3,591 research outputs found
Pressure-Induced Insulating State in Ba1-xRExIrO3 (RE = Gd, Eu) Single Crystals
BaIrO3 is a novel insulator with coexistent weak ferromagnetism, charge and
spin density wave. Dilute RE doping for Ba induces a metallic state, whereas
application of modest pressure readily restores an insulating state
characterized by a three-order-of-magnitude increase of resistivity. Since
pressure generally increases orbital overlap and broadens energy bands, a
pressure-induced insulating state is not commonplace. The profoundly dissimilar
responses of the ground state to light doping and low hydrostatic pressures
signal an unusual, delicate interplay between structural and electronic degrees
of freedom in BaIrO3
Individual phenotypic variation reduces interaction strengths in a consumer–resource system
Natural populations often show variation in traits that can affect the strength of interspecific interactions. Interaction strengths in turn influence the fate of pairwise interacting populations and the stability of food webs. Understanding the mechanisms relating individual phenotypic variation to interaction strengths is thus central to assess how trait variation affects population and community dynamics. We incorporated nonheritable variation in attack rates and handling times into a classical consumer–resource model to investigate how variation may alter interaction strengths, population dynamics, species persistence, and invasiveness. We found that individual variation influences species persistence through its effect on interaction strengths. In many scenarios, interaction strengths decrease with variation, which in turn affects species coexistence and stability. Because environmental change alters the direction and strength of selection acting upon phenotypic traits, our results have implications for species coexistence in a context of habitat fragmentation, climate change, and the arrival of exotic species to native ecosystems
Multiscale temporal integrators for fluctuating hydrodynamics
Following on our previous work [S. Delong and B. E. Griffith and E.
Vanden-Eijnden and A. Donev, Phys. Rev. E, 87(3):033302, 2013], we develop
temporal integrators for solving Langevin stochastic differential equations
that arise in fluctuating hydrodynamics. Our simple predictor-corrector schemes
add fluctuations to standard second-order deterministic solvers in a way that
maintains second-order weak accuracy for linearized fluctuating hydrodynamics.
We construct a general class of schemes and recommend two specific schemes: an
explicit midpoint method, and an implicit trapezoidal method. We also construct
predictor-corrector methods for integrating the overdamped limit of systems of
equations with a fast and slow variable in the limit of infinite separation of
the fast and slow timescales. We propose using random finite differences to
approximate some of the stochastic drift terms that arise because of the
kinetic multiplicative noise in the limiting dynamics. We illustrate our
integrators on two applications involving the development of giant
nonequilibrium concentration fluctuations in diffusively-mixing fluids. We
first study the development of giant fluctuations in recent experiments
performed in microgravity using an overdamped integrator. We then include the
effects of gravity, and find that we also need to include the effects of fluid
inertia, which affects the dynamics of the concentration fluctuations greatly
at small wavenumbers.Comment: Published with some errors (fixed here) as Phys. Rev. E, 90, 063312,
201
Effect of HSV-2 Suppressive Therapy on Genital Tract HIV-1 RNA Shedding among Women on HAART: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial
Background. The role of suppressive HSV therapy in women coinfected with HSV-2 and HIV-1 taking highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is unclear. Methods. 60 women with HIV-1/HSV-2 coinfection on HAART with plasma HIV-1 viral load (PVL) ≤75 copies/mL were randomized to receive acyclovir (N = 30) or no acyclovir (N = 30). PVL, genital tract (GT) HIV-1, and GT HSV were measured every 4 weeks for one year. Results. Detection of GT HIV-1 was not significantly different in the two arms (OR 1.23, P = 0.67), although this pilot study was underpowered to detect this difference. When PVL was undetectable, the odds of detecting GT HIV were 0.4 times smaller in the acyclovir arm than in the control arm, though this was not statistically significant (P = 0.07). The odds of detecting GT HSV DNA in women receiving acyclovir were significantly lower than in women in the control group, OR 0.38, P < 0.05. Conclusions. Chronic suppressive therapy with acyclovir in HIV-1/HSV-2-positive women on HAART significantly reduces asymptomatic GT HSV shedding, though not GT HIV shedding or PVL. PVL was strongly associated with GT HIV shedding, reinforcing the importance of HAART in decreasing HIV sexual transmission
Diverse syntrophic partnerships from deep-sea methane vents revealed by direct cell capture and metagenomics
Microorganisms play a fundamental role in the cycling of nutrients and energy on our planet. A common strategy for many microorganisms mediating biogeochemical cycles in anoxic environments is syntrophy, frequently necessitating close spatial proximity between microbial partners. We are only now beginning to fully appreciate the diversity and pervasiveness of microbial partnerships in nature, the majority of which cannot be replicated in the laboratory. One notable example of such cooperation is the interspecies association between anaerobic methane oxidizing archaea (ANME) and sulfate-reducing bacteria. These consortia are globally distributed in the environment and provide a significant sink for methane by substantially reducing the export of this potent greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. The interdependence of these currently uncultured microbes renders them difficult to study, and our knowledge of their physiological capabilities in nature is limited. Here, we have developed a method to capture select microorganisms directly from the environment, using combined fluorescence in situ hybridization and immunomagnetic cell capture. We used this method to purify syntrophic anaerobic methane oxidizing ANME-2c archaea and physically associated microorganisms directly from deep-sea marine sediment. Metagenomics, PCR, and microscopy of these purified consortia revealed unexpected diversity of associated bacteria, including Betaproteobacteria and a second sulfate-reducing Deltaproteobacterial partner. The detection of nitrogenase genes within the metagenome and subsequent demonstration of 15N2 incorporation in the biomass of these methane-oxidizing consortia suggest a possible role in new nitrogen inputs by these syntrophic assemblages
A Graph Theoretic Approach for Object Shape Representation in Compositional Hierarchies Using a Hybrid Generative-Descriptive Model
A graph theoretic approach is proposed for object shape representation in a
hierarchical compositional architecture called Compositional Hierarchy of Parts
(CHOP). In the proposed approach, vocabulary learning is performed using a
hybrid generative-descriptive model. First, statistical relationships between
parts are learned using a Minimum Conditional Entropy Clustering algorithm.
Then, selection of descriptive parts is defined as a frequent subgraph
discovery problem, and solved using a Minimum Description Length (MDL)
principle. Finally, part compositions are constructed by compressing the
internal data representation with discovered substructures. Shape
representation and computational complexity properties of the proposed approach
and algorithms are examined using six benchmark two-dimensional shape image
datasets. Experiments show that CHOP can employ part shareability and indexing
mechanisms for fast inference of part compositions using learned shape
vocabularies. Additionally, CHOP provides better shape retrieval performance
than the state-of-the-art shape retrieval methods.Comment: Paper : 17 pages. 13th European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV
2014), Zurich, Switzerland, September 6-12, 2014, Proceedings, Part III, pp
566-581. Supplementary material can be downloaded from
http://link.springer.com/content/esm/chp:10.1007/978-3-319-10578-9_37/file/MediaObjects/978-3-319-10578-9_37_MOESM1_ESM.pd
Socio-Economic Instability and the Scaling of Energy Use with Population Size
The size of the human population is relevant to the development of a sustainable world, yet the forces setting growth or declines in the human population are poorly understood. Generally, population growth rates depend on whether new individuals compete for the same energy (leading to Malthusian or density-dependent growth) or help to generate new energy (leading to exponential and super-exponential growth). It has been hypothesized that exponential and super-exponential growth in humans has resulted from carrying capacity, which is in part determined by energy availability, keeping pace with or exceeding the rate of population growth. We evaluated the relationship between energy use and population size for countries with long records of both and the world as a whole to assess whether energy yields are consistent with the idea of an increasing carrying capacity. We find that on average energy use has indeed kept pace with population size over long time periods. We also show, however, that the energy-population scaling exponent plummets during, and its temporal variability increases preceding, periods of social, political, technological, and environmental change. We suggest that efforts to increase the reliability of future energy yields may be essential for stabilizing both population growth and the global socio-economic system
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