Garbage in the diet of carnivores in an agricultural area

Human food waste is considered to be richer in carbohydrates, lipids and proteins than most natural food supplies; however, it is very well digested in scats. So, as an indication of this kind of food in the diet, we have used each indigestible, anthropogenic origin element found in faeces (e.g., glass, plastic, rubber, etc.). There are few studies discussing the importance of garbage in the diet of mammalian predators living in farmland; definitely,  most focus on this issue in urban areas. We studied the contribution of garbage in the diet of raccoon dog  (Nyctereutes procyonoides), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), marten (Martes sp.), polecat (Mustela putorius), stoat (Mustela erminea), American mink (Neovison vison) and Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) in the agricultural areas of western Poland in 2006-2010. In addition, we examined the spatial changes in the diet of red fox and polecat. The largest contribution of garbage was found in scats of raccoon dog (8.8%), red fox (4.8%) and marten (4.3%). The diet of polecat, stoat and Eurasian otter contained 2.5%, 1.7% and 0.2% garbage items respectively. The most frequent item was plastic. Our analysis showed that garbage consumption by red fox and polecat was greater  closer to human settlements. The results reveal a continuous gradient in the garbage consumption that corresponds with the degree of synanthropization of particular species

Human preferences for sexually dimorphic faces may be evolutionarily novel

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.A large literature proposes that preferences for exaggerated sex typicality in human faces (masculinity/femininity) reflect a long evolutionary history of sexual and social selection. This proposal implies that dimorphism was important to judgments of attractiveness and personality in ancestral environments. It is difficult to evaluate, however, because most available data come from largescale, industrialized, urban populations. Here, we report the results for 12 populations with very diverse levels of economic development. Surprisingly, preferences for exaggerated sex-specific traits are only found in the novel, highly developed environments. Similarly, perceptions that masculine males look aggressive increase strongly with development, specifically, urbanization. These data challenge the hypothesis that facial dimorphism was an important ancestral signal of heritable mate value. One possibility is that highly developed environments provide novel opportunities to discern relationships between facial traits and behavior by exposing individuals to large numbers of unfamiliar faces, revealing patterns too subtle to detect with smaller samples

BERLinPro A Compact Demonstrator ERL for High Current and Low Emittance Beams

The HZB previously BESSY was the first institution in Germany to build and operate a dedicated synchrotron light source BESSY I . About 10 years ago BESSY II, a third generation synchrotron light source, was commissioned and is very successfully running since that time. Due to its expertise in development and operation of accelerator facilities HZB is ideally suited to realize new accelerator concepts. Therefore HZB is proposing to build a demonstrator ERL facility BERLinPro that will realize high current and low emittance operation at 100 MeV. BERLinPro is intented to bring ERL technology to maturity. This paper presents an overview of the project and the key components of the facilit

Angular Scaling in Jets

We introduce a jet shape observable defined for an ensemble of jets in terms of two-particle angular correlations and a resolution parameter R. This quantity is infrared and collinear safe and can be interpreted as a scaling exponent for the angular distribution of mass inside the jet. For small R it is close to the value 2 as a consequence of the approximately scale invariant QCD dynamics. For large R it is sensitive to non-perturbative effects. We describe the use of this correlation function for tests of QCD, for studying underlying event and pile-up effects, and for tuning Monte Carlo event generators.Comment: Updated to JHEP versio

Jet Substructure at the Tevatron and LHC: New results, new tools, new benchmarks

In this report we review recent theoretical progress and the latest experimental results in jet substructure from the Tevatron and the LHC. We review the status of and outlook for calculation and simulation tools for studying jet substructure. Following up on the report of the Boost 2010 workshop, we present a new set of benchmark comparisons of substructure techniques, focusing on the set of variables and grooming methods that are collectively known as "top taggers". To facilitate further exploration, we have attempted to collect, harmonise, and publish software implementations of these techniques.Comment: 53 pages, 17 figures. L. Asquith, S. Rappoccio, C. K. Vermilion, editors; v2: minor edits from journal revision

Torsion-balance tests of the weak equivalence principle

We briefly summarize motivations for testing the weak equivalence principle and then review recent torsion-balance results that compare the differential accelerations of beryllium-aluminum and beryllium-titanium test body pairs with precisions at the part in $10^{13}$ level. We discuss some implications of these results for the gravitational properties of antimatter and dark matter, and speculate about the prospects for further improvements in experimental sensitivity.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures (in press Classical Quantum Gravity 2012

Spectral hole burning: examples from photosynthesis

The optical spectra of photosynthetic pigment–protein complexes usually show broad absorption bands, often consisting of a number of overlapping, ‘hidden’ bands belonging to different species. Spectral hole burning is an ideal technique to unravel the optical and dynamic properties of such hidden species. Here, the principles of spectral hole burning (HB) and the experimental set-up used in its continuous wave (CW) and time-resolved versions are described. Examples from photosynthesis studied with hole burning, obtained in our laboratory, are then presented. These examples have been classified into three groups according to the parameters that were measured: (1) hole widths as a function of temperature, (2) hole widths as a function of delay time and (3) hole depths as a function of wavelength. Two examples from light-harvesting (LH) 2 complexes of purple bacteria are given within the first group: (a) the determination of energy-transfer times from the chromophores in the B800 ring to the B850 ring, and (b) optical dephasing in the B850 absorption band. One example from photosystem II (PSII) sub-core complexes of higher plants is given within the second group: it shows that the size of the complex determines the amount of spectral diffusion measured. Within the third group, two examples from (green) plants and purple bacteria have been chosen for: (a) the identification of ‘traps’ for energy transfer in PSII sub-core complexes of green plants, and (b) the uncovering of the lowest k = 0 exciton-state distribution within the B850 band of LH2 complexes of purple bacteria. The results prove the potential of spectral hole burning measurements for getting quantitative insight into dynamic processes in photosynthetic systems at low temperature, in particular, when individual bands are hidden within broad absorption bands. Because of its high-resolution wavelength selectivity, HB is a technique that is complementary to ultrafast pump–probe methods. In this review, we have provided an extensive bibliography for the benefit of scientists who plan to make use of this valuable technique in their future research

Probing natural SUSY from stop pair production at the LHC

We consider the natural supersymmetry scenario in the framework of the R-parity conserving minimal supersymmetric standard model (called natural MSSM) and examine the observability of stop pair production at the LHC. We first scan the parameters of this scenario under various experimental constraints, including the SM-like Higgs boson mass, the indirect limits from precision electroweak data and B-decays. Then in the allowed parameter space we study the stop pair production at the LHC followed by the stop decay into a top quark plus a lightest neutralino or into a bottom quark plus a chargino. From detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the signals and backgrounds, we find the two decay modes are complementary to each other in probing the stop pair production, and the LHC with $\sqrt{s}= 14$ TeV and 100 $fb^{-1}$ luminosity is capable of discovering the stop predicted in natural MSSM up to 450 GeV. If no excess events were observed at the LHC, the 95% C.L. exclusion limits of the stop masses can reach around 537 GeV.Comment: 19 pages, 10 figures, version accepted by JHE