61,905 research outputs found
Lay perceptions of risk in relation to food safety and BSE in the UK: preliminary findings [Conference abstract]
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Preliminary results from the dust flux monitoring instrument during the encounter of Stardust spacecraft with Wild-2 comet
On January 2, 2004, the Stardust spacecraft successfully encountered the Wild-2 comet. The Dust Flux Monitoring Instrument (DFMI) provided quantitative measurements of dust particle fluxes and particle mass distributions throughout the entire flythrough
Hemiparasitic plant impacts animal and plant communities across four trophic levels
1.Understanding the impact of species on community structure is a fundamental question in ecology. There is a growing body of evidence that suggests that both sub-dominant species and parasites can have a disproportionately large impact.
2.Here we report the impacts of an organism that is both subdominant and parasitic, the hemiparasite Rhinanthus minor. Whilst the impact of parasitic angiosperms on their hosts and, to a lesser degree, co-existing plant species, have been well characterized, much less is known about their impacts on higher trophic levels.
3.We experimentally manipulated field densities of the hemiparasite Rhinanthus minor in a species rich grassland, comparing the plant and invertebrate communities in plots where it was removed, at natural densities or at enhanced densities.
4.Plots with natural and enhanced densities of R. minor had lower plant biomass than plots without the hemiparasite, but enhanced densities almost doubled the abundance of invertebrates within the plots across all trophic levels, with effects evident in herbivores, predators and detritivores.
5.The hemiparasite R. minor, despite being a sub-dominant and transient component within plant communities that it inhabits, has profound effects on four different trophic levels. These effects persist beyond the life of the hemiparasite,
emphasizing its role as a keystone species in grassland communitie
The low energy expansion of the one-loop type II superstring amplitude
The one-loop four-graviton amplitude in either of the type II superstring
theories is expanded in powers of the external momenta up to and including
terms of order s^4 log s R^4, where R^4 denotes a specific contraction of four
linearized Weyl tensors and s is a Mandelstam invariant. Terms in this series
are obtained by integrating powers of the two-dimensional scalar field theory
propagator over the toroidal world-sheet as well as the moduli of the torus.
The values of these coefficients match expectations based on duality relations
between string theory and eleven-dimensional supergravity.Comment: harvmac (b), 25 pages, 3 eps figures. v2: Factors of 2 corrected.
Conclusion unchange
The Spectral Evolution of Transient Anomalous X-ray Pulsar XTE J1810--197
(Abridged) We present a multi-epoch spectral study of the Transient Anomalous
X-ray Pulsar XTE J1810-197 obtained with the XMM X-ray telescope. Four
observations taken over the course of a year reveal strong spectral evolution
as the source fades from outburst. The origin of this is traced to the
individual decay rates of the pulsar's spectral components. A 2-T fit at each
epoch requires nearly constant temperatures of kT=0.25 & 0.67 keV while the
component luminosities decrease exponentially with tau=900 & 300d,
respectively. One possible interpretation is that the slowly decaying cooler
component is the radiation from a deep heating event that affected a large
fraction of the crust, while the hotter component is powered by external
surface heating at the foot-points of twisted magnetic field lines, by
magnetospheric currents that are decaying more rapidly. The energy-dependent
pulse profile of XTE J1810-197 is well modeled at all epochs by the sum of a
sine and triangle function. These profiles peak at the same phase, suggesting a
concentric surface emission geometry. The spectral and pulse evolution together
argue against the presence of a significant ``power-law'' contribution to the
X-ray spectrum below 8 keV. The extrapolated flux is projected to return to the
historic quiescent level, characterized by an even cooler blackbody spectrum,
by the year 2007.Comment: 12 pages, 6 Figures, Latex, emulateapj. To appear in the
Astrophysical Journa
Replica field theory and renormalization group for the Ising spin glass in an external magnetic field
We use the generic replica symmetric cubic field-theory to study the
transition of short range Ising spin glasses in a magnetic field around the
upper critical dimension, d=6. A novel fixed-point is found, in addition to the
well-known zero magnetic field fixed-point, from the application of the
renormalization group. In the spin glass limit, n going to 0, this fixed-point
governs the critical behaviour of a class of systems characterised by a single
cubic interaction parameter. For this universality class, the spin glass
susceptibility diverges at criticality, whereas the longitudinal mode remains
massive. The third mode, the so-called anomalous one, however, behaves
unusually, having a jump at criticality. The physical consequences of this
unusual behaviour are discussed, and a comparison with the conventional de
Almeida-Thouless scenario presented.Comment: 5 pages written in revtex4. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
Let
Improving mental health outcomes: achieving equity through quality improvement
Objective. To investigate equity of patient outcomes in a psychological therapy service, following increased access achieved by a quality improvement (QI) initiative. Design. Retrospective service evaluation of health outcomes; data analysed by ANOVA, chi-squared and Statistical Process Control. Setting. A psychological therapy service in Westminster, London, UK. Participants. People living in the Borough of Westminster, London, attending the service (from either healthcare professional or self-referral) between February 2009 and May 2012. Intervention(s). Social marketing interventions were used to increase referrals, including the promotion of the service through local media and through existing social networks. Main Outcome Measure(s). (i) Severity of depression on entry using Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ9). (ii) Changes to severity of depression following treatment (ΔPHQ9). (iii) Changes in attainment of a meaningful improvement in condition assessed by a key performance indicator. Results. Patients from areas of high deprivation entered the service with more severe depression (M = 15.47, SD = 6.75), com-pared with patients from areas of low (M = 13.20, SD = 6.75) and medium (M = 14.44, SD = 6.64) deprivation. Patients in low
Young core collapse supernova remnants and their supernovae
Massive star supernovae can be divided into four categories depending on the
amount of mass loss from the progenitor star and the star's radius: red
supergiant stars with most of the H envelope intact (SN IIP), stars with some H
but most lost (IIL, IIb), stars with all H lost (Ib, Ic), and blue supergiant
stars with a massive H envelope (SN 1987A-like). Various aspects of the
immediate aftermath of the supernova are expected to develop in different ways
depending on the supernova category: mixing in the supernova, fallback on the
central compact object, expansion of any pulsar wind nebula, interaction with
circumstellar matter, and photoionization by shock breakout radiation. The
observed properties of young supernova remnants allow many of them to be placed
in one of the supernova categories; all the categories are represented except
for the SN 1987A-like type. Of the remnants with central pulsars, the pulsar
properties do not appear to be related to the supernova category. There is no
evidence that the supernova categories form a mass sequence, as would be
expected in a single star scenario for the evolution. Models for young pulsar
wind nebulae expanding into supernova ejecta indicate initial pulsar periods of
10-100 ms and approximate equipartition between particle and magnetic energies.
Ages are obtained for pulsar nebulae, including an age of 2400 pm 500 yr for
3C58, which is not consistent with an origin in SN 1181. There is no evidence
that mass fallback plays a role in neutron star properties.Comment: 43 pages, ApJ, revised, discussion of 3C58 changed, in press for Feb.
1, 200
Supersymmetry Constraints on Type IIB Supergravity
Supersymmetry is used to derive conditions on higher derivative terms in the
effective action of type IIB supergravity. Using these conditions, we are able
to prove earlier conjectures that certain modular invariant interactions of
order alpha' **3 relative to the Einstein-Hilbert term are proportional to
eigenfunctions of the Laplace operator on the fundamental domain of SL(2,Z). We
also discuss how these arguments generalize to terms of higher order in alpha',
as well as to compactifications of supergravity.Comment: 31 pages, harvmac (b); minor correction
Running-mass models of inflation, and their observational constraints
If the inflaton sector is described by softly broken supersymmetry, and the
inflaton has unsuppressed couplings, the inflaton mass will run strongly with
scale. Four types of model are possible. The prediction for the spectral index
involves two parameters, while the COBE normalization involves a third, all of
them calculable functions of the relevant masses and couplings. A crude
estimate is made of the region of parameter space allowed by present
observation.Comment: Latex file, 20 pages, 11 figures, uses epsf.sty. Comment on the
observation of the spectral index scale dependence added; Fig. 3-6 improve
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