Development of weeds in organic crop rotation experiments

Weeds are a major problem in organic farming. Preventive as well as curative measures must be utilised to manage the weeds and avoid proliferation. Besides direct weed control measures, many different aspects of planning and management in the cropping system affect the proliferation of weeds. However, it has rarely been investigated how the whole system affects weed populations

Bursts and Shocks in a Continuum Shell Model

We study a "burst" event, i. e. the evolution of an initial condition having support only in a finite interval of k-space, in the continuum shell model due to Parisi. We show that the continuum equation without forcing or dissipation can be explicitly written in characteristic form and that the right and left moving parts can be solved exactly. When this is supplemented by the appropriate shock condition it is possible to find the asymptotic form of the burst.Comment: 15 pages, 2 eps figures included, Latex 2e. Contribution to the proceedings of the conference: Disorder and Chaos, in honour of Giovanni Paladin, September 22-24, 1997, in Rom

Creating Mischief: The Tenth Circuit Declares the SEC’s Administrative Law Judges Unconstitutional in Bandimere V. Securities Exchange Commission

Since the passage of the APA, administrative agencies’ use of Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) to preside over hearings has exploded, and now far outpaces the number trials conducted before federal judges. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is one such agency that heavily utilizes ALJs to conduct their hearings. Recently, following an apparent higher percentage of SEC wins before their own ALJs as compared to before federal judges, a new constitutional challenge on the basis of the Appointments Clause has been brought before several circuits; that the SEC’s ALJs are inferior officers of the SEC, not employees, and therefore are required to be appointed pursuant to the requirements of the Appointments Clause. The support for this challenge comes from the Supreme Court’s decision in Freytag v. Commissioner, which laid out three indicia of inferior officer status. In 2016, both the D.C. Circuit and the Tenth Circuit had occasion to decide this issue, with the former ruling in favor of the SEC’s ALJs, and the latter against. The circuit split has left the status of the SEC’s ALJs in a state of flux, with more challenges certain to come, including challenges to other agencies’ ALJs. This Note argues that the Tenth Circuit’s decision in Bandimere v. SEC more faithfully applied the Supreme Court’s indicia of officer status, and properly declared the SEC’s ALJs inferior officers

Eve and the Forbidden Fruit: Reflections on a Feminist Methodology

In traditional Western legal analysis, the standard approach to dispute resolution involves evaluating the respective rights in a given conflict, and imposing an ordered settlement with one right as paramount. This method is upheld as an objective process leading to inherent truths. In reality, traditional legal approaches are steeped in subjective and normative selections. The decision-maker infuses the analysis with the values and priorities of a limited segment of the community. The consequence of this approach has been the entrenchment of legal principles which reflect traditionally male perspectives. For example, the legal approach of characterizing conflicts in terms of competing rights finds its philosophical underpinning in male approaches to reasoning. This focus on competing rights in defining and resolving conflict serves to overlook other perspectives, and ignores the realities of individuals actually before the decision-maker. In an attempt to address both the individual and collective experience, feminist legal theorists have moved beyond the constraints inherent in liberal legalism. Feminists have critiqued the rights-based approach as one which neglects to address the realities of women. The difficulties in employing a rights-based approach are evidenced in the Supreme Court of Canada\u27s decision in Re Eve, which concerned the question of contraceptive sterilization of mentally incompetent women. The Court based its decision on the parens patriae jurisdiction. Writing for the unanimous Court, Laforest, J. restricted the exercise of that jurisdiction to exclude the contraceptive sterilization of the mentally incapacitated woman before it. This decision has been hailed by many as a victory for the mentally disabled. However, the author argues that these accolades are short-sighted

Implementation of the Duality between Wilson loops and Scattering Amplitudes in QCD

We generalize modern ideas about the duality between Wilson loops and scattering amplitudes in ${\cal N}$=4 SYM to large-N (or quenched) QCD. We show that the area-law behavior of asymptotically large Wilson loops is dual to the Regge-Veneziano behavior of scattering amplitudes at high energies and fixed momentum transfer, when quark mass is small and/or the number of particles is large. We elaborate on this duality for string theory in a flat space, identifying the asymptotes of the disk amplitude and the Wilson loop of large-N QCD.Comment: REVTex, 6 pages, 1 figure; v3: refs added; v4pp. to appear in PR

Deconfinement transition and dimensional cross-over in the 3D gauge Ising model

We present a high precision Monte Carlo study of the finite temperature $Z_2$ gauge theory in 2+1 dimensions. The duality with the 3D Ising spin model allows us to use powerful cluster algorithms for the simulations. For temporal extensions up to $N_t=16$ we obtain the inverse critical temperature with a statistical accuracy comparable with the most accurate results for the bulk phase transition of the 3D Ising model. We discuss the predictions of T. W. Capehart and M.E. Fisher for the dimensional crossover from 2 to 3 dimensions. Our precise data for the critical exponents and critical amplitudes confirm the Svetitsky-Yaffe conjecture. We find deviations from Olesen's prediction for the critical temperature of about 20%.Comment: latex file of 21 pages plus 1 ps figure. Minor corrections in the figure. Text unchange

Below-ground plant-fungus network topology is not congruent with above-ground plant-animal network topology

植物を支える「共生ネットワーク」は地上と地下で構造が違う --見えてきた地下生物圏の構造--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2015-10-26.In nature, plants and their pollinating and/or seed-dispersing animals form complex interaction networks. The commonly observed pattern of links between specialists and generalists in these networks has been predicted to promote species coexistence. Plants also build highly species-rich mutualistic networks below ground with root-associated fungi, and the structure of these plant–fungus networks may also affect terrestrial community processes. By compiling high-throughput DNA sequencing data sets of the symbiosis of plants and their root-associated fungi from three localities along a latitudinal gradient, we uncovered the entire network architecture of these interactions under contrasting environmental conditions. Each network included more than 30 plant species and hundreds of mycorrhizal and endophytic fungi belonging to diverse phylogenetic groups. The results were consistent with the notion that processes shaping host-plant specialization of fungal species generate a unique linkage pattern that strongly contrasts with the pattern of above-ground plant–partner networks. Specifically, plant–fungus networks lacked a “nested” architecture, which has been considered to promote species coexistence in plant–partner networks. Rather, the below-ground networks had a conspicuous “antinested” topology. Our findings lead to the working hypothesis that terrestrial plant community dynamics are likely determined by the balance between above-ground and below-ground webs of interspecific interactions

Universal behaviour of interfaces in 2d and dimensional reduction of Nambu-Goto strings

We propose a simple effective model for the description of interfaces in 2d statistical models, based on the first-order treatment of an action corresponding to the length of the interface. The universal prediction of this model for the interface free energy agrees with the result of an exact calculation in the case of the 2d Ising model. This model appears as a dimensional reduction of the Nambu-Goto stringy description of interfaces in 3d, i.e., of the capillary wave model.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figur

The string tension in SU(N) gauge theory from a careful analysis of smearing parameters

We report a method to select optimal smearing parameters before production runs and discuss the advantages of this selection for the determination of the string tension.Comment: Contribution to Lat97 poster session, title was 'How to measure the string tension', 3 pages, 5 colour eps figure