1,179 research outputs found
Origin and demographic history of the endemic Taiwan spruce (Picea morrisonicola)
Taiwan spruce (Picea morrisonicola) is a vulnerable conifer species endemic to the island of Taiwan. A warming climate and competition from subtropical tree species has limited the range of Taiwan spruce to the higher altitudes of the island. Using seeds sampled from an area in the central mountain range of Taiwan, 15 nuclear loci were sequenced in order to measure genetic variation and to assess the long-term genetic stability of the species. Genetic diversity is low and comparable to other spruce species with limited ranges such as Picea breweriana, Picea chihuahuana, and Picea schrenkiana. Importantly, analysis using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) provides evidence for a drastic decline in the effective population size approximately 0.3–0.5 million years ago (mya). We used simulations to show that this is unlikely to be a false-positive result due to the limited sample used here. To investigate the phylogenetic origin of Taiwan spruce, additional sequencing was performed in the Chinese spruce Picea wilsonii and combined with previously published data for three other mainland China species, Picea purpurea, Picea likiangensis, and P. schrenkiana. Analysis of population structure revealed that P. morrisonicola clusters most closely with P. wilsonii, and coalescent analyses using the program MIMAR dated the split to 4–8 mya, coincidental to the formation of Taiwan. Considering the population decrease that occurred after the split, however, led to a much more recent origin
Temperature dependent magnetic anisotropy in metallic magnets from an ab-initio electronic structure theory: L1_0-ordered FePt
On the basis of a first-principles, relativistic electronic structure theory
of finite temperature metallic magnetism, we investigate the variation of
magnetic anisotropy, K, with magnetisation, M, in metallic ferromagnets. We
apply the theory to the high magnetic anisotropy material, L1_0-ordered FePt,
and find its uniaxial K consistent with a magnetic easy axis perpendicular to
the Fe/Pt layering for all M and to be proportional to M^2 for a broad range of
values of M. For small M, near the Curie temperature, the calculations pick out
the easy axis for the onset of magnetic order. Our results are in good
agreement with recent experimental measurements on this important magnetic
material.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Charge Distributions in Metallic Alloys: a Charge Excess Functional theory approach
Charge Distributions in Metallic Alloys: a Charge Excess Functional theory
approachComment: 13 pages, 5 figure
Formal Specification and Testing of a Management Architecture
The importance of network and distributed systems management to supply and maintain services required by users has led to a demand for management facilities. Open network management is assisted by representing the system resources to be managed as objects, and providing standard services and protocols for interrogating and manipulating these objects. This paper examines the application of formal description techniques to the specification of managed objects by presenting a case study in the specification and testing of a management architecture. We describe a formal specification of a management architecture suitable for scheduling and distributing services across nodes in a distributed system. In addition, we show how formal specifications can be used to generate conformance tests for the management architecture
Depletion of density of states near Fermi energy induced by disorder and electron correlation in alloys
We have performed high resolution photoemission study of substitutionally
disordered alloys Cu-Pt, Cu-Pd, Cu-Ni, and Pd-Pt. The ratios between alloy
spectra and pure metal spectra are found to have dips at the Fermi level when
the residual resistivity is high and when rather strong repulsive
electron-electron interaction is expected. This is in accordance with Altshuler
and Aronov's model which predicts depletion of density of states at the Fermi
level when both disorder and electron correlation are present.Comment: 1 tex file and 4 ps file
Virtual-crystal approximation that works: Locating a composition phase boundary in Pb(Zr_{1-x}Ti_3)O_3
We present a new method for modeling disordered solid solutions, based on the
virtual crystal approximation (VCA). The VCA is a tractable way of studying
configurationally disordered systems; traditionally, the potentials which
represent atoms of two or more elements are averaged into a composite atomic
potential. We have overcome significant shortcomings of the standard VCA by
developing a potential which yields averaged atomic properties. We perform the
VCA on a ferroelectric oxide, determining the energy differences between the
high-temperature rhombohedral, low-temperature rhombohedral and tetragonal
phases of Pb(Zr_{1-x}Ti_x)O_3 at x=0.5 and comparing these results to
superlattice calculations and experiment. We then use our new method to
determine the preferred structural phase at x=0.4. We find that the
low-temperature rhombohedral phase becomes the ground state at x=0.4, in
agreement with experimental findings.Comment: 5 pages, no figure
Stochastic Resonance of Ensemble Neurons for Transient Spike Trains: A Wavelet Analysis
By using the wavelet transformation (WT), we have analyzed the response of an
ensemble of (=1, 10, 100 and 500) Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) neurons to {\it
transient} -pulse spike trains () with independent Gaussian noises.
The cross-correlation between the input and output signals is expressed in
terms of the WT expansion coefficients. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is
evaluated by using the {\it denoising} method within the WT, by which the noise
contribution is extracted from output signals. Although the response of a
single (N=1) neuron to sub-threshold transient signals with noises is quite
unreliable, the transmission fidelity assessed by the cross-correlation and SNR
is shown to be much improved by increasing the value of : a population of
neurons play an indispensable role in the stochastic resonance (SR) for
transient spike inputs. It is also shown that in a large-scale ensemble, the
transmission fidelity for supra-threshold transient spikes is not significantly
degraded by a weak noise which is responsible to SR for sub-threshold inputs.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure
Pion-Lambda-Sigma Coupling Extracted from Hyperonic Atoms
The latest measurements of the atomic level width in Sigma-hyperonic Pb atom
offer the most accurate datum in the region of low-energy Sigma-hyperon
physics. Atomic widths are due to the conversion of Sigma-nucleon into
Lambda-nucleon. In high angular momentum states this conversion is dominated by
the one-pion exchange. A joint analysis of the data of the scattering of
negative-Sigma on proton converting into a Lambda and a neutron and of the
atomic widths allows to extract a pseudovector pion-hyperon-Sigma coupling
constant of 0.048 with a statistical error of +-0.005 and a systematic one of
+-0.004. This corresponds to a pseudoscalar coupling constant of 13.3 with a
statistical uncertainty of 1.4 and a systematic one of 1.1.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figure, Use of Revtex.st
The three- and four-nucleon systems from chiral effective field theory
Recently developed chiral nucleon-nucleon (NN) forces at next-to-leading
order (NLO) that describe NN phase shifts up to about 100 MeV fairly well have
been applied to 3N and 4N systems. Faddeev-Yakubovsky equations have been
solved rigorously. The chiral NLO forces depend on a momentum cut-off \Lambda
lying between 540-600 MeV/c. The resulting 3N and 4N binding energies are in
the same range as found using standard NN potentials. In additon, low-energy 3N
scattering observables are very well reproduced like for standard NN forces.
Surprisingly, the long standing A_y-puzzle is resolved at NLO. The cut-off
dependence of the scattering observables is rather mild.Comment: 4 pp, revtex, 3 figure
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