230 research outputs found
Mapping adaptation of barley to droughted environments
Identifying barley genomic regions influencing the response of yield and its components to water deficits will aid in our understanding of the genetics of drought tolerance and the development of more drought tolerant cultivars. We assembled a population of 192 genotypes that represented landraces, old, and contemporary cultivars sampling key regions around the Mediterranean basin and the rest of Europe. The population was genotyped with a stratified set of 50 genomic and EST derived molecular markers, 49 of which were Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs), which revealed an underlying population sub-structure that corresponded closely to the geographic regions in which the genotypes were grown. A more dense whole genome scan was generated by using Diversity Array Technology (DArT®) to generate 1130 biallelic markers for the population. The population was grown at two contrasting sites in each of seven Mediterranean countries for harvest 2004 and 2005 and grain yield data collected. Mean yield levels ranged from 0.3 to 6.2 t/ha, with highly significant genetic variation in low-yielding environments. Associations of yield with barley genomic regions were then detected by combining the DArT marker data with the yield data in mixed model analyses for the individual trials, followed by multiple regression of yield on markers to identify a multi-locus subset of significant markers/QTLs. QTLs exhibiting a pre-defined consistency across environments were detected in bins 4, 6, 6 and 7 on barley chromosomes 3H, 4H, 5H and 7H respectivel
Imprinting, honeymooning, or maturing: Testing three theories of how interfirm social bonding impacts suppliers’ allocations of resources to business customers
In business markets, does strength of social bonds that a supplier perceives with a specific customer influence the supplier’s allocations of resources relative to other customers? If social bonding does uniquely impact supplier allocation of resources to customers, does the impact vary by relationship duration? Relationship marketing and Homans’ framework for social behavior are the theoretical bases for the study, which uses survey data to examine three alternative models that indicate how suppliers’ perceptions of social bonds with customers influence the suppliers’ allocations of resources over time. Analysis of data from sales and marketing managers confirms that two of these models, the imprinting theory and the maturity theory, are relevant. The findings indicate that relationship managers need to take into account the clear effect that creation of strong social bonds in buyer–seller relationships, as distinct from financial bonds, has on the way in which suppliers allocate resources to those relationships and how relationship duration affects the way in which they do so. The study strengthens the argument, on a strong theoretical base, to adopt a collaborative, as opposed to a transactional, approach to buyer–seller relationships
Relativistic models of two low-luminosity radio jets: B2 0326+39 and B2 1553+24
We apply the intrinsically symmetrical, decelerating relativistic jet model
developed by Laing & Bridle for 3C 31 to deep, full-synthesis 8.4-GHz VLA
imaging of the two low-luminosity radio galaxies B2 0326+39 and B2 1553+24.
After some modifications to the functional forms used to describe the geometry,
velocity, emissivity and magnetic-field structure, these models can accurately
fit our data in both total intensity and linear polarization. We conclude that
the jets in B2 0326+39 and B2 1553+24 are at angles of 64 +/- 5 deg and 7.7 +/-
1.3 deg to the line of sight, respectively. In both objects, we find that the
jets decelerate from 0.7 - 0.8c to <0.2c over a distance of approximately 10
kpc, although in B2 1553+24 this transition occurs much further from the
nucleus than in B2 0326+39 or 3C 31. The longitudinal emissivity profiles can
be divided into sections, each fit accurately by a power law; the indices of
these power laws decrease with distance from the nucleus. The magnetic fields
in both objects are dominated by the longitudinal component in the
high-velocity regions close to the nucleus and by the toroidal component
further out, but B2 0326+39 also has a significant radial component at large
distances, whereas B2 1553+24 does not. Simple adiabatic models fail to fit the
emissivity variations in the regions of high velocity but provide good
descriptions of the emissivity after the jets have decelerated. Given the small
angle to the line of sight inferred for B2 1553+24, there should be a
significant population of similar sources at less extreme orientations. Such
objects should have long (>200 kpc), straight, faint jets and we show that
their true sizes are likely to have been underestimated in existing images.
(Slightly abridged.)Comment: 27 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA
Dark Energy and Gravity
I review the problem of dark energy focusing on the cosmological constant as
the candidate and discuss its implications for the nature of gravity. Part 1
briefly overviews the currently popular `concordance cosmology' and summarises
the evidence for dark energy. It also provides the observational and
theoretical arguments in favour of the cosmological constant as the candidate
and emphasises why no other approach really solves the conceptual problems
usually attributed to the cosmological constant. Part 2 describes some of the
approaches to understand the nature of the cosmological constant and attempts
to extract the key ingredients which must be present in any viable solution. I
argue that (i)the cosmological constant problem cannot be satisfactorily solved
until gravitational action is made invariant under the shift of the matter
lagrangian by a constant and (ii) this cannot happen if the metric is the
dynamical variable. Hence the cosmological constant problem essentially has to
do with our (mis)understanding of the nature of gravity. Part 3 discusses an
alternative perspective on gravity in which the action is explicitly invariant
under the above transformation. Extremizing this action leads to an equation
determining the background geometry which gives Einstein's theory at the lowest
order with Lanczos-Lovelock type corrections. (Condensed abstract).Comment: Invited Review for a special Gen.Rel.Grav. issue on Dark Energy,
edited by G.F.R.Ellis, R.Maartens and H.Nicolai; revtex; 22 pages; 2 figure
Origin of the ring structures in Hercules A.: Sub-arcsecond 144 MHz to 7 GHz observations
Large scale structure and cosmologyGalaxie
Next-to-Leading Order QCD Analysis of Polarized Deep Inelastic Scattering Data
We present a Next-to-Leading order perturbative QCD analysis of world data on
the spin dependent structure functions , and , including
the new experimental information on the dependence of . Careful
attention is paid to the experimental and theoretical uncertainties. The data
constrain the first moments of the polarized valence quark distributions, but
only qualitatively constrain the polarized sea quark and gluon distributions.
The NLO results are used to determine the dependence of the ratio
and evolve the experimental data to a constant . We
determine the first moments of the polarized structure functions of the proton
and neutron and find agreement with the Bjorken sum rule.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figures; final version to be published in Phys. Lett. B.
References updated. Uses elsart.cls version 1996/04/22, 2e-1.4
Measurement of the - and -Dependence of the Asymmetry on the Nucleon
We report results for the virtual photon asymmetry on the nucleon from
new Jefferson Lab measurements. The experiment, which used the CEBAF Large
Acceptance Spectrometer and longitudinally polarized proton (NH) and
deuteron (ND) targets, collected data with a longitudinally
polarized electron beam at energies between 1.6 GeV and 5.7 GeV. In the present
paper, we concentrate on our results for and the related ratio
in the resonance and the deep inelastic regions for our lowest
and highest beam energies, covering a range in momentum transfer from
0.05 to 5.0 GeV and in final-state invariant mass up to about 3 GeV.
Our data show detailed structure in the resonance region, which leads to a
strong --dependence of for below 2 GeV. At higher , a
smooth approach to the scaling limit, established by earlier experiments, can
be seen, but is not strictly --independent. We add
significantly to the world data set at high , up to . Our data
exceed the SU(6)-symmetric quark model expectation for both the proton and the
deuteron while being consistent with a negative -quark polarization up to
our highest . This data setshould improve next-to-leading order (NLO) pQCD
fits of the parton polarization distributions.Comment: 7 pages LaTeX, 5 figure
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