1,109 research outputs found
Z-11-TETRADECENYL ACETATE: SEX ATTRACTANT OF AGAPETA ZOEGANA (LEPIDOPTERA: TORTRICIDAE), A POTENTIAL SPECIES FOR THE BIOLOGICAL CONTROL OF KNAPWEED
In Canada, 78 of the most important weed species are introductions from Eurasia (Frankton and Mulligan 1970). Classical biological control aims to reduce the density of alien weeds below the economic threshold through introduction of specific herbivores from the native distribution area (Peschken 1979). During extended field surveys in central and southeastern Europe, the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control established the root-mining tortricid Agapeta zoegana Haw. as a promising control agent for Centaurea diffusa Lam. and C. maculosa Lam., 2 important ranch weeds in southwestern Canada (Harris and Myers 1984) and the northwestern United States (Maddox 1982). Due to the limited host range and suitable climatic conditions this moth was chosen for introduction into North America (MĂĽller et al. 1982; MĂĽller 1984). We wish to report an attractant that may be used to monitor the establishment of this beneficial species in its new habita
Uncertainty-principle noise in vacuum-tunneling transducers
The fundamental sources of noise in a vacuum-tunneling probe used as an
electromechanical transducer to monitor the location of a test mass are
examined using a first-quantization formalism. We show that a tunneling
transducer enforces the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for the position and
momentum of a test mass monitored by the transducer through the presence of two
sources of noise: the shot noise of the tunneling current and the momentum
fluctuations transferred by the tunneling electrons to the test mass. We
analyze a number of cases including symmetric and asymmetric rectangular
potential barriers and a barrier in which there is a constant electric field.
Practical configurations for reaching the quantum limit in measurements of the
position of macroscopic bodies with such a class of transducers are studied
Computing CMB Anisotropy in Compact Hyperbolic Spaces
The measurements of CMB anisotropy have opened up a window for probing the
global topology of the universe on length scales comparable to and beyond the
Hubble radius. For compact topologies, the two main effects on the CMB are: (1)
the breaking of statistical isotropy in characteristic patterns determined by
the photon geodesic structure of the manifold and (2) an infrared cutoff in the
power spectrum of perturbations imposed by the finite spatial extent. We
present a completely general scheme using the regularized method of images for
calculating CMB anisotropy in models with nontrivial topology, and apply it to
the computationally challenging compact hyperbolic topologies. This new
technique eliminates the need for the difficult task of spatial eigenmode
decomposition on these spaces. We estimate a Bayesian probability for a
selection of models by confronting the theoretical pixel-pixel temperature
correlation function with the COBE-DMR data. Our results demonstrate that
strong constraints on compactness arise: if the universe is small compared to
the `horizon' size, correlations appear in the maps that are irreconcilable
with the observations. If the universe is of comparable size, the likelihood
function is very dependent upon orientation of the manifold wrt the sky. While
most orientations may be strongly ruled out, it sometimes happens that for a
specific orientation the predicted correlation patterns are preferred over the
conventional infinite models.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX (IOP style included), 3 color figures (GIF) in
separate files. Minor revision to match the version accepted in Class.
Quantum Grav.: Proc. of Topology and Cosmology, Cleveland, 1997. The paper
can be also downloaded from
http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~pogosyan/cwru_proc.ps.g
The Kinematics of Thick Disks in External Galaxies
We present kinematic measurements of the thick and thin disks in two edge-on
galaxies. We have derived stellar rotation curves at and above the galaxies'
midplanes using Ca II triplet features measured with the GMOS spectrograph on
Gemini North. In one galaxy, FGC 1415, the kinematics above the plane show
clear rotation that lags that of the midplane by ~20-50%, similar to the
behavior seen in the Milky Way. However, the kinematics of the second galaxy,
FGC 227, are quite different. The rotation above the plane is extremely slow,
showing <25% of the rotation speed of the stars at the midplane. We decompose
the observed rotation curves into a superposition of thick and thin disk
kinematics, using 2-dimensional fits to the galaxy images to determine the
fraction of thick disk stars at each position. We find that the thick disk of
FGC 1415 rotates at 30-40% of the rotation speed of the thin disk. In contrast,
the thick disk of FGC 227 is very likely counter-rotating, if it is rotating at
all. These observations are consistent with the velocity dispersion profiles we
measure for each galaxy. The detection of counter-rotating thick disks
conclusively rules out models where the thick disk forms either during
monolithic collapse or from vertical heating of a previous thin disk. Instead,
the data strongly support models where the thick disk forms from direct
accretion of stars from infalling satellites.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap
Scalar fields on SL(2,R) and H^2 x R geometric spacetimes and linear perturbations
Using appropriate harmonics, we study the future asymptotic behavior of
massless scalar fields on a class of cosmological vacuum spacetimes. The
spatial manifold is assumed to be a circle bundle over a higher genus surface
with a locally homogeneous metric. Such a manifold corresponds to the
SL(2,R)-geometry (Bianchi VIII type) or the H^2 x R-geometry (Bianchi III
type). After a technical preparation including an introduction of suitable
harmonics for the circle-fibered Bianchi VIII to separate variables, we derive
systems of ordinary differential equations for the scalar field. We present
future asymptotic solutions for these equations in a special case, and find
that there is a close similarity with those on the circle-fibered Bianchi III
spacetime. We discuss implications of this similarity, especially to
(gravitational) linear perturbations. We also point out that this similarity
can be explained by the "fiber term dominated behavior" of the two models.Comment: 23 pages, no figures, to be published in Class. Quant. Gravi
Determining the Physical Properties of the B Stars I. Methodology and First Results
We describe a new approach to fitting the UV-to-optical spectra of B stars to
model atmospheres and present initial results. Using a sample of lightly
reddened stars, we demonstrate that the Kurucz model atmospheres can produce
excellent fits to either combined low dispersion IUE and optical photometry or
HST FOS spectrophotometry, as long as the following conditions are fulfilled:
1) an extended grid of Kurucz models is employed,
2) the IUE NEWSIPS data are placed on the FOS absolute flux system using the
Massa & Fitzpatrick (1999) transformation, and
3) all of the model parameters and the effects of interstellar extinction are
solved for simultaneously.
When these steps are taken, the temperatures, gravities, abundances and
microturbulence velocities of lightly reddened B0-A0 V stars are determined to
high precision. We also demonstrate that the same procedure can be used to fit
the energy distributions of stars which are reddened by any UV extinction curve
which can be expressed by the Fitzpatrick & Massa (1990) parameterization
scheme.
We present an initial set of results and verify our approach through
comparisons with angular diameter measurements and the parameters derived for
an eclipsing B star binary. We demonstrate that the metallicity derived from
the ATLAS 9 fits to main sequence B stars is essentially the Fe abundance. We
find that a near zero microturbulence velocity provides the best-fit to all but
the hottest or most luminous stars (where it may become a surrogate for
atmospheric expansion), and that the use of white dwarfs to calibrate UV
spectrophotometry is valid.Comment: 17 pages, including 2 pages of Tables and 6 pages of Figures.
Astrophysical Jounral, in pres
Dynamical Mass Constraints on Low-Mass Pre-Main-Sequence Stellar Evolutionary Tracks: An Eclipsing Binary in Orion with a 1.0 Msun Primary and an 0.7 Msun Secondary
We report the discovery of a double-lined, spectroscopic, eclipsing binary in
the Orion star-forming region. We analyze the system spectroscopically and
photometrically to empirically determine precise, distance-independent masses,
radii, effective temperatures, and luminosities for both components. The
measured masses for the primary and secondary, accurate to ~1%, are 1.01 Msun
and 0.73 Msun, respectively; thus the primary is a definitive pre-main-sequence
solar analog, and the secondary is the lowest-mass star yet discovered among
pre-main-sequence eclipsing binary systems. We use these fundamental
measurements to test the predictions of pre-main-sequence stellar evolutionary
tracks. None of the models we examined correctly predict the masses of the two
components simultaneously, and we implicate differences between the theoretical
and empirical effective temperature scales for this failing. All of the models
predict the observed slope of the mass-radius relationship reasonably well,
though the observations tend to favor models with low convection efficiencies.
Indeed, considering our newly determined mass measurements together with other
dynamical mass measurements of pre-main-sequence stars in the literature, as
well as measurements of Li abundances in these stars, we show that the data
strongly favor evolutionary models with inefficient convection in the stellar
interior, even though such models cannot reproduce the properties of the
present-day Sun.Comment: Accepted by Ap
Achievable rates for the Gaussian quantum channel
We study the properties of quantum stabilizer codes that embed a
finite-dimensional protected code space in an infinite-dimensional Hilbert
space. The stabilizer group of such a code is associated with a symplectically
integral lattice in the phase space of 2N canonical variables. From the
existence of symplectically integral lattices with suitable properties, we
infer a lower bound on the quantum capacity of the Gaussian quantum channel
that matches the one-shot coherent information optimized over Gaussian input
states.Comment: 12 pages, 4 eps figures, REVTe
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