1,745 research outputs found
L.P. CURTIS, Jr. - Anglo-Saxons and Celts; A Study of Anti-Irish Prejudice in Victorian England.
Testosterone, Migration Distance, and Migratory Timing in Song Sparrows Melospiza melodia
In seasonally migratory animals, migration distance often varies substantially within populations such that individuals breeding at the same site may overwinter different distances from the breeding grounds. Shorter migration may allow earlier return to the breeding grounds, which may be particularly advantageous to males competing to acquire a breeding territory. However, little is known about potential mechanisms that may mediate migration distance. We investigated naturally-occurring variation in androgen levels at the time of arrival to the breeding site and its relationship to overwintering latitude in male and female song sparrows (Melospiza melodia). We used stable isotope analysis of hydrogen (δ2H) in winter-grown claw tissue to infer relative overwintering latitude (migration distance), combined with 14 years of capture records from a long-term study population to infer the arrival timing of males versus females. Relative to females, males had higher circulating androgen levels, migrated shorter distances, and were more likely to be caught early in the breeding season. Males that migrate short distances may benefit from early arrival at the breeding grounds, allowing them to establish a breeding territory. Even after controlling for sex and date, androgen levels were highest in individuals that migrated shorter distances. Our findings indicate that androgens and migration distance are correlated traits within and between sexes that may reflect individual variation within an integrated phenotype in which testosterone has correlated effects on behavioral traits such as migration
Revisiting the ground state of CoAlO: comparison to the conventional antiferromagnet MnAlO
The A-site spinel material, CoAl2O4, is a physical realization of the
frustrated diamond-lattice antiferromagnet, a model in which is predicted to
contain unique incommensurate or `spin-spiral liquid' ground states. Our
previous single-crystal neutron scattering study instead classified it as a
`kinetically-inhibited' antiferromagnet, where the long ranged correlations of
a collinear Neel ground state are blocked by the freezing of domain wall motion
below a first-order phase transition at T* = 6.5 K. The current paper expands
on our original results in several important ways. New elastic and inelastic
neutron measurements are presented that show our initial conclusions are
affected by neither the sample measured nor the instrument resolution, while
measurements to temperatures as low as T = 250 mK limit the possible role being
played by low-lying thermal excitations. Polarized diffuse neutron measurements
confirm reports of short-range antiferromagnetic correlations and diffuse
streaks of scattering, but major diffuse features are explained as signatures
of overlapping critical correlations between neighboring Brillouin zones.
Finally, and critically, this paper presents detailed elastic and inelastic
measurements of magnetic correlations in a single-crystal of MnAl2O4, which
acts as an unfrustrated analogue to CoAl2O4. The unfrustrated material is shown
to have a classical continuous phase transition to Neel order at T_N = 39 K,
with collective spinwave excitations and Lorentzian-like critical correlations
which diverge at the transition. Direct comparison between the two compounds
indicates that CoAl2O4 is unique, not in the nature of high-temperature diffuse
correlations, but rather in the nature of the frozen state below T*. The higher
level of cation inversion in the MnAl2O4 sample indicates that this novel
behavior is primarily an effect of greater next-nearest-neighbor exchange.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, acccepted for publication in Physical Review
Projecting the release of carbon from permafrost soils using a perturbed parameter ensemble modelling approach
The soils of the northern hemispheric permafrost region are estimated to
contain 1100 to 1500 Pg of carbon. A substantial fraction of this carbon has
been frozen and therefore protected from microbial decay for millennia. As
anthropogenic climate warming progresses much of this permafrost is expected
to thaw. Here we conduct perturbed model experiments on a climate model of
intermediate complexity, with an improved permafrost carbon module, to
estimate with formal uncertainty bounds the release of carbon from permafrost
soils by the year 2100 and 2300 CE. We estimate that by year 2100 the permafrost
region may release between 56 (13 to 118) Pg C under Representative
Concentration Pathway (RCP) 2.6 and 102 (27 to 199) Pg C under RCP 8.5, with
substantially more to be released under each scenario by the year 2300. Our
analysis suggests that the two parameters that contribute most to the
uncertainty in the release of carbon from permafrost soils are the size of
the non-passive fraction of the permafrost carbon pool and the equilibrium
climate sensitivity. A subset of 25 model variants are integrated 8000 years
into the future under continued RCP forcing. Under the moderate RCP 4.5
forcing a remnant near-surface permafrost region persists in the high Arctic,
eventually developing a new permafrost carbon pool. Overall our simulations
suggest that the permafrost carbon cycle feedback to climate change will make
a significant contribution to climate change over the next centuries and
millennia, releasing a quantity of carbon 3 to 54 % of the cumulative
anthropogenic total
Twitchy, the Drosophila orthologue of the ciliary gating protein FBF1/dyf-19, is required for coordinated locomotion and male fertility
Primary cilia are compartmentalised from the rest of the cell by a ciliary gate comprising transition fibres and a transition zone. The ciliary gate allows the selective import and export of molecules such as transmembrane receptors and transport proteins. These are required for the assembly of the cilium, its function as a sensory and signalling centre and to maintain its distinctive composition. Certain motile cilia can also form within the cytosol as exemplified by human and Drosophila sperm. The role of transition fibre proteins has not been well described in the cytoplasmic cilia.
Drosophila have both compartmentalised primary cilia, in sensory neurons, and sperm flagella that form within the cytosol. Here, we describe phenotypes for twitchy the Drosophila orthologue of a transition fibre protein, mammalian FBF1/C. elegans dyf-19. Loss-of-function mutants in twitchy are adult lethal and display a severely uncoordinated phenotype. Twitchy flies are too uncoordinated to mate but RNAi-mediated loss of twitchy specifically within the male germline results in coordinated but infertile adults. Examination of sperm from twitchy RNAi-knockdown flies shows that the flagellar axoneme forms, elongates and is post-translationally modified by polyglycylation but the production of motile sperm is impaired. These results indicate that twitchy is required for the function of both sensory cilia that are compartmentalised from the rest of the cell and sperm flagella that are formed within the cytosol of the cell. Twitchy is therefore likely to function as part of a molecular gate in sensory neurons but may have a distinct function in sperm cells.ISSN:2046-639
A preliminary assessment of glacier melt-model parameter sensitivity and transferability in a dry subarctic environment
Efforts to project the long-term melt of mountain glaciers and ice-caps require that melt models developed and calibrated for well studied locations be transferable over large regions. Here we assess the sensitivity and transferability of parameters within several commonly used melt models for two proximal sites in a dry subarctic environment of northwestern Canada. The models range in complexity from a classical degree-day model to a simplified energy-balance model. Parameter sensitivity is first evaluated by tuning the melt models to the output of an energy balance model forced with idealized inputs. This exercise allows us to explore parameter sensitivity both to glacier geometric attributes and surface characteristics, as well as to meteorological conditions. We then investigate the effect of model tuning with different statistics, including a weighted coefficient of determination (<i>wR</i><sup>2</sup>), the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency criterion (<i>E</i>), mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE). Finally we examine model parameter transferability between two neighbouring glaciers over two melt seasons using mass balance data collected in the St. Elias Mountains of the southwest Yukon. The temperature-index model parameters appear generally sensitive to glacier aspect, mean surface elevation, albedo, wind speed, mean annual temperature and temperature lapse rate. The simplified energy balance model parameters are sensitive primarily to snow albedo. Model tuning with <i>E</i>, MAE and RMSE produces similar, or in some cases identical, parameter values. In twelve tests of spatial and/or temporal parameter transferability, the results with the lowest RMSE values with respect to ablation stake measurements were achieved twice with a classical temperature-index (degree-day) model, three times with a temperature-index model in which the melt parameter is a function of potential radiation, and seven times with a simplified energy-balance model. A full energy-balance model produced better results than the other models in nine of twelve cases, though the tuning of this model differs from that of the others
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