Observations of Intraspecific Aggression and Cannibalism in Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus)

Cannibalism in polar bears appears to occur as carrion feeding and as attacks by males on small cubs or incapacitated individuals. Direct observations indicate that intraspecific killing and cannibalism occur among polar bears throughout the Arctic. The high incidence of Trichinella infection and circumpolar observations of cannibalism suggest that polar bears will readily eat other polar bears when they can do so without excessive risk of injury. Speculations that intraspecific aggression and cannibalism may be an important social and ecological force are consistent with existing information on polar bear biology.Key words: aggression, cannibalism, parasitism, polar bears, population dynamics, Trichinella, Ursidae, Ursus maritimusMots clés: agression, cannibalisme, parasitisme, ours blancs, dynamiques des populations, Trichinella, Ursidae, Ursus maritimu

Char particle fragmentation and its effect on unburned carbon during pulverized coal combustion. Final report, March 20, 1997

This document is the final report of work on a project concerned with the fragmentation of char particles during pulverized coal combustion that was conducted at the High Temperature Gasdynamics Laboratory at Stanford University, Stanford, California. The project is intended to satisfy, in part, PETC`s research efforts to understand the chemical and physical processes that govern coal combustion. The overall objectives of the project were: (1) to characterize the fragmentation events as a function of combustion environment, (2) to characterize fragmentation with respect to particle porosity and mineral loadings, (3) to assess overall mass loss rates with respect to particle fragmentation, and (4) to quantify the impact of fragmentation on unburned carbon in ash. The knowledge obtained during the course of this project can be used to predict accurately the overall mass loss rates of coals based on both the physical and chemical characteristics of their chars. The work provides a means of assessing reasons for unburned carbon in the ash of coal fired boilers and furnaces

Role of shear stress in endothelial cell morphology and expression of cyclooxygenase isoforms

MEDLINE® is the source for the MeSH terms of this document.Objective-: The goal of this study was to examine the effect of chronic heterogeneous shear stress, applied using an orbital shaker, on endothelial cell morphology and the expression of cyclooxygenases 1 and 2. Methods and results-: Porcine aortic endothelial cells were plated on fibronectin-coated Transwell plates. Cells were cultured for up to 7 days either under static conditions or on an orbital shaker that generated a wave of medium inducing shear stress over the cells. Cells were fixed and stained for the endothelial surface marker CD31 or cyclooxygenases 1 and 2. En face confocal microscopy and scanning ion conductance microscopy were used to show that endothelial cells were randomly oriented at the center of the well, aligned with shear stress nearer the periphery, and expressed cyclooxygenase-1 under all conditions. Lipopolysaccharide induced cyclooxygenase-2 and the production of 6-keto-prostaglandin F1α in all cells. Conclusion-: Cyclooxygenase-1 is expressed in endothelial cells cultured under chronic shear stress of high or low directionality.Peer reviewedSubmitted Versio

Radiation Damage of F8 Lead Glass with 20 MeV Electrons

Using a 20 MeV linear accelerator, we investigate the effects of electromagnetic radiation on the optical transparency of F8 lead glass. Specifically, we measure the change in attenuation length as a function of radiation dose. Comparing our results to similar work that utilized a proton beam, we conclude that F8 lead glass is more susceptible to proton damage than electron damage.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

High Pressure Thermoelasticity of Body-centered Cubic Tantalum

We have investigated the thermoelasticity of body-centered cubic (bcc) tantalum from first principles by using the linearized augmented plane wave (LAPW) and mixed--basis pseudopotential methods for pressures up to 400 GPa and temperatures up to 10000 K. Electronic excitation contributions to the free energy were included from the band structures, and phonon contributions were included using the particle-in-a-cell (PIC) model. The computed elastic constants agree well with available ultrasonic and diamond anvil cell data at low pressures, and shock data at high pressures. The shear modulus $c_{44}$ and the anisotropy change behavior with increasing pressure around 150 GPa because of an electronic topological transition. We find that the main contribution of temperature to the elastic constants is from the thermal expansivity. The PIC model in conjunction with fast self-consistent techniques is shown to be a tractable approach to studying thermoelasticity.Comment: To be appear in Physical Review

Overcoming controllability problems in distributed testing from an input output transition system

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 Springer VerlagThis paper concerns the testing of a system with physically distributed interfaces, called ports, at which it interacts with its environment. We place a tester at each port and the tester at port p observes events at p only. This can lead to controllability problems, where the observations made by the tester at a port p are not sufficient for it to be able to know when to send an input. It is known that there are test objectives, such as executing a particular transition, that cannot be achieved if we restrict attention to test cases that have no controllability problems. This has led to interest in schemes where the testers at the individual ports send coordination messages to one another through an external communications network in order to overcome controllability problems. However, such approaches have largely been studied in the context of testing from a deterministic finite state machine. This paper investigates the use of coordination messages to overcome controllability problems when testing from an input output transition system and gives an algorithm for introducing sufficient messages. It also proves that the problem of minimising the number of coordination messages used is NP-hard

Measurement of cosmic-ray low-energy antiproton spectrum with the first BESS-Polar Antarctic flight

The BESS-Polar spectrometer had its first successful balloon flight over Antarctica in December 2004. During the 8.5-day long-duration flight, almost 0.9 billion events were recorded and 1,520 antiprotons were detected in the energy range 0.1-4.2 GeV. In this paper, we report the antiproton spectrum obtained, discuss the origin of cosmic-ray antiprotons, and use antiprotons to probe the effect of charge sign dependent drift in the solar modulation.Comment: 18 pages, 1 table, 5 figures, submitted to Physics Letters

Measurements of Atmospheric Antiprotons

We measured atmospheric antiproton spectra in the energy range 0.2 to 3.4 GeV, at sea level and at balloon altitude in the atmospheric depth range 4.5 to 26 g/cm^2. The observed energy spectra, including our previous measurements at mountain altitude, were compared with estimated spectra calculated on various assumptions regarding the energy distribution of antiprotons that interacted with air nuclei.Comment: Accepted for publication in PL

A Cohomological Perspective on Algebraic Quantum Field Theory

Algebraic quantum field theory is considered from the perspective of the Hochschild cohomology bicomplex. This is a framework for studying deformations and symmetries. Deformation is a possible approach to the fundamental challenge of constructing interacting QFT models. Symmetry is the primary tool for understanding the structure and properties of a QFT model. This perspective leads to a generalization of the algebraic quantum field theory framework, as well as a more general definition of symmetry. This means that some models may have symmetries that were not previously recognized or exploited. To first order, a deformation of a QFT model is described by a Hochschild cohomology class. A deformation could, for example, correspond to adding an interaction term to a Lagrangian. The cohomology class for such an interaction is computed here. However, the result is more general and does not require the undeformed model to be constructed from a Lagrangian. This computation leads to a more concrete version of the construction of perturbative algebraic quantum field theory