Rarity and shifts in occurrence of endangered butterflies in South Korea

Endangered species are often the focus of public attention, partly because of their vulnerability to environmental changes, such as climate and land use change, and subsequently being at high risk of extinctions. Hence, red lists of endangered species play anessential in nature conservation. Although several endangered butterfly species have been previously listed as endangered species by government and/or individuals in South Korea, these red listsrarely include reliable quantitative population data. This has led to endless and unproductive debates on the selection of endangered species. Following Korean butterfly atlases, we assessed the population status of Korean endangered butterfly species whose distributions have been previously published. We hypothesized that these endangered species are rare and are decreasing in occurrence. We found that the decrease in occurrence is more important in determining endanger status than rarity. Using values of rarity and shifts in species occurrence, we selected endangered species from the previously published endangered species. Only eight species of 20 previous endangered species were defined as endangered by this semi-quantitative classification. This finding suggests that the subjective determination based on expert's perception would define more species as endangered compared to the quantitative determination based on population data.Article信州大学農学部紀要 50（1-2）: 37-42(2014)departmental bulletin pape

A Patterned Single Layer Graphene Resistance Temperature Sensor

Micro-fabricated single-layer graphenes (SLGs) on a silicon dioxide (SiO2)/Si substrate, a silicon nitride (SiN) membrane, and a suspended architecture are presented for their use as temperature sensors. These graphene temperature sensors act as resistance temperature detectors, showing a quadratic dependence of resistance on the temperature in a range between 283 K and 303 K. The observed resistance change of the graphene temperature sensors are explained by the temperature dependent electron mobility relationship (~T−4) and electron-phonon scattering. By analyzing the transient response of the SLG temperature sensors on different substrates, it is found that the graphene sensor on the SiN membrane shows the highest sensitivity due to low thermal mass, while the sensor on SiO2/Si reveals the lowest one. Also, the graphene on the SiN membrane reveals not only the fastest response, but also better mechanical stability compared to the suspended graphene sensor. Therefore, the presented results show that the temperature sensors based on SLG with an extremely low thermal mass can be used in various applications requiring high sensitivity and fast operation

Triclinic Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) as a High Redox Potential Cathode Material for Na-Ion Batteries

Two types of sodium cobalt pyrophosphates, triclinic Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) and orthorhombic Na2CoP2O7, are compared as high-voltage cathode materials for Na-ion batteries. Na2CoP2O7 shows no electrochemical activity, delivering negligible capacity. In contrast, Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) exhibits good electrochemical performance, such as high redox potential at ca. 4.3 V (vs. Na/Na+) and stable capacity retention over 50 cycles, although Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) delivered approximately 40 mA h g(-1). This is attributed to the fact that Na2CoP2O7 (similar to 3.1 angstrom) has smaller diffusion channel size than Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) (similar to 4.2 angstrom). Moreover, the electrochemical performance of Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) is examined using Na cells and Li cells. The overpotential of Na cells is smaller than that of Li cells. This is due to the fact that Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) has a smaller charge transfer resistance and higher diffusivity for Na+ ions than Li+ ions. This implies that the large channel size of Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) is more appropriate for Na+ ions than Li+ ions. Therefore, Na3.12Co2.44(P2O7)(2) is considered a promising high-voltage cathode material for Na-ion batteries, if new electrolytes, which are stable above 4.5 V vs. Na/Na+, are introduced.

Designing and understanding directional emission from spiral microlasers

The availability of microlasers with highly directional far-field characteristics is crucial for future applications. To this end we study the far-field emission of active microcavities with spiral shape using the Schroedinger-Bloch model. We find that they can provide directional emission under the conditions of (i) pumping along the resonator boundary and (ii) for specific resonator geometries. We systematically study the far-field characteristics under variation of the pumped area and the cavity geometry, and identify an directionality-optimized regime. Our results consistently explain previously obtained experimental results.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Optics Letter