A Checklist of Megaloptera and Neuroptera (Planipennia) of Indiana

Sixty-five species of the insect orders Megaloptera and Neuroptera have been confirmed as being distributed in the state of Indiana, with the majority representing new state records

Supercritical multicomponent solvent coal extraction

The yield of organic extract from the supercritical extraction of coal with larger diameter organic solvents such as toluene is increased by use of a minor amount of from 0.1 to 10% by weight of a second solvent such as methanol having a molecular diameter significantly smaller than the average pore diameter of the coal

High power operation of an X-band gyrotwistron

We report the first experimental verification of a gyrotwistron amplifier. The device utilized a single 9.858 GHz, TE011 cavity, a heavily attenuated drift tube, and a long tapered output waveguide section. With a 440 kV, 200-245 A, 1 μs electron beam and a sharply tapered axial magnetic field, peak powers above 21 MW were achieved with a gain near 24 dB. Performance was limited by competition from a fundamental TE11 mode. A multimode code was developed to analyze this system, and simulations were in good agreement with the experiment

High-power operation of a K-band second harmonic gyroklystron

Amplification studies of a two-cavity second-harmonic gyroklystron are reported. A magnetron injection gun produces a 440 kV, 200–245 A, 1 μs beam with an average perpendicular-to-parallel velocity ratio slightly less than 1. The TE011 input cavity is driven near 9.88 GHz and the TE021 output cavity resonates near 19.76 GHz. Peak powers exceeding 21 MW are achieved with an efficiency near 21% and a large signal gain above 25 dB. This performance represents the current state of the art for gyroklystrons in terms of the peak power normalized to the output wavelength squared

Assays with Commercially Produced Trichogramma (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae) To Determine Suitability for Obliquebanded Leafroller (Lepidoptera: Tortricidae) Control

Laboratory assays were used to compare the ability of commercially produced Trichogramma spp. to parasitize eggs of the obliquebanded leafroller, Choristoneura rosaceana (Harris), in the laboratory and field. Trichogramma platneri Nagarkatti parasitized more obliquebanded leafroller eggs per egg mass than did Trichogramma pretiosum Riley or Trichogramma minutum Riley produced by either of 2 insectaries. T. minutum produced at 1 insectary caused significantly more host mortality by host feeding and repiercing than by parasitism. Variation in parasitoid performance from different insectaries and among shipments from the same insectary was common. Young egg masses were more heavily parasitized than old egg masses. Parasitism increased as the number of conspecific female Trichogramma spp. placed on the same host increased, but the number of eggs parasitized per female decreased. Exposure of host egg masses to female Trichogramma spp. prevented additional oviposition in the same egg mass by conspecific, ovipositionally experienced females but had no effect on parasitism by conspecific, ovipositionally naive females. The method used to attach sentinel egg masses to foliage influenced parasitism rates. Moistening the leaf with water and adhering the egg mass to the moistened leaf had the least impact. Inundative releases of Trichogramma spp. into an apple orchard paralleled laboratory assays by showing greater parasitism of obliquebanded leafroller egg masses by T. platneri than with T. minutum. However, extreme differences observed in field performance between the 2 species was not predicted from the assay

Qubits as spectrometers of dephasing noise

We present a procedure for direct characterization of the dephasing noise acting on a single qubit by making repeated measurements of the qubit coherence under suitably chosen sequences of controls. We show that this allows a numerical reconstruction of the short time noise correlation function and that it can be combined with a series of measurements under free evolution to allow a characterization of the noise correlation function over many orders of magnitude range in timescale. We also make an analysis of the robustness and reliability of the estimated correlation functions. Application to a simple model of two uncorrelated noise fluctuators using decoupling pulse sequences shows that the approach provides a useful route for experimental characterization of dephasing noise and its statistical properties in a variety of condensed phase and atomic systems.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Interleukin-1 beta converting enzyme is necessary for development of depression-like behavior following intracerebroventricular administration of lipopolysaccharide to mice

BACKGROUND: Interleukin-1 beta converting enzyme (ICE, caspase 1) is a cysteine protease that processes immature pro-IL-1β into active mature IL-1β. IL-1β is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that mediates many of the physiological and behavioral responses to inflammation. Genetic deletion of ICE has previously been shown to prevent some negative physiologic responses to lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation. METHODS: Here we used a preclinical murine model to test the hypothesis that ICE is necessary for development of depression-like behaviors following intracerebroventricular (ICV) treatment with LPS. Adult male ICE knockout (ICE KO) and congenic wild-type C57BL/6 J (WT) mice were administered LPS either ICV at 100 ng/mouse or intraperitoneally (IP) at 830 μg/kg body weight or an equal volume of saline as controls. Mice were monitored up to 48 h after treatment for both sickness and depression-like behaviors. RESULTS: LPS given ICV induced a loss of body weight in both WT and ICE KO mice. This sickness response was similar between WT and ICE KO mice. As expected, LPS administered ICV increased immobility in the forced swim test (FST) and decreased sucrose preference in WT mice but no change in either of these two depression-like behaviors was observed in ICE KO mice. Expression of TNF-α and CD11b in brain was lower in ICE-KO mice at 24 h following ICV administration of LPS compared to WT mice. In contrast, when LPS was given systemically, sickness response, depression-like behaviors, and expression of these genes were similar between the two strains of mice. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that ICE plays a specific role in depression-like behavior induced by a central inflammatory stimuli even though it is not required when LPS is administered systemically

Einstein Manifolds As Yang-Mills Instantons

It is well-known that Einstein gravity can be formulated as a gauge theory of Lorentz group where spin connections play a role of gauge fields and Riemann curvature tensors correspond to their field strengths. One can then pose an interesting question: What is the Einstein equations from the gauge theory point of view? Or equivalently, what is the gauge theory object corresponding to Einstein manifolds? We show that the Einstein equations in four dimensions are precisely self-duality equations in Yang-Mills gauge theory and so Einstein manifolds correspond to Yang-Mills instantons in SO(4) = SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R gauge theory. Specifically, we prove that any Einstein manifold with or without a cosmological constant always arises as the sum of SU(2)_L instantons and SU(2)_R anti-instantons. This result explains why an Einstein manifold must be stable because two kinds of instantons belong to different gauge groups, instantons in SU(2)_L and anti-instantons in SU(2)_R, and so they cannot decay into a vacuum. We further illuminate the stability of Einstein manifolds by showing that they carry nontrivial topological invariants.Comment: v4; 17 pages, published version in Mod. Phys. Lett.