864 research outputs found
Earth system dynamics in the Anthropocene: Modelling key processes of climate-human interactions in the terrestrial biosphere
Hysteresis and competition between disorder and crystallization in sheared and vibrated granular flow
Experiments on spherical particles in a 3D Couette cell vibrated from below
and sheared from above show a hysteretic freezing/melting transition. Under
sufficient vibration a crystallized state is observed, which can be melted by
sufficient shear. The critical line for this transition coincides with equal
kinetic energies for vibration and shear. The force distribution is
double-peaked in the crystalline state and single-peaked with an approximately
exponential tail in the disordered state. A linear relation between pressure
and volume () exists for a continuum of partially and/or
intermittently melted states over a range of parameters
The Jamming Transition in Granular Systems
Recent simulations have predicted that near jamming for collections of
spherical particles, there will be a discontinuous increase in the mean contact
number, Z, at a critical volume fraction, phi_c. Above phi_c, Z and the
pressure, P are predicted to increase as power laws in phi-phi_c. In
experiments using photoelastic disks we corroborate a rapid increase in Z at
phi_c and power-law behavior above phi_c for Z and P. Specifically we find
power-law increase as a function of phi-phi_c for Z-Z_c with an exponent beta
around 0.5, and for P with an exponent psi around 1.1. These exponents are in
good agreement with simulations. We also find reasonable agreement with a
recent mean-field theory for frictionless particles.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 2 pages supplement; minor changes and
clarifications, 2 addtl. refs., accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
Finite-size behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat
For models which exhibit a continuous phase transition in the thermodynamic
limit a numerical study of small systems reveals a non-monotonic behaviour of
the microcanonical specific heat as a function of the system size. This is in
contrast to a treatment in the canonical ensemble where the maximum of the
specific heat increases monotonically with the size of the system. A
phenomenological theory is developed which permits to describe this peculiar
behaviour of the microcanonical specific heat and allows in principle the
determination of microcanonical critical exponents.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to J. Phys.
Urinary neopterin of wild chimpanzees indicates that cell-mediated immune activity varies by age, sex, and female reproductive status
Frozen capillary waves on glass surfaces: an AFM study
Using atomic force microscopy on silica and float glass surfaces, we give
evidence that the roughness of melted glass surfaces can be quantitatively
accounted for by frozen capillary waves. In this framework the height spatial
correlations are shown to obey a logarithmic scaling law; the identification of
this behaviour allows to estimate the ratio where is the
Boltzmann constant, the interface tension and the temperature
corresponding to the ``freezing'' of the capillary waves. Variations of
interface tension and (to a lesser extent) temperatures of annealing treatments
are shown to be directly measurable from a statistical analysis of the
roughness spectrum of the glass surfaces
Pattern Formation in the Inhomogeneous Cooling State of Granular Fluids
We present results from comprehensive event-driven (ED) simulations of
nonlinear pattern formation in freely-evolving granular gases. In particular,
we focus on the the morphologies of density and velocity fields in the
inhomogeneous cooling state (ICS). We emphasize the strong analogy between the
ICS morphologies and pattern formation in phase ordering systems with a
globally conserved order parameter.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. to appear in Europhys. Let
Plasma testosterone and androstenedione levels follow the same sex-specific patterns in the two Pan species
In most animals, males are considered more aggressive, in terms of frequency and intensity of aggressive behaviors, than their female peers. However, in several species this widespread male-biased aggression pattern is either extenuated, absent, or even sex-reversed. Studies investigating potential neuro-physiological mechanisms driving the selection for female aggression in these species have revealed an important, but not exclusive role of androgens in the expression of the observed sex-specific behavioral patterns. Two very closely related mammalian species that markedly differ in the expression and degree of sex-specific aggression are the two Pan species, where the chimpanzee societies are male-dominated while in bonobos sex-biased aggression patterns are alleviated. Using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) methods, we measured levels of plasma testosterone and androstenedione levels in male and female zoo-housed bonobos (N = 21; 12 females, 9 males) and chimpanzees (N = 41; 27 females, 14 males). Our results show comparable absolute and relative intersexual patterns of blood androgen levels in both species of Pan. Plasma testosterone levels were higher in males (bonobos: females: average 0.53 ± 0.30 ng/mL; males 6.70 ± 2.93 ng/mL; chimpanzees: females: average 0.40 ± 0.23 ng/mL; males 5.84 ± 3.63 ng/mL) and plasma androstenedione levels were higher in females of either species (bonobos: females: average 1.83 ± 0.87 ng/mL; males 1.13 ± 0.44 ng/mL; chimpanzees: females: average 1.84 ± 0.92 ng/mL; males 1.22 ± 0.55 ng/mL). The latter result speaks against a role of androstenedione in the mediation of heightened female aggression, as had been suggested based on studies in other mammal species where females are dominant and show high levels of female aggressivenes
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