A new species of Mermiglossa from Kenya, with comments on the arrangement of Old World Panurginae (Hymenoptera: Andrenidae)

A new species of the panurgine bee genus Mermiglossa Friese (Panurginae) is described and figured from females captured near Voi in the southern part of the former Coast Province, Kenya, a historical type locality for several bee species.  Mermiglossa voicola Ascher & Engel, new species, is distinguished from the only other species of the genus, M. rufa Friese from central Namibia.  The new species is readily identified due to its black rather than red metasoma and compound eyes slightly convergent above rather than parallel-sided.  The new species raises the total number of described bee species for Kenya to 343, extends the known distribution of its genus and subtribe from the Namib Desert of southwestern Africa to the western edge of the Nviri Desert of East Africa, and provides further evidence of extensive biogeographic connections between these disjunct xeric areas.  Recent changes in the family-group classification of Old World Panurginae are discussed in relation to recognition of Mermiglossina as a valid subtribe within an expanded tribe Panurgini also including the New World perditines

Twisted semilocal strings in the MSSM

The standard electroweak model is extended by means of a second Brout-Englert-Higgs-doublet. The symmetry breaking potential is chosen is such a way that (i) the Lagrangian possesses a custodial symmetry, (ii) a stationary, axially symmetric ansatz of the bosonic fields consistently reduces the Euler-Lagrange equations to a set of differential equations. The potential involves, in particular, a direct interaction between the two doublets. Stationary, axially-symmetric solutions of the classical equations are constructed. Some of them can be assimilated to embedded Nielsen-Olesen strings. From these solutions there are bifurcations and new solutions appear which exhibit the characteristics of the recently constructed twisted semilocal strings. A special emphasis is set on "doubly-twisted" solutions for which the two doublets present different time-dependent phase factors. They are regular and have a finite energy which can be lower than the energy of the embedded twisted solution. Electric-type solutions, such that the fields oscillate asymptotically far from the symmetry-axis, are also reported.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures, discussion extended, new solutions obtaine

Ten Bee Species New to Green Roofs in the Chicago Area

Green roofs increasingly provide habitat for many insects in urban environments. Pollinators such as bees may utilize foraging and nesting resources provided by green roofs but few studies have documented which species occur in these novel habitats. This study identified bees from 26 species, 11 genera and 5 families collected from 7 green roofs using pan trapping methods over 2 years. Ten of these species have not previously been recorded on green roofs in the Chicago region. Although the majority of bee species collected were solitary, soil-nesting, and native to Illinois, the proportion of exotic species was high compared to previous collections from Chicago area green roofs and urban parks. Urban green roofs may enhance populations of both native and exotic bees, but their ability to support the same range of native diversity recorded from other urban habitats requires further investigation

A new species of Colletes (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Colletidae) from northern Florida and Georgia, with notes on the Colletes of those states

Colletes ultravalidus Hall & Ascher, new species, is described from several sites in northwestern Florida and southeastern Georgia.  It is a member of the inaequalis species group, very similar to C. validus Cresson, a specialist of Ericaceae, but can be distinguished by an even more elongate malar area and the absence of conspicuous tergal fascia.  Colletes ultravalidus has been found flying from early winter to early spring when it forms nest aggregations in xeric sites adjacent to shrub bog or basin swamp, the habitat of Pieris phyllyreifolia (Hook.) DC. (Ericaceae), the most likely, but as yet unconfirmed, host plant of the new species.  State records of Colletes for Florida and Georgia are reviewed and discrepancies in taxonomy and distributional limits between Stephen’s 1954 revision of the genus and Mitchell’s 1960 monograph of eastern North American bees are noted.  We concur with Stephen that the distributions of several taxa in Colletes are more limited than that reported by Mitchell

Exotic composites: the decay of deficit angles in global-local monopoles

We study static, spherically symmetric, composite global-local monopoles with a direct interaction term between the two sectors in the regime where the interaction potential is large. At some critical coupling the global defect disappears and with it the deficit angle of the space-time. We find new solutions which represent local monopoles in an Anti-de-Sitter spacetime. In another parameter range the magnetic monopole, or even both, disappear. The decay of the magnetic monopole is accompanied by a dynamical transition from the higgsed phase to the gauge-symmetric phase. We comment on the applications to cosmology, topological inflation and braneworlds.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures; Minor corrections, matches published versio

Rotating Boson Stars and Q-Balls

We consider axially symmetric, rotating boson stars. Their flat space limits represent spinning Q-balls. We discuss their properties and determine their domain of existence. Q-balls and boson stars are stationary solutions and exist only in a limited frequency range. The coupling to gravity gives rise to a spiral-like frequency dependence of the boson stars. We address the flat space limit and the limit of strong gravitational coupling. For comparison we also determine the properties of spherically symmetric Q-balls and boson stars.Comment: 22 pages, 18 figure

Symmetry breaking in (gravitating) scalar field models describing interacting boson stars and Q-balls

We investigate the properties of interacting Q-balls and boson stars that sit on top of each other in great detail. The model that describes these solutions is essentially a (gravitating) two-scalar field model where both scalar fields are complex. We construct interacting Q-balls or boson stars with arbitrarily small charges but finite mass. We observe that in the interacting case - where the interaction can be either due to the potential or due to gravity - two types of solutions exist for equal frequencies: one for which the two scalar fields are equal, but also one for which the two scalar fields differ. This constitutes a symmetry breaking in the model. While for Q-balls asymmetric solutions have always corresponding symmetric solutions and are thus likely unstable to decay to symmetric solutions with lower energy, there exists a parameter regime for interacting boson stars, where only asymmetric solutions exist. We present the domain of existence for two interacting non-rotating solutions as well as for solutions describing the interaction between rotating and non-rotating Q-balls and boson stars, respectively.Comment: 33 pages including 21 figures; v2: version considerably extended: 6 new figures added, equations of motion added, discussion on varying gravitational coupling added, references adde

MTR-Viewer: Identifying regions within genes under purifying selection

Advances in genomic sequencing have enormous potential to revolutionise personalised medicine, however distinguishing disease-causing from benign variants remains a challenge. The increasing number of human genome and exome sequences available has revealed areas where unfavourable variation is removed through purifying selection. Here we present the MTR-Viewer, a web-server enabling easy visualisation at the gene or variant level of the Missense Tolerance Ratio (MTR), a measure of regional intolerance to missense variation calculated using variation from 220,000 exome and genome sequences. The MTR-Viewer enables exploration of MTR calculations, using different sliding windows, for over 18,000 human protein-coding genes and 85,000 alternative transcripts. Users can also view MTR scores calculated for specific ethnicities, to enable easy exploration of regions that may be under different selective pressure. The spatial distribution of population and known disease variants is also displayed on the protein’s domain structure. Intolerant regions were found to be highly enriched for ClinVar pathogenic and COSMIC somatic missense variants (Mann-Whitney U test p < 2.2x10-16). As the MTR is not biased by known domains and protein features, it can highlight functionally important regions within genes overlooked or inaccessible by traditional methods. MTR-Viewer is freely available via a user friendly web-server at http://biosig.unimelb.edu.au/mtr-viewer/.M.S. was supported by the Australian Government Research Training Program. S.P. was supported by an NHMRC R.D. Wright Career Development Fellowship (1126877). S.P. is an employee of AstraZeneca. D.B.A. was supported by the Jack Brockhoff Foundation [JBF 4186, 2016], a Newton Fund RCUK-CONFAP Grant awarded by The Medical Research Council (MRC) [MR/M026302/1]; the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia [APP1072476]; and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Melbourne

Does the Presence of a Measurable Blood Alcohol Level in a Potential Organ Donor Affect the Outcome of Liver Transplantation?

The widespread application of hepatic transplantation has created a tremendous demand for donor organs. An assessment of donor parameters is thought to be important in selecting good donors; however, the criteria utilized have not been standardized. This study was performed to determine the effect of a measurable donor blood alcohol level on graft survival. Fifty‐two patients who underwent orthotopic liver transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh were included in the study. Twenty‐five patients received liver grafts from donors having a blood alcohol level between 0.04 and 0.4 g/I with a mean of 0.17 g/I. Twenty‐seven patients received a liver graft from a donor who had no measurable blood alcohol. There were no differences between these two groups of donors regarding the time of initial hospitalization until the time of donation. Graft failure within the first 30 days was 24% for those receiving an organ from an alcohol‐positive donor as compared with 22.2% in those receiving an organ from an alcohol negative donor. The recipient mortality rate was 16% and 11%, respectively. No relationships between the donor blood alcohol level and organ performance, frequency of primary graft nonfunction, or number of episodes of acute cellular rejection were evident. Based upon these data, the presence of a measurable blood alcohol level in a donor should not mitigate against organ donation. Copyright © 1991, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserve