948 research outputs found
Effects of long-term removal of sheep grazing on the seedbanks of high-level grasslands and blanket bogs
Many areas of vegetation in the British uplands have reduced species diversity as a result of sheep overgrazing. It has been suggested that abandonment or re-wilding strategies might be used to reverse this. A likely first step would be the removal or reduction of grazing livestock from upland areas, with a presumption that this would lead to a recovery in species richness. However, we do not know if this would work, or the timescales involved. One of the important areas where more knowledge is needed is information on the size and composition of soil seedbanks as regeneration from zseed is a likely pathway of recovery. Here, we compared seedbanks in both grazed and ungrazed plots in five experiments at Moor House NNR in the northern Pennines; these sheep grazing exclusion experiments were started 52 and 63/64 years ago. Soil samples (n=10) were collected from both grazed and ungrazed plots in each experiment, and seed emergence counted in glasshouse trials. We detected only seeds of common species and very few dicotyledonous species. This suggests that the soil seedbank is unlikely to be a reliable source of the less common species for ecological restoration in these upland communities, suggesting an extinction debt. Therefore, seed addition and the creation of suitable safe-sites for germination may be needed in conjunction with grazing controls to allow the establishment of plants that will increase the species richness of the vegetation. However, this interventionist restoration approach remains to be tested
Cross Sections for Electron-induced Resonant Vibrational Excitations in Polyatomic Molecules
We continue our review of experimental data for electron-polyatomic molecule collisions in connection with fusion and processing plasmas, as well as with the associated environmental issues. In this case we focus on vibrational excitation processes, in particular what vibrational modes can be identified in electron energy loss experiments and which of these modes are resonantly enhanced due to the temporary capture of the incident electron by the species in question. In this latter respect we report indicative excitation function data, all of which were originally measured at Sophia University and for which the differential cross section, for excitation of the relevant mode, are studied as a function of the incident electron energy at a fixed scattered electron angle. Unlike our previous compilation (NIFS?DATA?101) for elastic scattering, which was conducted over a broad range of energies (1?100 eV), vibrational excitation cross sections usually only become significant when the resonance enhancement process occurs. As a consequence, this survey encompasses incident electron energies between 1?30 eV. Consistent with our first report, no detailed comparison is made here with any other data that might be available in the literature. This course of action was once again adopted in order to keep this report to a sensible length
Broken-Symmetry States in Quantum Hall Superlattices
We argue that broken-symmetry states with either spatially diagonal or
spatially off-diagonal order are likely in the quantum Hall regime, for clean
multiple quantum well (MQW) systems with small layer separations. We find that
for MQW systems, unlike bilayers, charge order tends to be favored over
spontaneous interlayer coherence. We estimate the size of the interlayer
tunneling amplitude needed to stabilize superlattice Bloch minibands by
comparing the variational energies of interlayer-coherent superlattice miniband
states with those of states with charge order and states with no broken
symmetries. We predict that when coherent miniband ground states are stable,
strong interlayer electronic correlations will strongly enhance the
growth-direction tunneling conductance and promote the possibility of Bloch
oscillations.Comment: 9 pages LaTeX, 4 figures EPS, to be published in PR
Limits on the monopole magnetic field from measurements of the electric dipole moments of atoms, molecules and the neutron
A radial magnetic field can induce a time invariance violating electric
dipole moment (EDM) in quantum systems. The EDMs of the Tl, Cs, Xe and Hg atoms
and the neutron that are produced by such a field are estimated. The
contributions of such a field to the constants, of the T,P-odd
interactions and are also estimated for the TlF, HgF and YbF molecules (where
() is the electron (nuclear) spin and is the molecular
axis). The best limit on the contact monopole field can be obtained from the
measured value of the Tl EDM. The possibility of such a field being produced
from polarization of the vacuum of electrically charged magnetic monopoles
(dyons) by a Coulomb field is discussed, as well as the limit on these dyons.
An alternative mechanism involves chromomagnetic and chromoelectric fields in
QCD.Comment: Uses RevTex, 16 pages, 4 postscript figures. An explanation of why
there is no orbital contribution to the EDM has been added, and the
presentation has been improved in genera
Generalised Israel Junction Conditions for a Gauss-Bonnet Brane World
In spacetimes of dimension greater than four it is natural to consider higher
order (in R) corrections to the Einstein equations. In this letter generalized
Israel junction conditions for a membrane in such a theory are derived. This is
achieved by generalising the Gibbons-Hawking boundary term. The junction
conditions are applied to simple brane world models, and are compared to the
many contradictory results in the literature.Comment: 4 page
On Traversable Lorentzian Wormholes in the Vacuum Low Energy Effective String Theory in Einstein and Jordan Frames
Three new classes (II-IV) of solutions of the vacuum low energy effective
string theory in four dimensions are derived. Wormhole solutions are
investigated in those solutions including the class I case both in the Einstein
and in the Jordan (string) frame. It turns out that, of the eight classes of
solutions investigated (four in the Einstein frame and four in the
corresponding string frame), massive Lorentzian traversable wormholes exist in
five classes. Nontrivial massless limit exists only in class I Einstein frame
solution while none at all exists in the string frame. An investigation of test
scalar charge motion in the class I solution in the two frames is carried out
by using the Plebanski-Sawicki theorem. A curious consequence is that the
motion around the extremal zero (Keplerian) mass configuration leads, as a
result of scalar-scalar interaction, to a new hypothetical "mass" that confines
test scalar charges in bound orbits, but does not interact with neutral test
particles.Comment: 18 page
Production and Decay of D_1(2420)^0 and D_2^*(2460)^0
We have investigated and final states and
observed the two established charmed mesons, the with mass
MeV/c and width MeV/c and
the with mass MeV/c and width
MeV/c. Properties of these final states, including
their decay angular distributions and spin-parity assignments, have been
studied. We identify these two mesons as the doublet predicted
by HQET. We also obtain constraints on {\footnotesize } as a function of the cosine of the relative phase of the two
amplitudes in the decay.Comment: 15 pages in REVTEX format. hardcopies with figures can be obtained by
sending mail to: [email protected]
Measurement of the branching fraction for
We have studied the leptonic decay of the resonance into tau
pairs using the CLEO II detector. A clean sample of tau pair events is
identified via events containing two charged particles where exactly one of the
particles is an identified electron. We find . The result is consistent with
expectations from lepton universality.Comment: 9 pages, RevTeX, two Postscript figures available upon request, CLNS
94/1297, CLEO 94-20 (submitted to Physics Letters B
Measurement of the Decay Asymmetry Parameters in and
We have measured the weak decay asymmetry parameters (\aLC ) for two \LC\
decay modes. Our measurements are \aLC = -0.94^{+0.21+0.12}_{-0.06-0.06} for
the decay mode and \aLC = -0.45\pm 0.31 \pm
0.06 for the decay mode . By combining these
measurements with the previously measured decay rates, we have extracted the
parity-violating and parity-conserving amplitudes. These amplitudes are used to
test models of nonleptonic charmed baryon decay.Comment: 11 pages including the figures. Uses REVTEX and psfig macros. Figures
as uuencoded postscript. Also available as
http://w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLNS/1995/CLNS95-1319.p
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