Oxygen minimum zone: An important oceanographic habitat for deep-diving northern elephant seals, Mirounga angustirostris.

Little is known about the foraging behavior of top predators in the deep mesopelagic ocean. Elephant seals dive to the deep biota-poor oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) (>800 m depth) despite high diving costs in terms of energy and time, but how they successfully forage in the OMZ remains largely unknown. Assessment of their feeding rate is the key to understanding their foraging behavior, but this has been challenging. Here, we assessed the feeding rate of 14 female northern elephant seals determined by jaw motion events (JME) and dive cycle time to examine how feeding rates varied with dive depth, particularly in the OMZ. We also obtained video footage from seal-mounted videos to understand their feeding in the OMZ. While the diel vertical migration pattern was apparent for most depths of the JME, some very deep dives, beyond the normal diel depth ranges, occurred episodically during daylight hours. The midmesopelagic zone was the main foraging zone for all seals. Larger seals tended to show smaller numbers of JME and lower feeding rates than smaller seals during migration, suggesting that larger seals tended to feed on larger prey to satisfy their metabolic needs. Larger seals also dived frequently to the deep OMZ, possibly because of a greater diving ability than smaller seals, suggesting their dependency on food in the deeper depth zones. Video observations showed that seals encountered the rarely reported ragfish (Icosteus aenigmaticus) in the depths of the OMZ, which failed to show an escape response from the seals, suggesting that low oxygen concentrations might reduce prey mobility. Less mobile prey in OMZ would enhance the efficiency of foraging in this zone, especially for large seals that can dive deeper and longer. We suggest that the OMZ plays an important role in structuring the mesopelagic ecosystem and for the survival and evolution of elephant seals

Development of Uniform CdTe Pixel Detectors Based on Caltech ASIC

We have developed a large CdTe pixel detector with dimensions of 23.7 x 13.0 mm and a pixel size of 448 x 448 um^2. The detector is based on recent technologies of an uniform CdTe single crystal, a two-dimensional ASIC, and stud bump-bonding to connect pixel electrodes on the CdTe surface to the ASIC. Good spectra are obtained from 1051 pixels out of total 1056 pixels. When we operate the detector at -50 C, the energy resolution is 0.67 keV and 0.99 keV at 14 keV and 60 keV, respectively. Week-long stability of the detector is confirmed at operating temperatures of both -50 C and -20 C. The detector also shows high uniformity: the peak positions for all pixels agree to within 0.82%, and the average of the energy resolution is 1.04 keV at a temperature of -50 C. When we normalized the peak area by the total counts detected by each pixel, a variation of 2.1 % is obtained.Comment: 11pages, 17figures, accepted for publication in Proc. SPIE 200

A Kelvin-wave cascade on a vortex in superfluid 4^4He at a very low temperature

A study by computer simulation is reported of the behaviour of a quantized vortex line at a very low temperature when there is continuous excitation of low-frequency Kelvin waves. There is no dissipation except by phonon radiation at a very high frequency. It is shown that non-linear coupling leads to a net flow of energy to higher wavenumbers and to the development of a simple spectrum of Kelvin waves that is insensitive to the strength and frequency of the exciting drive. The results are likely to be relevant to the decay of turbulence in superfluid $^4$He at very low temperatures

Effect of short-term temperature treatment to clusters on anthocyanin and abscisic acid content in the peel of 'Aki Queen' grape

The effect of short-term low and high temperature treatment to clusters before and after the onset of color development on anthocyanin and abscisic acid (ABA) content in the peel of 'Aki Queen' (Vitis labruscana L.), a tetraploid grape cultivar with red peel was investigated. Grape clusters were exposed to different temperature conditions, either from the beginning of the berry softening to the onset of color development, 47 to 56 days after full bloom (DAFB), or from the onset of color development onwards for 10 days, 56 to 66 DAFB. Low-temperature (2-5 °C lower than control) treatments in both, 47 to 56 DAFB and 56 to 66 DAFB had the tendency to increase anthocyanin concentration and the concentration in the peel was higher than that in the control. The difference in the ABA content after low and high temperature treatment in the 47 to 56 DAFB suggests that temperature from the beginning of berry softening to the onset of color development might affect the ABA content of the peel. On the other hand, treatment from the onset of color development onwards for 10 days might affect the anthocyanin concentration, but the effect on ABA content is relatively low. These results suggest that temperature-dependent accumulation of anthocyanin during maturation correlate with ABA content at the onset of color development in 'Aki Queen' grape.

Exciton transition and electronic structure of PbMoO4 crystals studied by polarized light

Published in Physica status solidi. B, Basic solid state physics, Vol. 247, No. 2, pp405-410, 2010.Polarized reflectivity spectra of PbMoO4 crystals have been measured using synchrotron radiation up to 20 eV. The optical constants for the crystallographic axes are derived by using a Kramers-Kronig analysis. It is found that the exciton band at 3.6 eV shows a doublet structure with distinct dichroism. X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS) and the calculation of the elec-tronic structure by a discrete variational Xα method are also carried out. The calculation shows that the va-lence band and the conduction band are mainly com-posed of the O 2p and Mo 4d states, respectively, and the Pb state contributes appreciably to the top of the valence band and the bottom of the conduction band. The valence-band XPS spectrum of PbMoO4 is com-pared with that of PbWO4, which reveals a remarkable difference between them. This difference reflects dif-ferent magnitude of hybridization of Mo 4d or W 5d state to the valence band. The exciton transition is ex-plained in terms of the cationic Pb 6s → 6p excitation model taking into account the crystal-field splitting and the spin-orbit interaction of Pb 6p state. From a comparison of the doublet structure of the exciton band of PbMoO4 and PbWO4, it is suggested that the electron-hole exchange interaction plays an important role for the exciton transitions in both materials.ArticlePhysica status solidi. B, Basic solid state physics. 247(2):405-410 (2010)journal articl

Direction Finding Estimators of Cyclostationary Signals in Array Processing for Microwave Power Transmission

A solar power satellite is paid attention to as a clean, inexhaustible large- scale base-load power supply. The following technology related to beam control is used: A pilot signal is sent from the power receiving site and after direction of arrival estimation the beam is directed back to the earth by same direction. A novel direction-finding algorithm based on linear prediction technique for exploiting cyclostationary statistical information (spatial and temporal) is explored. Many modulated communication signals exhibit a cyclostationarity (or periodic correlation) property, corresponding to the underlying periodicity arising from carrier frequencies or baud rates. The problem was solved by using both cyclic second-order statistics and cyclic higher-order statistics. By evaluating the corresponding cyclic statistics of the received data at certain cycle frequencies, we can extract the cyclic correlations of only signals with the same cycle frequency and null out the cyclic correlations of stationary additive noise and all other co-channel interferences with different cycle frequencies. Thus, the signal detection capability can be significantly improved. The proposed algorithms employ cyclic higher-order statistics of the array output and suppress additive Gaussian noise of unknown spectral content, even when the noise shares common cycle frequencies with the non-Gaussian signals of interest. The proposed method completely exploits temporal information (multiple lag ), and also can correctly estimate direction of arrival of desired signals by suppressing undesired signals. Our approach was generalized over direction of arrival estimation of cyclostationary coherent signals. In this paper, we propose a new approach for exploiting cyclostationarity that seems to be more advanced in comparison with the other existing direction finding algorithms

Comparative study of excitonic structures and luminescence properties of Bi4Ge3O12 and Bi12GeO20

Published in physica status solidi (b), Vol. 245, No. 12, pp2733-2736, 2008.Bi12GeO20 crystals have been performed, in addition to relativistic molecular orbital calculations. Both materials consist of the same elements but form different crystal structures. Based on the obtained results, the excitonic reflection structures and luminescence properties of Bi4Ge3O12 and Bi12GeO20 are discussed in comparison with each other.Bookphysica status solidi (b). 245(12):2733-2736 (2008)journal articl

A retrotransposon-inserted VvmybA1a allele has been spread among cultivars of Vitis vinifera but not North American or East Asian Vitis species

Research Note

Kondo-like behaviors in magnetic and thermal properties of single crystal Tm5Si2Ge2

We grew the single crystal of stoichiometric Tm5Si2.0Ge2.0 using a Bridgeman method and performed XRD, EDS, magnetization, ac and dc magnetic susceptibilities, specific heat, electrical resistivity and XPS experiments. It crystallizes in orthorhombic Sm5Ge4-type structure. The mean valence of Tm ions in Tm5Si2.0Ge2.0 is almost trivalent. The 4f states is split by the crystalline electric field. The ground state exhibits the long range antiferromagnetic order with the ferromagnetically coupled magnetic moments in the ac plane below 8.01 K, while the exited states exhibit the reduction of magnetic moment and magnetic entropy and -log T-behaviors observed in Kondo materials.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure

VvmybA1 genotype determines grape skin color

Research Not