Patterns of biogeographic and regional life-history trait variation in four large-bodied tropical wrasses

Ectotherms display substantial demographic variation across latitudinal gradients of temperature. Higher temperatures are often associated with smaller size, rapid initial growth rates, and early maturation, generally described as the Temperature-Size Rule (TSR). The longevity of most ectotherms also declines at warmer, lower latitudes. However, these patterns may be modified by increases in food resources that can flow on to continuous growth and large adult size. The present study estimates age-based demographic parameters of large-bodied tropical wrasses (Hemigymnus melapterus, H. fasciatus, Cheilinus fasciatus, and Oxycheilinus digramma) collected from Philippine fish markets (9-11 degrees N) and sampled from Palm (18.53-18.70 degrees S) and Whitsunday (20.05-20.21 degrees S) reefs on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia (GBR). Differences in longevity, initial growth rates, and the age at sexual maturation at a biogeographic scale, between the Philippines and GBR, conformed to predictions of the TSR. However, Philippine specimens exhibited greater relative body condition and sustained periods of growth beyond sexual maturity resulting in larger adult size than GBR samples. Size-structure data from Philippine marine reserves and fished sites indicated that these differences were not confounded by fishery-dependent sampling. Moreover, latitudinal length-weight relationships could not be explained by lower densities of the focal wrasses in the Philippines or by relative gonad size. Less pronounced patterns of demographic variation that differed across species were evident at a regional scale, among Palm and Whitsunday reefs. Patterns of demographic variation between the Philippines and GBR strongly suggest that differences in food resource levels will be important in explaining the observed geographic variation

Building Detection from Mobile Imagery Using Informative SIFT Descriptors

Abstract. We propose reliable outdoor object detection on mobile phone imagery from o-the-shelf devices. With the goal to provide both robust object detection and reduction of computational complexity for situated interpretation of urban imagery, we propose to apply the 'Informative Descriptor Approach ' on SIFT features (i-SIFT descriptors). We learn an attentive matching of i-SIFT keypoints, resulting in a signicant im-provement of state-of-the-art SIFT descriptor based keypoint matching. In the o-line learning stage, rstly, standard SIFT responses are eval-uated using an information theoretic quality criterion with respect to object semantics, rejecting features with insucient conditional entropy measure, producing both sparse and discriminative object representa-tions. Secondly, we learn a decision tree from the training data set that maps SIFT descriptors to entropy values. The key advantages of in-formative SIFT (i-SIFT) to standard SIFT encoding are argued from observations on performance complexity, and demonstrated in a typical outdoor mobile vision experiment on the MPG-20 reference database.

Natural Feature Tracking Augmented Reality for On-Site Assembly Assistance Systems

We introduce a natural feature tracking approach that facilitates the tracking of rigid objects for an on-site assembly assistance system. The tracking system must track multiple circuit boards without added fiducial markers, and they are manipulated by the user. We use a common SIFT feature matching detector enhanced with a probability search. This search estimates how likely a set of query descriptors belongs to a particular object. The method was realized and tested. The results show that the probability search enhanced the identification of different circuit boards

Statistical Theory of Spin Relaxation and Diffusion in Solids

A comprehensive theoretical description is given for the spin relaxation and diffusion in solids. The formulation is made in a general statistical-mechanical way. The method of the nonequilibrium statistical operator (NSO) developed by D. N. Zubarev is employed to analyze a relaxation dynamics of a spin subsystem. Perturbation of this subsystem in solids may produce a nonequilibrium state which is then relaxed to an equilibrium state due to the interaction between the particles or with a thermal bath (lattice). The generalized kinetic equations were derived previously for a system weakly coupled to a thermal bath to elucidate the nature of transport and relaxation processes. In this paper, these results are used to describe the relaxation and diffusion of nuclear spins in solids. The aim is to formulate a successive and coherent microscopic description of the nuclear magnetic relaxation and diffusion in solids. The nuclear spin-lattice relaxation is considered and the Gorter relation is derived. As an example, a theory of spin diffusion of the nuclear magnetic moment in dilute alloys (like Cu-Mn) is developed. It is shown that due to the dipolar interaction between host nuclear spins and impurity spins, a nonuniform distribution in the host nuclear spin system will occur and consequently the macroscopic relaxation time will be strongly determined by the spin diffusion. The explicit expressions for the relaxation time in certain physically relevant cases are given.Comment: 41 pages, 119 Refs. Corrected typos, added reference

The PHENIX Experiment at RHIC

The physics emphases of the PHENIX collaboration and the design and current status of the PHENIX detector are discussed. The plan of the collaboration for making the most effective use of the available luminosity in the first years of RHIC operation is also presented.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. Further details of the PHENIX physics program available at http://www.rhic.bnl.gov/phenix

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Measurement of the polarisation of W bosons produced with large transverse momentum in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS experiment

This paper describes an analysis of the angular distribution of W->enu and W->munu decays, using data from pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in 2010, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of about 35 pb^-1. Using the decay lepton transverse momentum and the missing transverse energy, the W decay angular distribution projected onto the transverse plane is obtained and analysed in terms of helicity fractions f0, fL and fR over two ranges of W transverse momentum (ptw): 35 < ptw < 50 GeV and ptw > 50 GeV. Good agreement is found with theoretical predictions. For ptw > 50 GeV, the values of f0 and fL-fR, averaged over charge and lepton flavour, are measured to be : f0 = 0.127 +/- 0.030 +/- 0.108 and fL-fR = 0.252 +/- 0.017 +/- 0.030, where the first uncertainties are statistical, and the second include all systematic effects.Comment: 19 pages plus author list (34 pages total), 9 figures, 11 tables, revised author list, matches European Journal of Physics C versio

Observation of a new chi_b state in radiative transitions to Upsilon(1S) and Upsilon(2S) at ATLAS

The chi_b(nP) quarkonium states are produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV and recorded by the ATLAS detector. Using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.4 fb^-1, these states are reconstructed through their radiative decays to Upsilon(1S,2S) with Upsilon->mu+mu-. In addition to the mass peaks corresponding to the decay modes chi_b(1P,2P)->Upsilon(1S)gamma, a new structure centered at a mass of 10.530+/-0.005 (stat.)+/-0.009 (syst.) GeV is also observed, in both the Upsilon(1S)gamma and Upsilon(2S)gamma decay modes. This is interpreted as the chi_b(3P) system.Comment: 5 pages plus author list (18 pages total), 2 figures, 1 table, corrected author list, matches final version in Physical Review Letter

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters