Managing conflict between bats and humans: The response of soprano pipistrelles (pipistrellus pygmaeus) to exclusion from roosts in houses

Copyright: © 2015 Stone et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Conflict can arise when bats roost in human dwellings and householders are affected adversely by their presence. In the United Kingdom, the exclusion of bats from roosts can be licensed under exceptional circumstances to alleviate conflict, but the fate of excluded bats and the impact on their survival and reproduction is not well understood. Using radiotracking, we investigated the effects of exclusion on the soprano pipistrelle Pipistrellus pygmaeus, a species that commonly roosts in buildings in Europe. Exclusions were performed under licence at five roosts in England in spring, when females were in the early stages of pregnancy. Following exclusion, all bats found alternative roosts and colonies congregated in nearby known roosts that had been used by radio-tagged bats prior to exclusion. We found no difference in roosting behaviour before and after exclusion. Both the frequency of roost switching and the type of roosts used by bats remained unchanged. We also found no change in foraging behaviour. Bats foraged in the same areas, travelled similar distances to reach foraging areas and showed similar patterns of habitat selection before and after exclusion. Population modelling suggested that any reduction in survival following exclusion could have a negative impact on population growth, whereas a reduction in productivity would have less effect. While the number of soprano pipistrelle exclusions currently licensed each year is likely to have little effect on local populations, the cumulative impacts of licensing the destruction of large numbers of roosts may be of concern

Distinguishing WH and WBBbar production at the Fermilab Tevatron

The production of a Higgs boson in association with a W-boson is the most likely process for the discovery of a light Higgs at the Fermilab Tevatron. Since it decays primarily to b-quark pairs, the principal background for this associated Higgs production process is WBBbar, where the BBbar pair comes from the splitting of an off mass shell gluon. In this paper we investigate whether the spin angular correlations of the final state particles can be used to separate the Higgs signal from the WBBbar background. We develop a general numerical technique which allows one to find a spin basis optimized according to a given criterion, and also give a new algorithm for reconstructing the W longitudinal momentum which is suitable for the WH and WBBbar processes.Comment: latex, 12 pages, 19 postscript figure

Properties of the Strange Axial Mesons in the Relativized Quark Model

We studied properties of the strange axial mesons in the relativized quark model. We calculated the $K_1$ decay constant in the quark model and showed how it can be used to extract the $K_1 (^3P_1) - K_1 (^1P_1)$ mixing angle ($\theta_K$) from the weak decay $\tau \to K_1 \nu_\tau$. The ratio $BR(\tau \to \nu_\tau K_1 (1270))/BR(\tau\to \nu_\tau K_1(1400))$ is the most sensitive measurement and also the most reliable since the largest of the theoretical uncertainties factor out. However the current bounds extracted from the TPC/Two-Gamma collaboration measurements are rather weak: we typically obtain $-30^o \lesssim \theta_K \lesssim 50^o$ at 68\% C.L. We also calculated the strong OZI-allowed decays in the pseudoscalar emission model and the flux-tube breaking model and extracted a $^3P_1 - ^1P_1$ mixing angle of $\theta_K \simeq 45^o$. Our analysis also indicates that the heavy quark limit does not give a good description of the strange mesons.Comment: Revised version to be published in Phys. Rev. D. Minor changes. Latex file uses revtex version 3 and epsfig, 4 postcript figures are attached. The full postcript version with embedded figures is available at ftp://ftp.physics.carleton.ca/pub/theory/godfrey/ocipc9512.ps.

Field trialling of a pulse airtightness tester in a range of UK homes

A new low pressure ‘quasi-steady’ pulse technique for determining the airtightness of buildings has been developed further and compared with the standard blower-door technique for field-testing a range of typical UK homes. The reported low pressure air pulse unit (APU) has gone through several development stages related to optimizing the algorithm, pressure reference and system construction. The technique, which is compact, portable and easy to use, has been tested alongside the standard blower-door technique to measure the airtightness of a range of typical UK home types. Representative of the UK housing stock, the homes mostly have low levels of airtightness, resulting in poor energy performance, poor indoor air quality and poor thermal comfort. Some of these homes have been targeted for retrofitting and a quick, low cost and simple method for accurately determining their airtightness has clear advantages for correctly predicting the benefits of any improvements. A comparison between the results given by the two techniques is presented and the field trials indicate that the latest version of the pulse technique is reliable for determining building leakage at low pressure. Repeatability of multiple APU tests in the same house is found to be within +/-5% of the mean. A test where the leakage is increased by a known amount shows the APU is able to measure the change more accurately than the blower-door test. The APU also gives convenience in practical applications, due to being more compact and portable, plus it doesn’t need to penetrate the building envelope. The field trials demonstrate the pulse test has the potential to be a feasible alternative to the standard blower-door test

Heavy Quarks and Heavy Quarkonia as Tests of Thermalization

We present here a brief summary of new results on heavy quarks and heavy quarkonia from the PHENIX experiment as presented at the "Quark Gluon Plasma Thermalization" Workshop in Vienna, Austria in August 2005, directly following the International Quark Matter Conference in Hungary.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figures, Quark Gluon Plasma Thermalization Workshop (Vienna August 2005) Proceeding

Measurement of Leading Proton and Neutron Production in Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA

Deep--inelastic scattering events with a leading baryon have been detected by the H1 experiment at HERA using a forward proton spectrometer and a forward neutron calorimeter. Semi--inclusive cross sections have been measured in the kinematic region 2 <= Q^2 <= 50 GeV^2, 6.10^-5 <= x <= 6.10^-3 and baryon p_T <= MeV, for events with a final state proton with energy 580 <= E' <= 740 GeV, or a neutron with energy E' >= 160 GeV. The measurements are used to test production models and factorization hypotheses. A Regge model of leading baryon production which consists of pion, pomeron and secondary reggeon exchanges gives an acceptable description of both semi-inclusive cross sections in the region 0.7 <= E'/E_p <= 0.9, where E_p is the proton beam energy. The leading neutron data are used to estimate for the first time the structure function of the pion at small Bjorken--x.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Eur. Phys.

Our friend in the north: the origins, evolution and appeal of the cult of St Duthac of Tain in later Middle Ages

St Duthac of Tain was one of the most popular Scottish saints of the later middle ages. From the late fourteenth century until the reformation devotion to Duthac outstripped that of Andrew, Columba, Margaret and Mungo, and Duthac's shrine in Easter Ross became a regular haunt of James IV (1488-1513) and James V (1513-42). Hitherto historians have tacitly accepted the view of David McRoberts that Duthac was one of several local saints whose emergence and popularity in the fifteenth century was part of a wider self-consciously nationalist trend in Scottish religious practice. This study looks beyond the paradigm of nationalism to trace and explain the popularity of St Duthac from the shadowy origins of the cult to its heyday in the early sixteenth century