Pathogenicity of Phytophthora multivora to Eucalyptus gomphocephala and E. marginata

Since the early 1990s there has been a significant decline of E. gomphocephala, and more recently E. marginata, in the tuart forest in tuart woodland in Yalgorup National Park SW Western Australia, although no satisfactory aetiology has been established to explain the decline. Characteristics of the canopy dieback and decline distribution are reminiscent of other forest declines known to involve Phytophthora soil pathogens and indicate that a Phytophthora species may be involved in the decline. In 2007 isolates of Phytophthora multivora, recently described by (1), were recovered from rhizosphere soil of declining or dead trees of Eucalyptus gomphocephala and E. marginata. For E. gomphocephala and E. marginata, the pathogenicity of P. multivora was tested: ex situ on seedlings using a soil infestation method; and in situ on stems using an under bark infestation method

Phytophthora multivora sp. nov., a new species recovered from declining Eucalyptus, Banksia, Agonis and other plant species in Western Australia

A new Phytophthora species, isolated from rhizosphere soil of declining or dead trees of Eucalyptus gomphocephala, E. marginata, Agonis flexuosa, and another 13 plant species, and from fine roots of E. marginata and collar lesions of Banksia attenuata in Western Australia, is described as Phytophthora multivora sp. nov. It is homothallic and produces semipapillate sporangia, smooth-walled oogonia containing thick-walled oospores, and paragynous antheridia. Although morphologically similar to P. citricola, phylogenetic analyses of the ITS and cox1 gene regions demonstrate that P. multivora is unique. Phytophthora multivora is pathogenic to bark and cambium of E. gomphocephala and E. marginata and is believed to be involved in the decline syndrome of both eucalypt species within the tuart woodland in south-west Western Australia

Making things happen : a model of proactive motivation

Being proactive is about making things happen, anticipating and preventing problems, and seizing opportunities. It involves self-initiated efforts to bring about change in the work environment and/or oneself to achieve a different future. The authors develop existing perspectives on this topic by identifying proactivity as a goal-driven process involving both the setting of a proactive goal (proactive goal generation) and striving to achieve that proactive goal (proactive goal striving). The authors identify a range of proactive goals that individuals can pursue in organizations. These vary on two dimensions: the future they aim to bring about (achieving a better personal fit within one’s work environment, improving the organization’s internal functioning, or enhancing the organization’s strategic fit with its environment) and whether the self or situation is being changed. The authors then identify “can do,” “reason to,” and “energized to” motivational states that prompt proactive goal generation and sustain goal striving. Can do motivation arises from perceptions of self-efficacy, control, and (low) cost. Reason to motivation relates to why someone is proactive, including reasons flowing from intrinsic, integrated, and identified motivation. Energized to motivation refers to activated positive affective states that prompt proactive goal processes. The authors suggest more distal antecedents, including individual differences (e.g., personality, values, knowledge and ability) as well as contextual variations in leadership, work design, and interpersonal climate, that influence the proactive motivational states and thereby boost or inhibit proactive goal processes. Finally, the authors summarize priorities for future researc

Relativistic Calculation of the Meson Spectrum: a Fully Covariant Treatment Versus Standard Treatments

A large number of treatments of the meson spectrum have been tried that consider mesons as quark - anti quark bound states. Recently, we used relativistic quantum "constraint" mechanics to introduce a fully covariant treatment defined by two coupled Dirac equations. For field-theoretic interactions, this procedure functions as a "quantum mechanical transform of Bethe-Salpeter equation". Here, we test its spectral fits against those provided by an assortment of models: Wisconsin model, Iowa State model, Brayshaw model, and the popular semi-relativistic treatment of Godfrey and Isgur. We find that the fit provided by the two-body Dirac model for the entire meson spectrum competes with the best fits to partial spectra provided by the others and does so with the smallest number of interaction functions without additional cutoff parameters necessary to make other approaches numerically tractable. We discuss the distinguishing features of our model that may account for the relative overall success of its fits. Note especially that in our approach for QCD, the resulting pion mass and associated Goldstone behavior depend sensitively on the preservation of relativistic couplings that are crucial for its success when solved nonperturbatively for the analogous two-body bound-states of QED.Comment: 75 pages, 6 figures, revised content

Test of a theoretical equation of state for elemental solids and liquids

We propose a means for constructing highly accurate equations of state (EOS) for elemental solids and liquids essentially from first principles, based upon a particular decomposition of the underlying condensed matter Hamiltonian for the nuclei and electrons. We also point out that at low pressures the neglect of anharmonic and electron-phonon terms, both contained in this formalism, results in errors of less than 5% in the thermal parts of the thermodynamic functions. Then we explicitly display the forms of the remaining terms in the EOS, commenting on the use of experiment and electronic structure theory to evaluate them. We also construct an EOS for Aluminum and compare the resulting Hugoniot with data up to 5 Mbar, both to illustrate our method and to see whether the approximation of neglecting anharmonicity et al. remains viable to such high pressures. We find a level of agreement with experiment that is consistent with the low-pressure results.Comment: Minor revisions for consistency with published versio

Tests of sunspot number sequences: 1. Using ionosonde data

More than 70 years ago it was recognised that ionospheric F2-layer critical frequencies [foF2] had a strong relationship to sunspot number. Using historic datasets from the Slough and Washington ionosondes, we evaluate the best statistical fits of foF2 to sunspot numbers (at each Universal Time [UT] separately) in order to search for drifts and abrupt changes in the fit residuals over Solar Cycles 17-21. This test is carried out for the original composite of the Wolf/Zürich/International sunspot number [R], the new “backbone” group sunspot number [RBB] and the proposed “corrected sunspot number” [RC]. Polynomial fits are made both with and without allowance for the white-light facular area, which has been reported as being associated with cycle-to-cycle changes in the sunspot number - foF2 relationship. Over the interval studied here, R, RBB, and RC largely differ in their allowance for the “Waldmeier discontinuity” around 1945 (the correction factor for which for R, RBB and RC is, respectively, zero, effectively over 20 %, and explicitly 11.6 %). It is shown that for Solar Cycles 18-21, all three sunspot data sequences perform well, but that the fit residuals are lowest and most uniform for RBB. We here use foF2 for those UTs for which R, RBB, and RC all give correlations exceeding 0.99 for intervals both before and after the Waldmeier discontinuity. The error introduced by the Waldmeier discontinuity causes R to underestimate the fitted values based on the foF2 data for 1932-1945 but RBB overestimates them by almost the same factor, implying that the correction for the Waldmeier discontinuity inherent in RBB is too large by a factor of two. Fit residuals are smallest and most uniform for RC and the ionospheric data support the optimum discontinuity multiplicative correction factor derived from the independent Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) sunspot group data for the same interval

Observation of Orbitally Excited B_s Mesons

We report the first observation of two narrow resonances consistent with states of orbitally excited (L=1) B_s mesons using 1 fb^{-1} of ppbar collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV collected with the CDF II detector at the Fermilab Tevatron. We use two-body decays into K^- and B^+ mesons reconstructed as B^+ \to J/\psi K^+, J/\psi \to \mu^+ \mu^- or B^+ \to \bar{D}^0 \pi^+, \bar{D}^0 \to K^+ \pi^-. We deduce the masses of the two states to be m(B_{s1}) = 5829.4 +- 0.7 MeV/c^2 and m(B_{s2}^*) = 5839.7 +- 0.7 MeV/c^2.Comment: Version accepted and published by Phys. Rev. Let

Recovered memories, satanic abuse, Dissociative Identity Disorder and false memories in the UK: a survey of Clinical Psychologists and Hypnotherapists

An online survey was conducted to examine psychological therapists’ experiences of, and beliefs about, cases of recovered memory, satanic / ritualistic abuse, Multiple Personality Disorder / Dissociative Identity Disorder, and false memory. Chartered Clinical Psychologists (n=183) and Hypnotherapists (n=119) responded. In terms of their experiences, Chartered Clinical Psychologists reported seeing more cases of satanic / ritualistic abuse compared to Hypnotherapists who, in turn, reported encountering more cases of childhood sexual abuse recovered for the first time in therapy, and more cases of suspected false memory. Chartered Clinical Psychologists were more likely to rate the essential accuracy of reports of satanic / ritualistic abuse as higher than Hypnotherapists. Belief in the accuracy of satanic / ritualistic abuse and Multiple Personality Disorder / Dissociative Identity Disorder reports correlated negatively with the belief that false memories were possible