Using Microsatellites to Assess Genetic Variation in a Selective Breeding Program of Chinese Bay Scallop (Argopecten irradians irradians)

This study aimed to improve our understanding of the genetics of the Chinese bay scallop (Argopecten irradians irradians), one of the most important maricultured shellfish in China. Ten polymorphic microsatellite loci were examined to assess the allelic diversity, heterozygosity, and genetic variation between two domesticated populations selected for fast growth in breeding programs, and their base population. Forty-one alleles were found throughout the loci and the mean number of alleles per locus ranged 3.30-3.50. The average heterozygosity ranged 0.38-0.45, whereas the polyamorphic information content ranged 0.1504-0.7518. Genetic differences between the three populations were detected based on the number of alleles per locus, effective number of alleles, Shannon index, inbreeding coefficient (Fis), p values, genetic distance, and pairwise Fst values. There was no significant loss of genetic variability in the breeding program but changes in gene frequencies were detectable over the populations, implying that thea loci were saffected by the pressures of selective culture

Using Different Approaches to Evaluate Individual Social Equity in Transport

Inequalities not only exist in the field of economics in relation to income and wealth, but also in other areas, such as the transport sector, where access to and use of different transport modes varies markedly across population groups, and which provides the means to access everyday living activities. A key concern within the transport sector is that inequality has extended beyond the traditional measures of travel, and now covers a wide range of effects relating to social exclusion, freedom, well-being and being able to access reasonable opportunities and resources. In order to address the aforementioned issues, an important question to resolve is what type of methods can be used to measure inequalities in transport most effectively. Therefore, this study aims to apply different approaches, including the Capabilities Approach (CA) and a further six inequality indices, namely the Gini coefficient, the Atkinson index, the Palma ratio, the Pietra ratio, the Schutz coefficient and the Theil index, to the case study using the relatively migrant-rich lower-income neighbourhood of Tuqiao, in Beijing, in order to assess individual transport-related social inequity issues. The findings suggest that the CA is useful in assessing transport-related inequalities where there are significant barriers to the take up of accessibility, for example where there are high levels of disadvantaged groups and disaggregated analysis can be undertaken. The Palma ratio appears to have a larger effect than the Gini coefficient and the other inequality indices when measuring transport-related social inequity. In addition, we also found that most income inequality methods adapted from econometrics may be better suited to measuring transport-related social inequity between different regions, cities or countries, or within the same area, but at different points in time, rather than to measuring a single neighbourhood as a whole. Finally, we argue that to what extent politicians or transport planners can use appropriate management tools to measure transport-related social inequalities may be significant in terms of the progress that can be made in the fight against social inequity in the transport field

Effects of current on vortex and transverse domain walls

By using the spin torque model in ferromagnets, we compare the response of vortex and transverse walls to the electrical current. For a defect-free sample and a small applied current, the steady state wall mobility is independent of the wall structure. In the presence of defects, the minimum current required to overcome the wall pinning potential is much smaller for the vortex wall than for the transverse wall. During the wall motion, the vortex wall tends to transform to the transverse wall. We construct a phase diagram for the wall mobility and the wall transformation driven by the current

Heavy paths and cycles in weighted graphs

A weighted graph is a graph in which each edge e is assigned a non-negative\ud number $w(e)$, called the weight of $e$. In this paper, some theorems on the\ud existence of long paths and cycles in unweighted graphs are generalized to heavy\ud paths and cycles in weighted graphs

The deepest splits in Chloranthaceae as resolved by chloroplast sequences

Evidence from the fossil record, comparative morphology, and molecular phylogenetic analyses indicates that Chloranthaceae are among the oldest lineages of flowering plants alive today. Their four genera (ca. 65 species) today are disjunctly distributed in the Neotropics, China, tropical Asia, and Australasia, with a single species in Madagascar but none in mainland Africa. In the Cretaceous, Chloranthaceae occurred in much of Laurasia as well as Africa, Australia, and southern South America. We used DNA sequence data from the plastid rbcL gene, the rpl20-rps12 spacer, the trnL intron, and the trnL-F spacer to evaluate intra-Chloranthaceae relationships and geographic disjunctions. In agreement with earlier analyses, Hedyosmum was found to be sister to the remaining genera, followed by Ascarina and Chloranthus + Sarcandra. Bayesian and parsimony analyses of the combined data yielded resolved and well-supported trees except for polytomies among Andean Hedyosmum and Madagascan-Australasian-Polynesian Ascarina. The sole Asiatic species of Hedyosmum, Hedyosmum orientale from Hainan, China, was sister to Caribbean and Neotropical species. Likelihood ratio tests on the rbcL data set did not reject the assumption of a clock as long as the long-branched outgroup Canella was excluded. Two alternative fossil calibrations were used to convert genetic distances into absolute ages. Calibrations with Hedyosmum-like flowers from the Barremian-Aptian or Chloranthus-like androecia from the Turonian yielded substitution rates that differed by a factor of two, illustrating a perhaps unsolvable problem in molecular clock–based studies that use several calibration fossils. The alternative rates place the onset of divergence among crown group (extant) species of Hedyosmum at 60 or 29 Ma, between the Paleocene and the Oligocene; that among extant Chloranthus at 22 or 11 Ma; and that among extant Ascarina at 18 or 9 Ma, implying long-distance dispersal between Madagascar and Australasia-Polynesia

Roles of non-equilibrium conduction electrons on magnetization dynamics of ferromagnets

The mutual dependence of spin-dependent conduction and magnetization dynamics of ferromagnets provides the key mechanisms in various spin-dependent phenomena. We compute the response of the conduction electron spins to a spatial and time varying magnetization ${\bf M} ({\bf r},t)$ within the time-dependent semiclassical transport theory. We show that the induced non-equilibrium conduction spin density in turn generates four spin torques acting on the magnetization--with each torque playing different roles in magnetization dynamics. By comparing with recent theoretical models, we find that one of these torques that has not been previously identified is crucial to consistently interpret experimental data on domain wall motion.Comment: References correcte

Directed paths with few or many colors in colored directed graphs

Given a graph $D=(V(D),A(D))$ and a coloring of $D$, not necessarily a proper coloring of either the arcs or the vertices of $D$, we consider the complexity of finding a path of $D$ from a given vertex $s$ to another given vertex $t$ with as few different colors as possible, and of finding one with as many different colors as possible. We show that the first problem is polynomial-time solvable, and that the second problem is NP-hard. \u

Octupole degree of freedom for the critical-point candidate nucleus 152^{152}Sm in a reflection-asymmetric relativistic mean-field approach

The potential energy surfaces of even-even $^{146-156}$Sm are investigated in the constrained reflection-asymmetric relativistic mean-field approach with parameter set PK1. It is shown that the critical-point candidate nucleus $^{152}$Sm marks the shape/phase transition not only from U(5) to SU(3) symmetry, but also from the octupole-deformed ground state in $^{150}$Sm to the quadrupole-deformed ground state in $^{154}$Sm. By including the octupole degree of freedom, an energy gap near the Fermi surface for single-particle levels in $^{152}$Sm with $\beta_2 = 0.14 \sim 0.26$ is found, and the important role of the octupole deformation driving pair $\nu 2f_{7/2}$ and $\nu 1i_{13/2}$ is demonstrated.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure