19,484 research outputs found
A Meta-Analysis of Effects of Bt Crops on Honey Bees (Hymenoptera: Apidae)
L.) are the most important pollinators of many agricultural crops worldwide and are a key test species used in the tiered safety assessment of genetically engineered insect-resistant crops. There is concern that widespread planting of these transgenic crops could harm honey bee populations.We conducted a meta-analysis of 25 studies that independently assessed potential effects of Bt Cry proteins on honey bee survival (or mortality). Our results show that Bt Cry proteins used in genetically modified crops commercialized for control of lepidopteran and coleopteran pests do not negatively affect the survival of either honey bee larvae or adults in laboratory settings.Although the additional stresses that honey bees face in the field could, in principle, modify their susceptibility to Cry proteins or lead to indirect effects, our findings support safety assessments that have not detected any direct negative effects of Bt crops for this vital insect pollinator
Theory of standing spin waves in finite-size chiral spin soliton lattice
We present a theory of standing spin wave (SSW) in a monoaxial chiral
helimagnet. Motivated by experimental findings on the magnetic field-dependence
of the resonance frequency in thin films of CrNbS[Goncalves
et al., Phys. Rev. B95, 104415 (2017)], we examine the SSW over a chiral
soliton lattice (CSL) excited by an ac magnetic field applied parallel and
perpendicular to the chiral axis. For this purpose, we generalize Kittel-Pincus
theories of the SSW in ferromagnetic thin films to the case of non-collinear
helimagnet with the surface end spins which are softly pinned by an anisotropy
field. Consequently, we found there appear two types of modes. One is a Pincus
mode which is composed of a long-period Bloch wave and a short-period ripple
originated from the periodic structure of the CSL. Another is a short-period
Kittel ripple excited by space-periodic perturbation which exists only in the
case where the ac field is applied perpendicular the chiral axis. We
demonstrate that the existence of the Pincus mode and the Kittel ripple is
consistent with experimentally found double resonance profile.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figure
Impaired Glucose Metabolism among Those with and without Diagnosed Diabetes and Mortality: A Cohort Study Using Health Survey for England Data.
The extent that controlled diabetes impacts upon mortality, compared with uncontrolled diabetes, and how pre-diabetes alters mortality risk remain issues requiring clarification
Conformational Entropy of Compact Polymers
Exact results for the scaling properties of compact polymers on the square
lattice are obtained from an effective field theory. The entropic exponent
\gamma=117/112 is calculated, and a line of fixed points associated with
interacting chains is identified; along this line \gamma varies continuously.
Theoretical results are checked against detailed numerical transfer matrix
calculations, which also yield a precise estimate for the connective constant
\kappa=1.47280(1).Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Shoal choice in zebrafish, Danio rerio: the influence of shoal size and activity
Shoaling fish are expected, in many cases, to gain fitness benefits from being in a larger shoal and previous experiments have shown that fish are indeed capable of choosing between shoals of different sizes. We investigated the influence of shoal activity on shoal size preference in the zebrafish. We gave test fish the choice between shoals of one to four stimulus fish, presented at two different water temperatures, and so differing in their activity levels. Where all stimulus fish were in water of the same temperature, test fish generally preferred the larger shoal. However, this preference could be reduced by presenting the larger shoal in colder water and so reducing its activity. We discuss these findings with reference to the factors that may influence shoal activity, the effect of temperature on shoaling behaviour and the mechanisms that may be used by fish to discriminate shoal size. (C) 2001 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour
On touching random surfaces, two-dimensional quantum gravity and non-critical string theory
A set of physical operators which are responsible for touching interactions
in the framework of c<1 unitary conformal matter coupled to 2D quantum gravity
is found. As a special case the non-critical bosonic strings are considered.
Some analogies with four dimensional quantum gravity are also discussed, e.g.
creation-annihilation operators for baby universes, Coleman mechanism for the
cosmological constant.Comment: 22 pages, Latex2e, 3 figure
Aberrational Effects for Shadows of Black Holes
In this paper, we discuss how the shadow of a Kerr black hole depends on the
motion of the observer. In particular, we derive an analytical formula for the
boundary curve of the shadow for an observer moving with given four-velocity at
given Boyer--Lindquist coordinates. We visualize the shadow for various values
of parameters.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures; Proceedings of the 524. WE-Heraeus-Seminar held
at the Physikzentrum, Bad Honnef, Germany, 17.--23.2.201
A Semi-Classical Analysis of Order from Disorder
We study in this paper the Heisenberg antiferromagnet with nearest neighbours
interactions on the Husimi cactus, a system which has locally the same topology
as the Kagom\'e lattice. This system has a huge classical degeneracy
corresponding to an extensive number of degrees of freedom.We show that unlike
thermal fluctuations, quantum fluctuations lift partially this degeneracy and
favour a discrete subset of classical ground states. In order to clarify the
origin of these effects, we have set up a general semi-classical analysis of
the order from disorder phenomenon and clearly identified the differences
between classical and quantum fluctuations. This semi-classical approach also
enables us to classify various situations where a selection mechanism still
occurs. Moreover, once a discrete set of ground states has been preselected,
our analysis suggests that tunelling processes within this set should be the
dominant effect underlying the strange low energy spectrum of Kagom\'e-like
lattices.Comment: 49 pages, Latex, 12 PS figure
The effect of age and hearing loss on partner-directed gaze in a communicative task
The study examined the partner-directed gaze patterns of old and young talkers in a task (DiapixUK) that involved two people (a lead talker and a follower) engaging in a spontaneous dialogue. The aim was (1) to determine whether older adults engage less in partner-directed gaze than younger adults by measuring mean gaze frequency and mean total gaze duration; and (2) examine the effect that mild hearing loss may have on older adult’s partner-directed gaze. These were tested in various communication conditions: a no barrier condition; BAB2 condition in which the lead talker and the follower spoke and heard each other in multitalker babble noise; and two barrier conditions in which the lead talker could hear clearly their follower but the follower could not hear the lead talker very clearly (i.e., the lead talker’s voice was degraded by babble (BAB1) or by a Hearing Loss simulation (HLS). 57 single-sex pairs (19 older adults with mild Hearing Loss, 17 older adults with Normal Hearing and 21 younger adults) participated in the study. We found that older adults with normal hearing produced fewer partner-directed gazes (and gazed less overall) than either the older adults with hearing loss or younger adults for the BAB1 and HLS conditions. We propose that this may be due to a decline in older adult’s attention to cues signaling how well a conversation is progressing. Older adults with hearing loss, however, may attend more to visual cues because they give greater weighting to these for understanding speech
Erosion resistance of surface engineered 6000 series aluminium alloy
Aluminium and its alloys are widely used in a wide variety of applications. Aluminium’s main advantages include: lightness, high specific strength, high thermal and electrical conductivities, good formability, excellent machinability, diversity of aluminium alloys, extensive range of forming and processing options (e.g. rolling, extrusions, stampings, forgings and castings) and suitability for a diverse range of joining techniques, surface treatments and recyclability. A number of surface treatment technologies are available which produce thicker oxide coating layers that can be used to combat corrosion and wear of aluminium alloys under aggressive environments, such as in petroleum extraction environments. Coating processes for surface modification of aluminium alloys include plasma electrolytic oxidation, plasma-sprayed ceramic and hard anodising. In this article, erosive wear characteristics of coatings produced using the aforesaid three processes are compared with each other and benchmarked against the uncoated aluminium substrate. This article investigates the extent of erosion resistance, in particular impingement due to sand loading, of these coatings taking into consideration the effect of material properties such as adhesion, ductility and roughness
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