A broad look at charcoal rot in the Northern Region broadacre crops through soil sampling and in-crop surveys

Macrophomina phaseolina (Tassi) Goid. is a generalist soil-born pathogen, which is endemic to Australia. The pathogen has a broad host-range of both monocot and dicot plant species which include numerous weed and crop plant species (1, 2). The disease is most commonly identified with summer crops, e.g. soybean, sorghum, sunflower, maize and mungbean (3) and occurs most often when hot, dry conditions occur during the growing season. Current estimates predict that north-eastern Australia will become hotter and dryer as a result of climate change (4, 5). Thus, it is likely that conditions favouring the development of this disease will become more common in the future. However, to date, no work has been done to determine the extent of the pathogen’s presence in Australian soils, in-paddock spatial variability, or the occurrence of the disease as correlated with pathogen presence and population levels. In this paper, we present findings from soil sampling and end-of-season disease assessments in sorghum paddocks across northern New South Wales (NNSW), south eastern Queensland (SEQ) and central Queensland (CQ) during the 2016/17 and 2017/18 summer cropping seasons

A simple and efficient numerical scheme to integrate non-local potentials

As nuclear wave functions have to obey the Pauli principle, potentials issued from reaction theory or Hartree-Fock formalism using finite-range interactions contain a non-local part. Written in coordinate space representation, the Schrodinger equation becomes integro-differential, which is difficult to solve, contrary to the case of local potentials, where it is an ordinary differential equation. A simple and powerful method has been proposed several years ago, with the trivially equivalent potential method, where non-local potential is replaced by an equivalent local potential, which is state-dependent and has to be determined iteratively. Its main disadvantage, however, is the appearance of divergences in potentials if the wave functions have nodes, which is generally the case. We will show that divergences can be removed by a slight modification of the trivially equivalent potential method, leading to a very simple, stable and precise numerical technique to deal with non-local potentials. Examples will be provided with the calculation of the Hartree-Fock potential and associated wave functions of 16O using the finite-range N3LO realistic interaction.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, submitted to Eur. Phys. J.

A Rigourous Treatment of the Lattice Renormalization Problem of F_B

The $B$-meson decay constant can be measured on the lattice using a $1/m_b$ expansion. To relate the physical quantity to Monte Carlo data one has to know the renormalization coefficient, $Z$, between the lattice operators and their continuum counterparts. We come back to this computation to resolve discrepancies found in previous calculations. We define and discuss in detail the renormalization procedure that allows the (perturbative) computation of $Z$. Comparing the one-loop calculations in the effective Lagrangian approach with the direct two-loop calculation of the two-point $B$-meson correlator in the limit of large $b$-quark mass, we prove that the two schemes give consistent results to order $\alpha_s$. We show that there is, however, a renormalization prescription ambiguity that can have sizeable numerical consequences. This ambiguity can be resolved in the framework of an $O(a)$ improved calculation, and we describe the correct prescription in that case. Finally we give the numerical values of $Z$ that correspond to the different types of lattice approximations discussed in the paper.Comment: 27 pages, 2 figures (Plain TeX, figures in an appended postscript file

Observations of the Hubble Deep Field with the Infrared Space Observatory. I. Data reduction, maps and sky coverage

We present deep imaging at 6.7 micron and 15 micron from the CAM instrument on the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), centred on the Hubble Deep Field (HDF). These are the deepest integrations published to date at these wavelengths in any region of sky. We discuss the observation strategy and the data reduction. The observed source density appears to approach the CAM confusion limit at 15 micron, and fluctuations in the 6.7 micron sky background may be identifiable with similar spatial fluctuations in the HDF galaxy counts. ISO appears to be detecting comparable field galaxy populations to the HDF, and our data yields strong evidence that future IR missions (such as SIRTF, FIRST and WIRE) as well as SCUBA and millimetre arrays will easily detect field galaxies out to comparably high redshifts.Comment: 7 pages, LaTeX (using mn.sty), 9 figures included as GIFs. Gzipped Postscipt version available from http://artemis.ph.ic.ac.uk/hdf/papers/ps/. Further information on ISO-HDF project can be found at http://artemis.ph.ic.ac.uk/hdf

Magnetic and superconducting instabilities of the Hubbard model at the van Hove filling

We use a novel temperature-flow renormalization group technique to analyze magnetic and superconducting instabilities in the two-dimensional t-t' Hubbard model for particle densities close to the van Hove filling as a function of the next-nearest neighbor hopping t'. In the one-loop flow at the van Hove filling, the characteristic temperature for the flow to strong coupling is suppressed drastically around t'_c approx. -0.33t, suggesting a quantum critical point between d-wave pairing at moderate t'>t'_c and ferromagnetism for t'<t'_c. Upon increasing the particle density in the latter regime the leading instability occurs in the triplet pairing channel.Comment: 4 pages, to appear in Physical Review Letter

Observations of the Hubble Deep Field with the Infrared Space Observatory V. Spectral energy distributions starburst models and star formation history

We have modelled the spectral energy distributions of the 13 Hubble Deep Field (HDF) galaxies reliably detected by the Infrared Space Observatoiy (ISO). For two galaxies the emission detected by ISO is consistent with being starlight or the infrared 'cirrus' in the galaxies. For the remaining 11 galaxies there is a clear mid-infrared excess, which we interpret as emission from dust associated with a strong starburst. 10 of these galaxies are spirals or interacting pairs, while the remaining one is an elliptical with a prominent nucleus and broad emission lines. We give a new discussion of how the star formation rate can be deduced from the far-infrared luminosity, and derive star formation rates for these galaxies of 8-1000ø M¿ yr-1, where ø takes account of the uncertainty in the initial mass function. The HDF galaxies detected by ISO are clearly forming stars at a prodigious rate compared with nearby normal galaxies. We discuss the implications of our detections for the history of star and heavy element formation in the Universe. Although uncertainties in the calibration, reliability of source detection, associations and starburst models remain, it is clear that dust plays an important role in star formation out to redshift 1 at least

Investigation Into the Humaneness of Slaughter Methods for Guinea Pigs (Cavia porcelus) in the Andean Region

Guinea pigs (Cavia porcelus) are an important source of nonhuman animal protein in the Andean region of South America. Specific guidelines regarding the welfare of guinea pigs before and during slaughter have yet to be developed. This study critically assessed the humaneness of 4 different stunning/slaughter methods for guinea pigs: cervical neck dislocation (n = 60), electrical head-only stunning (n = 83), carbon dioxide (CO(2)) stunning (n = 21), and penetrating captive bolt (n = 10). Following cervical neck dislocation, 97% of guinea pigs had at least 1 behavioral or cranial/spinal response. Six percent of guinea pigs were classified as mis-stunned after electrical stunning, and 1% were classified as mis-stunned after captive bolt. Increased respiratory effort was observed during CO(2) stunning. Apart from this finding, there were no other obvious behavioral responses that could be associated with suffering. Of the methods assessed, captive bolt was deemed the most humane, effective, and practical method of stunning guinea pigs. Cervical neck dislocation should not be recommended as a slaughter method for guinea pigs

Possible ΔΔ\Delta\Delta dibaryons in the quark cluster model

In the framework of RGM, the binding energy of one channel $\Delta\Delta_{(3,0)}$($d^*$) and $\Delta\Delta_{(0,3)}$ are studied in the chiral SU(3) quark cluster model. It is shown that the binding energies of the systems are a few tens of MeV. The behavior of the chiral field is also investigated by comparing the results with those in the SU(2) and the extended SU(2) chiral quark models. It is found that the symmetry property of the $\Delta\Delta$ system makes the contribution of the relative kinetic energy operator between two clusters attractive. This is very beneficial for forming the bound dibaryon. Meanwhile the chiral-quark field coupling also plays a very important role on binding. The S-wave phase shifts and the corresponding scattering lengths of the systems are also given.Comment: LeTex with 2 ps figure