Z-dependent Barriers in Multifragmentation from Poissonian Reducibility and Thermal Scaling

We explore the natural limit of binomial reducibility in nuclear multifragmentation by constructing excitation functions for intermediate mass fragments (IMF) of a given element Z. The resulting multiplicity distributions for each window of transverse energy are Poissonian. Thermal scaling is observed in the linear Arrhenius plots made from the average multiplicity of each element. ``Emission barriers'' are extracted from the slopes of the Arrhenius plots and their possible origin is discussed.Comment: 15 pages including 4 .ps figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. Letters. Also available at http://csa5.lbl.gov/moretto

Travelling convection vortices in the ionosphere map to the central plasma sheet

International audienceWe investigate the magnetospheric domain responsible for the generation of ionospheric travelling convection vortices (TCV) by comparing the location of the TCV to the locations of the low-altitude particle-precipitation boundaries deduced from the DMSP satellite measurements. For three very well documented TCV events we are able to identify suitable satellite passes, in the sense that for each event we can identify two to three passes occurring close to the TCV observation in both time and space. In all three cases the comparisons place the TCV centres at or equatorward of the central plasma sheet/boundary plasma sheet precipitation boundary. Thus our results indicate that the field-aligned currents related to the TCV originate in the plasma sheet rather than at the magnetopause or in the low-latitude boundary layer, as previous studies suggest

Competitive Interactions Between Palatable and Unpalatable Grasses: Effects of Selective Defoliations of the Palatable Grasses

Selective herbivory of the palatable species appears to be a dominant mechanisms contributing to species competitive replacement in grasslands. Selective herbivory of the palatable species allows unpalatable species to realize a competitive advantage within the community. To test this hypothesis we compare the competitive ability of the unpalatable grasses Stipa trichotoma or S. gyneriodes in the presence of nondefoliated and defoliated plants of the palatable grass S. clarazii. The three species are native to a temperate semiarid grassland of Argentina. The response variables estimated in S.trichotoma and S.gynerioides, at both plant and tiller levels, were higher (P \u3c 0.05) in the presence of defoliated than in the presence of undefoliated plants of S.clarazii. These results support the hypothesis that selective herbivory of the palatable species confers unpalatable species a competitive advantages, contributing to species competitive replacement within the community

Fragment size correlations in finite systems - application to nuclear multifragmentation

We present a new method for the calculation of fragment size correlations in a discrete finite system in which correlations explicitly due to the finite extent of the system are suppressed. To this end, we introduce a combinatorial model, which describes the fragmentation of a finite system as a sequence of independent random emissions of fragments. The sequence is accepted when the sum of the sizes is equal to the total size. The parameters of the model, which may be used to calculate all partition probabilities, are the intrinsic probabilities associated with the fragments. Any fragment size correlation function can be built by calculating the ratio between the partition probabilities in the data sample (resulting from an experiment or from a Monte Carlo simulation) and the 'independent emission' model partition probabilities. This technique is applied to charge correlations introduced by Moretto and collaborators. It is shown that the percolation and the nuclear statistical multifragmentaion model ({\sc smm}) are almost independent emission models whereas the nuclear spinodal decomposition model ({\sc bob}) shows strong correlations corresponding to the break-up of the hot dilute nucleus into nearly equal size fragments