4 Postscript figures, uses ReVTeX. Updated analysis to 52 kTy Super-Kamiokande data. A new figure for the up-down asymmetry is included. Some comments and references are adde

Global three-neutrino oscillation analysis of neutrino data

A global analysis of the solar, atmospheric and reactor neutrino data is presented in terms of three-neutrino oscillations. We include the most recent solar neutrino rates of Homestake, SAGE, GALLEX and GNO, as well as the recent 1117 day Super-Kamiokande data sample, including the recoil electron energy spectrum both for day and night periods and we treat in a unified way the full parameter space for oscillations, correctly accounting for the transition from the matter enhanced (MSW) to the vacuum oscillations regime. Likewise, we include in our description conversions with $\theta_{12} > \pi/4$. For the atmospheric data we perform our analysis of the contained events and the upward-going $\nu$-induced muon fluxes, including the previous data samples of Frejus, IMB, Nusex, and Kamioka experiments as well as the full 71 kton-yr (1144 days) Super-Kamiokande data set, the recent 5.1 kton-yr contained events of Soudan2 and the results on upgoing muons from the MACRO detector. We first present the allowed regions of solar and atmospheric oscillation parameters $\theta_{12}$, $\Delta m^2_{21}$ and $\theta_{23}$, $\Delta m^2_{32}$, respectively, as a function of $\theta_{13}$ and determine the constraints from atmospheric and solar data on the mixing angle $\theta_{13}$, common to solar and atmospheric analyses. We also obtain the allowed ranges of parameters from the full five-dimensional combined analysis of the solar, atmospheric and reactor data.Comment: 56 pages, 21 postscript figures. Some misprints corrected and new references added. Chooz limit included in Fig.21. Final version to appear in Phys. Rev.