Response of Lowland Rice Plants to Simulated Insect Defoliation in West Africa

Field experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of simulated insect-caused defoliation on irrigated rice. Defoliation levels tested were 0% (control), 25% defoliation at 21 days after transplanting (dat), 25% defoliation at 41 dat, 25% defoliation at 21 and 42 dat, 50% defoliation at 21 dat, 50% defoliation at 42 dat, 75% defoliation at 21 dat, 75% defoliation at 42 dat, 75% defoliation at 21 and 42 dat, 100% defoliation at 21 dat, and 100% defoliation at 21 and 42 dat. Tiller height, total number of tillers, percent panicle-bearing tillers, weight of 100 grains, and grain yields were recorded. The rice plant when defoliated just before tillering or in the tillering stage has the ability to compensate for defoliation damage. No yield losses occurred at 25% defoliation. Defoliation of 100% had a significant effect on the total number of tillers and on grain yield. Yield losses at 100% defoliation over the 3 years of the study averaged 40% in the 21 dat treatment and 55% in the 21 and 42 dat treatment. The implications of the development of cultural practices to manage lowland rice defoliating insects are discussed

Flux Dependence of Persistent Current in a Mesoscopic Disordered Tight Binding Ring

We reconsider the study of persistent currents in a disordered one-dimensional ring threaded by a magnetic flux, using he one-band tight-binding model for a ring of N-sites with random site energies. The secular equation for the eigenenergies expressed in terms of transfer matrices in the site representation is solved exactly to second order in a perturbation theory for weak disorder and fluxes differing from half-integer multiples of the elementary flux quantum. From the equilibrium currents associated with the one-electron eigenstates we derive closed analytic expressions for the disorder averaged persistent current for even and odd numbers, Ne, of electrons in the ground state. Explicit discussion for the half-filled band case confirms that the persistent current is flux periodic as in the absence of disorder, and that its amplitude is generally suppressed by the effect of the disorder. In comparison to previous results, based on an approximate analysis of the secular equation, the current suppression by disorder is strongly enhanced by a new flux-dependent factor.Comment: 15 pages, LaTex 2

Wireless internet architecture and testbed for wineglass

One of the most challenging issues in the area of mobile communication is the deployment of IPbased wireless multimedia networks in public and business environments. The public branch may involve public mobile networks, like UMTS as 3G system, while the business branch introduces local radio access networks by means of W-LANs. Conventional mobile networks realise mobile specific functionality, e.g. mobility management or authentication and accounting, by implementing appropriate mechanisms in specific switching nodes (e.g. SGSN in GPRS). In order to exploit the full potential of IP networking solutions a replacement of these mechanisms by IP-based solutions might be appropriate. In addition current and innovative future services in mobile environments require at least soft-guaranteed, differentiated QoS. Therefore the WINE GLASS project investigates and implements enhanced IP-based techniques supporting mobility and QoS in a wireless Internet architecture. As a means to verify the applicability of the implemented solutions, location-aware services deploying both IP-mobility and QoS mechanisms will be implemented and demonstratedPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Lonely adatoms in space

There is a close relation between the problems of second layer nucleation in epitaxial crystal growth and chemical surface reactions, such as hydrogen recombination, on interstellar dust grains. In both cases standard rate equation analysis has been found to fail because the process takes place in a confined geometry. Using scaling arguments developed in the context of second layer nucleation, I present a simple derivation of the hydrogen recombination rate for small and large grains. I clarify the reasons for the failure of rate equations for small grains, and point out a logarithmic correction to the reaction rate when the reaction is limited by the desorption of hydrogen atoms (the second order reaction regime)

Flux-free conductance modulation in a helical Aharonov-Bohm interferometer

A novel conductance oscillation in a twisted quantum ring composed of a helical atomic configuration is theoretically predicted. Internal torsion of the ring is found to cause a quantum phase shift in the wavefunction that describes the electron's motion along the ring. The resulting conductance oscillation is free from magnetic flux penetrating inside the ring, which is in complete contrast with the ordinary Aharonov-Bohm effect observed in untwisted quantum rings.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Absence of Fragmentation in Two-Dimensional Bose-Einstein Condensation

We investigate the possibility that the BEC-like phenomena recently detected on two-dimensional finite trapped systems consist of fragmented condensates. We derive and diagonalize the one-body density matrix of a two-dimensional isotropically trapped Bose gas at finite temperature. For the ideal gas, the procedure reproduces the exact harmonic-oscillator eigenfunctions and the Bose distribution. We use a new collocation-minimization method to study the interacting gas in the Hartree-Fock approximation and obtain a ground-state wavefunction and condensate fraction consistent with those obtained by other methods. The populations of the next few eigenstates increase at the expense of the ground state but continue to be negligible; this supports the conclusion that two-dimensional BEC is into a single state.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur

Localization length in Dorokhov's microscopic model of multichannel wires

We derive exact quantum expressions for the localization length $L_c$ for weak disorder in two- and three chain tight-binding systems coupled by random nearest-neighbour interchain hopping terms and including random energies of the atomic sites. These quasi-1D systems are the two- and three channel versions of Dorokhov's model of localization in a wire of $N$ periodically arranged atomic chains. We find that $L^{-1}_c=N.\xi^{-1}$ for the considered systems with $N=(1,2,3)$, where $\xi$ is Thouless' quantum expression for the inverse localization length in a single 1D Anderson chain, for weak disorder. The inverse localization length is defined from the exponential decay of the two-probe Landauer conductance, which is determined from an earlier transfer matrix solution of the Schr\"{o}dinger equation in a Bloch basis. Our exact expressions above differ qualitatively from Dorokhov's localization length identified as the length scaling parameter in his scaling description of the distribution of the participation ratio. For N=3 we also discuss the case where the coupled chains are arranged on a strip rather than periodically on a tube. From the transfer matrix treatment we also obtain reflection coefficients matrices which allow us to find mean free paths and to discuss their relation to localization lengths in the two- and three channel systems

Functional characterization of generalized Langevin equations

We present an exact functional formalism to deal with linear Langevin equations with arbitrary memory kernels and driven by any noise structure characterized through its characteristic functional. No others hypothesis are assumed over the noise, neither the fluctuation dissipation theorem. We found that the characteristic functional of the linear process can be expressed in terms of noise's functional and the Green function of the deterministic (memory-like) dissipative dynamics. This object allow us to get a procedure to calculate all the Kolmogorov hierarchy of the non-Markov process. As examples we have characterized through the 1-time probability a noise-induced interplay between the dissipative dynamics and the structure of different noises. Conditions that lead to non-Gaussian statistics and distributions with long tails are analyzed. The introduction of arbitrary fluctuations in fractional Langevin equations have also been pointed out

Atom trapping and two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates in field-induced adiabatic potentials

We discuss a method to create two-dimensional traps as well as atomic shell, or bubble, states for a Bose-Einstein condensate initially prepared in a conventional magnetic trap. The scheme relies on the use of time-dependent, radio frequency-induced adiabatic potentials. These are shown to form a versatile and robust tool to generate novel trapping potentials. Our shell states take the form of thin, highly stable matter-wave bubbles and can serve as stepping-stones to prepare atoms in highly-excited trap eigenstates or to study `collapse and revival phenomena'. Their creation requires gravitational effects to be compensated by applying additional optical dipole potentials. However, in our scheme gravitation can also be exploited to provide a route to two-dimensional atom trapping. We demonstrate the loading process for such a trap and examine experimental conditions under which a 2D condensate may be prepared.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figure

Localization fom conductance in few-channel disordered wires

We study localization in two- and three channel quasi-1D systems using multichain tight-binding Anderson models with nearest-neighbour interchain hopping. In the three chain case we discuss both the case of free- and that of periodic boundary conditions between the chains. The finite disordered wires are connected to ideal leads and the localization length is defined from the Landauer conductance in terms of the transmission coefficients matrix. The transmission- and reflection amplitudes in properly defined quantum channels are obtained from S-matrices constructed from transfer matrices in Bloch wave bases for the various quasi-1D systems. Our exact analytic expressions for localization lengths for weak disorder reduce to the Thouless expression for 1D systems in the limit of vanishing interchain hopping. For weak interchain hopping the localization length decreases with respect to the 1D value in all three cases. In the three-channel cases it increases with interchain hopping over restricted domains of large hopping