Large Charge Four-Dimensional Non-Extremal N=2 Black Holes with R^2-Terms

We consider N=2 supergravity in four dimensions with small R^2 curvature corrections. We construct large charge non-extremal black hole solutions in all space, with either a supersymmetric or a non-supersymmetric extremal limit, and analyze their thermodynamic properties. This generalizes some of the extremal solutions presented in [arXiv:0902.0831]. The indexed entropy of the non-extremal extension of the supersymmetric black hole, has the form of the extremal entropy, with the charges replaced by a function of the charges, the moduli at infinity and the non-extremality parameter. This is the same behavior as in the case without R^2-terms.Comment: 13 pages. v2: stripped down to letter format, based on the background given in [arXiv:0902.0831]. v3: up to date with CQG versio

A Framework for Promoting Diverse Perennial Circular Forage Systems for More Resilient Agricultural Landscapes: Developing Extension and Educational Tools for Resilience and Sustainability

The Resilience CAP Team seeks to use diverse, perennial, circular forage systems (DPCFS) to enhance biodiversity, improve soil and plant health, support ecosystem service, all towards achieving greater resilience to global change and improving the farm economy and quality of life. Our project will design a transdisciplinary framework that combines agronomic, ecological, economic, and sociological factors to achieve greater resilience and stability in agricultural systems through use of DPCFS. In this paper, we describe two of the project’s six objectives. Objective 5 is our extension/outreach arm where we will develop extension media, activities, and actionable decision tools to communicate concepts about the benefits of DPCFS to all stakeholders including farmers, consumers, lenders, and policy makers. To this end, our Extension Team is developing an interactive network of farmers, researchers, and other stakeholders that use multidirectional communication to help reduce barriers to forage use in production systems. Our network will be supported by traditional print and face-to-face approaches, a website, online programming, interactive online decision tools, and social media. Objective 6 is our education arm, where we will develop educational materials on the importance of resilience, ecosystem services, and economic value of DPCFS and integrate the materials into K-12 and university curricula. The activities are designed to develop knowledge and skills associated with sustainable agriculture, with emphasis on DPCFS. Currently, we seek to have multi-institutional internship and graduate seminar programs throughout the year

Developing a Simple Bioassay for Detection of Alfalfa Autotoxicity in Field Soils

Alfalfa autotoxicity causes yield reductions in alfalfa production by inhibiting plant establishment and decreasing plant productivity. Accurate predictions regarding autotoxic potential of the soil in a given field at a given time are an essential tool for alfalfa growers to make appropriate planting decisions. To address this issue, we are developing a soil bioassay that can be conducted as a mail-in soil test for alfalfa growers through plant diagnostic service laboratories. We hypothesize that we will detect differences in seed germination, emergence, root length, and root morphology between control and autotoxic soils. A preliminary trial testing alfalfa field soils and fallow field soils against a potting soil control found significant response of percent abnormal roots (P \u3c 0.001) and average root length (P \u3c 0.05) to soil variety. There were significantly lower percentages of abnormal roots in the control and fallow soils than in alfalfa soils (P \u3c 0.05) and significantly longer roots in the control soil than in alfalfa soils (P \u3c 0.05). An ongoing field trial encompassing multiple alfalfa varieties and termination dates will be used to validate the bioassay methodology for detecting autotoxicity. Implementing this bioassay could inform alfalfa establishment decisions, reduce yield losses from autotoxicity, and allow collection of data that can be used to further understand alfalfa autotoxicity

PerfWeb: How to Violate Web Privacy with Hardware Performance Events

The browser history reveals highly sensitive information about users, such as financial status, health conditions, or political views. Private browsing modes and anonymity networks are consequently important tools to preserve the privacy not only of regular users but in particular of whistleblowers and dissidents. Yet, in this work we show how a malicious application can infer opened websites from Google Chrome in Incognito mode and from Tor Browser by exploiting hardware performance events (HPEs). In particular, we analyze the browsers' microarchitectural footprint with the help of advanced Machine Learning techniques: k-th Nearest Neighbors, Decision Trees, Support Vector Machines, and in contrast to previous literature also Convolutional Neural Networks. We profile 40 different websites, 30 of the top Alexa sites and 10 whistleblowing portals, on two machines featuring an Intel and an ARM processor. By monitoring retired instructions, cache accesses, and bus cycles for at most 5 seconds, we manage to classify the selected websites with a success rate of up to 86.3%. The results show that hardware performance events can clearly undermine the privacy of web users. We therefore propose mitigation strategies that impede our attacks and still allow legitimate use of HPEs

A roof plate-dependent enhancer controls the expression of Homeodomain only protein in the developing cerebral cortex

AbstractThe smallest known homeodomain protein, Homeodomain only protein (Hop), was identified and described here as a temporally and spatially restricted gene in the neurogenic regions of the developing murine CNS including the cerebral cortex. Furthermore, an evolutionarily conserved 418 base pair upstream cis-regulatory DNA sequence was found to confine the Hop expression to the CNS of transgenic mice, but not to the heart which is the second major Hop expressing organ Chen, F., Kook, H., Milewski, R., Gitler, A.D., Lu, M.M., Li, J., Nazarian, R., Schnepp, R., Jen, K., Biben, C., Runke, G., Mackay, J.P., Novotny, J., Schwartz, R.J., Harvey, R.P., Mullins, M.C., Epstein, J.A., 2002. Hop is an unusual homeobox gene that modulates cardiac development. Cell 110, 713–723; Shin, C.H., Liu, Z.P., Passier, R., Zhang, C.L., Wang, D.Z., Harris, T.M., Yamagishi, H., Richardson, J.A., Childs, G., Olson, E.N., 2002. Modulation of cardiac growth and development by HOP, an unusual homeodomain protein. Cell 110, 725–735. The forebrain enhancer activity was successfully reproduced in vitro utilizing a combination of the electroporation and the organotypic brain culture method. Using this approach, the minimal requirement for the forebrain-specific enhancer sequence was delineated down to 200 base pairs. We further demonstrate that the Hop enhancer activity is inducible ectopically in a transgenic tissue by wild-type roof plate transplantation in vitro. Thus Hop is regulated in the forebrain by a so far unidentified paracrine signaling factor from the roof plate. Furthermore, the identified enhancer sequence provides an important tool for the targeted expression of transgenes in the medial cortex and the cortical hem

Influence of Nanoparticle Shape Factor on Convective Heat Transfer of Water-Based ZnO Nanofluids. Performance Evaluation Criterion

The convective heat transfer of ZnO/water colloidal suspensions is investigated experimentally to appreciate the influence of two shapes of nanoparticles. Pressure drop and heat transfer coefficients have been measured at two different inlet temperatures (20, 50°C) in heating and/or cooling conditions at various flow rates (200 \u3c Re \u3c 15,000). The Reynolds and Nusselt numbers have been determined by using thermal conductivity and viscosity measured in the same conditions as those in tests. The results obtained are compared with classical correlations. An energetic Performance Evaluation Criterion (PEC) has been defined to compare heat transfer rate to pumping power