1,935 research outputs found
Initial success of native grasses is contingent on multiple interactions among exotic grass competition, temporal priority, rainfall and site effects.
Ecological communities are increasingly being recognized as the products of contemporary drivers and historical legacies that are both biotic and abiotic. In an attempt to unravel multiple layers of ecological contingency, we manipulated (i) competition with exotic annual grasses, (ii) the timing of this competition (temporal priority in arrival/seeding times) and (iii) watering (simulated rainfall) in a restoration-style planting of native perennial grasses. In addition, we replicated this experiment simultaneously at three sites in north-central California. Native perennial grasses had 73-99 % less cover when planted with exotic annuals than when planted alone, but this reduction was greatly ameliorated by planting the natives 2 weeks prior to the exotics. In a drought year, irrigation significantly reduced benefits of early planting so that these benefits resembled those observed in a non-drought year. There were significant differences across the three sites (site effects and interactions) in (i) overall native cover, (ii) the response of natives to competition, (iii) the strength of the temporal priority effect and (iv) the degree to which supplemental watering reduced priority effects. These results reveal the strong multi-layered contingency that underlies even relatively simple communities
Die ontwikkeling van ’n Nagmaalsleer: Calvyn en Westphal
The development of a doctrine of Communion: Calvin and Westphal. Although references to the polemic writings of Calvin against Joachim Westphal of Hamburg are not infrequent, there is a lack of recent specific studies. In this article a resumé is given of Calvin’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper as found in his “Last Admonition to Joachim Westphal” of 1557 - the last and most detailed of the three works against Westphal and his allies. As this conflict had a definite influence on the development of the 1559 edition of Calvin’s Institutes, it is deemed necessary to take a new look at this document. The consensus with Bullinger which was published in 1551, the so-called Consensus Tigurinus, set the attacks of Westphal going against Calvin. Several of the heads of the Consensus are to be identified in the "Last Admonition'. After a brief historical background, these (nine in all) are used to systematize Calvin’s doctrine on the Lord’s Supper
Free-induction decay and envelope modulations in a narrowed nuclear spin bath
We evaluate free-induction decay for the transverse components of a localized
electron spin coupled to a bath of nuclear spins via the Fermi contact
hyperfine interaction. Our perturbative treatment is valid for special
(narrowed) bath initial conditions and when the Zeeman energy of the electron
exceeds the total hyperfine coupling constant : . Using one unified
and systematic method, we recover previous results reported at short and long
times using different techniques. We find a new and unexpected modulation of
the free-induction-decay envelope, which is present even for a purely isotropic
hyperfine interaction without spin echoes and for a single nuclear species. We
give sub-leading corrections to the decoherence rate, and show that, in
general, the decoherence rate has a non-monotonic dependence on electron Zeeman
splitting, leading to a pronounced maximum. These results illustrate the
limitations of methods that make use of leading-order effective Hamiltonians
and re-exponentiation of short-time expansions for a strongly-interacting
system with non-Markovian (history-dependent) dynamics.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure
Dynamical typicality of quantum expectation values
We show that the vast majority of all pure states featuring a common
expectation value of some generic observable at a given time will yield very
similar expectation values of the same observable at any later time. This is
meant to apply to Schroedinger type dynamics in high dimensional Hilbert
spaces. As a consequence individual dynamics of expectation values are then
typically well described by the ensemble average. Our approach is based on the
Hilbert space average method. We support the analytical investigations with
numerics obtained by exact diagonalization of the full time-dependent
Schroedinger equation for some pertinent, abstract Hamiltonian model.
Furthermore, we discuss the implications on the applicability of projection
operator methods with respect to initial states, as well as on irreversibility
in general.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
Singlet-triplet decoherence due to nuclear spins in a double quantum dot
We have evaluated hyperfine-induced electron spin dynamics for two electrons
confined to a double quantum dot. Our quantum solution accounts for decay of a
singlet-triplet correlator even in the presence of a fully static nuclear spin
system, with no ensemble averaging over initial conditions. In contrast to an
earlier semiclassical calculation, which neglects the exchange interaction, we
find that the singlet-triplet correlator shows a long-time saturation value
that differs from 1/2, even in the presence of a strong magnetic field.
Furthermore, we find that the form of the long-time decay undergoes a
transition from a rapid Gaussian to a slow power law () when
the exchange interaction becomes nonzero and the singlet-triplet correlator
acquires a phase shift given by a universal (parameter independent) value of
at long times. The oscillation frequency and time-dependent phase
shift of the singlet-triplet correlator can be used to perform a precision
measurement of the exchange interaction and Overhauser field fluctuations in an
experimentally accessible system. We also address the effect of orbital
dephasing on singlet-triplet decoherence, and find that there is an optimal
operating point where orbital dephasing becomes negligible.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
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Local forest structure variability increases resilience to wildfire in dry western U.S. coniferous forests.
A 'resilient' forest endures disturbance and is likely to persist. Resilience to wildfire may arise from feedback between fire behaviour and forest structure in dry forest systems. Frequent fire creates fine-scale variability in forest structure, which may then interrupt fuel continuity and prevent future fires from killing overstorey trees. Testing the generality and scale of this phenomenon is challenging for vast, long-lived forest ecosystems. We quantify forest structural variability and fire severity across >30 years and >1000 wildfires in California's Sierra Nevada. We find that greater variability in forest structure increases resilience by reducing rates of fire-induced tree mortality and that the scale of this effect is local, manifesting at the smallest spatial extent of forest structure tested (90 × 90 m). Resilience of these forests is likely compromised by structural homogenisation from a century of fire suppression, but could be restored with management that increases forest structural variability
Vacancy assisted arsenic diffusion and time dependent clustering effects in silicon
We present results of kinetic lattice Monte Carlo (KLMC) simulations of
substitutional arsenic diffusion in silicon mediated by lattice vacancies.
Large systems are considered, with 1000 dopant atoms and long range \textit{ab
initio} interactions, to the 18th nearest lattice neighbor, and the diffusivity
of each defect species over time is calculated. The concentration of vacancies
is greater than equilibrium concentrations in order to simulate conditions
shortly after ion implantation. A previously unreported time dependence in the
applicability of the pair diffusion model, even at low temperatures, is
demonstrated. Additionally, long range interactions are shown to be of critical
importance in KLMC simulations; when shorter interaction ranges are considered
only clusters composed entirely of vacancies form. An increase in arsenic
diffusivity for arsenic concentrations up to is
observed, along with a decrease in arsenic diffusivity for higher arsenic
concentrations, due to the formation of arsenic dominated clusters. Finally,
the effect of vacancy concentration on diffusivity and clustering is studied,
and increasing vacancy concentration is found to lead to a greater number of
clusters, more defects per cluster, and a greater vacancy fraction within the
clusters.Comment: 22 pages, 16 figure
Origin of atmospheric aerosols at the Pierre Auger Observatory using backward trajectory of air masses
The Pierre Auger Observatory is the largest operating cosmic ray observatory
ever built. Calorimetric measurements of extensive air showers induced by
cosmic rays are performed with a fluorescence detector. Thus, one of the main
challenges is the monitoring of the atmosphere, both in terms of atmospheric
state variables and optical properties. To better understand the atmospheric
conditions, a study of air mass trajectories above the site is presented. Such
a study has been done using an air-modelling program well known in atmospheric
sciences. Its validity has been checked using meteorological radiosonde
soundings performed at the Pierre Auger Observatory. Finally, aerosol
concentration values measured by the Central Laser Facility are compared to
backward trajectories.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures -- ECRS'12 European Cosmic Ray Symposium (July,
3-7, 2012) at Moscow, Russi
Asymmetric Quantum Shot Noise in Quantum Dots
We analyze the frequency-dependent noise of a current through a quantum dot
which is coupled to Fermi leads and which is in the Coulomb blockade regime. We
show that the asymmetric shot noise as function of frequency shows steps and
becomes super-Poissonian. This provides experimental access to the quantum
fluctuations of the current. We present an exact calculation for a single dot
level and a perturbative evaluation of the noise in Born approximation
(sequential tunneling regime but without Markov approximation) for the general
case of many levels with charging interaction.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
Improving Fiber Alignment in HARDI by Combining Contextual PDE Flow with Constrained Spherical Deconvolution
We propose two strategies to improve the quality of tractography results
computed from diffusion weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) data. Both
methods are based on the same PDE framework, defined in the coupled space of
positions and orientations, associated with a stochastic process describing the
enhancement of elongated structures while preserving crossing structures. In
the first method we use the enhancement PDE for contextual regularization of a
fiber orientation distribution (FOD) that is obtained on individual voxels from
high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) data via constrained
spherical deconvolution (CSD). Thereby we improve the FOD as input for
subsequent tractography. Secondly, we introduce the fiber to bundle coherence
(FBC), a measure for quantification of fiber alignment. The FBC is computed
from a tractography result using the same PDE framework and provides a
criterion for removing the spurious fibers. We validate the proposed
combination of CSD and enhancement on phantom data and on human data, acquired
with different scanning protocols. On the phantom data we find that PDE
enhancements improve both local metrics and global metrics of tractography
results, compared to CSD without enhancements. On the human data we show that
the enhancements allow for a better reconstruction of crossing fiber bundles
and they reduce the variability of the tractography output with respect to the
acquisition parameters. Finally, we show that both the enhancement of the FODs
and the use of the FBC measure on the tractography improve the stability with
respect to different stochastic realizations of probabilistic tractography.
This is shown in a clinical application: the reconstruction of the optic
radiation for epilepsy surgery planning
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