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The Community Ecology of Herbivore Regulation in an Agroecosystem: Lessons from Complex Systems
AbstractWhether an ecological community is controlled from above or below remains a popular framework that continues generating interesting research questions and takes on especially important meaning in agroecosystems. We describe the regulation from above of three coffee herbivores, a leaf herbivore (the green coffee scale, Coccus viridis), a seed predator (the coffee berry borer, Hypothenemus hampei), and a plant pathogen (the coffee rust disease, caused by Hemelia vastatrix) by various natural enemies, emphasizing the remarkable complexity involved. We emphasize the intersection of this classical question of ecology with the burgeoning field of complex systems, including references to chaos, critical transitions, hysteresis, basin or boundary collision, and spatial self-organization, all aimed at the applied question of pest control in the coffee agroecosystem
Development, implementation and pilot evaluation of a Web-based Virtual Patient Case Simulation environment – Web-SP
BACKGROUND: The Web-based Simulation of Patients (Web-SP) project was initiated in order to facilitate the use of realistic and interactive virtual patients (VP) in medicine and healthcare education. Web-SP focuses on moving beyond the technology savvy teachers, when integrating simulation-based education into health sciences curricula, by making the creation and use of virtual patients easier. The project strives to provide a common generic platform for design/creation, management, evaluation and sharing of web-based virtual patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate if it was possible to develop a web-based virtual patient case simulation environment where the entire case authoring process might be handled by teachers and which would be flexible enough to be used in different healthcare disciplines. RESULTS: The Web-SP system was constructed to support easy authoring, management and presentation of virtual patient cases. The case authoring environment was found to facilitate for teachers to create full-fledged patient cases without the assistance of computer specialists. Web-SP was successfully implemented at several universities by taking into account key factors such as cost, access, security, scalability and flexibility. Pilot evaluations in medical, dentistry and pharmacy courses shows that students regarded Web-SP as easy to use, engaging and to be of educational value. Cases adapted for all three disciplines were judged to be of significant educational value by the course leaders. CONCLUSION: The Web-SP system seems to fulfil the aim of providing a common generic platform for creation, management and evaluation of web-based virtual patient cases. The responses regarding the authoring environment indicated that the system might be user-friendly enough to appeal to a majority of the academic staff. In terms of implementation strengths, Web-SP seems to fulfil most needs from course directors and teachers from various educational institutions and disciplines. The system is currently in use or under implementation in several healthcare disciplines at more than ten universities worldwide. Future aims include structuring the exchange of cases between teachers and academic institutions by building a VP library function. We intend to follow up the positive results presented in this paper with other studies looking at the learning outcomes, critical thinking and patient management. Studying the potential of Web-SP as an assessment tool will also be performed. More information about Web-SP
Measurement of inclusive electron cross section in collisions at TRISTAN
We have studied open charm production in collisions with the
TOPAZ detector at the TRISTAN collider. In this study, charm
quarks were identified by electrons (and positrons) from semi-leptonic decays
of charmed hadrons. The data corresponded to an integrated luminosity of 95.3
pb at a center-of-mass energy of 58 GeV. The results are presented as
the cross sections of inclusive electron production in
collisions with an anti-tag condition, as well as the subprocess cross
sections, which correspond to resolved-photon processes. The latter were
measured by using a sub-sample with remnant jets. A comparison with various
theoretical predictions based on direct and resolved-photon processes showed
that our data prefer that with relatively large gluon contents in a photon at
small , with the next-to-leading order correction, and with a
charm-quark mass of 1.3 GeV.Comment: 26 pages, Latex format (article), 5 figures included, to be published
in Phys. Lett.
Evidence of B0 --> rho0 pi0
We present the first evidence of the decay B0 --> rho0 pi0, using 140fb^-1 of
data collected at the Upsilon(4S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB
asymmetric e+e- collider. We detect a signal with a significance of 3.5
standard deviations, and measure the branching fraction to be Br(B0 ->- rho0
pi0) = (5.1 +/- 1.6(stat) +/- 0.9(syst))*10^-6.Comment: RevTex4, 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.Let
Observation of the decay B^0->D+D*-
We report the first observation of the decay B^0->D+-D*-+ with the Belle
detector at the KEKB e^+e^- collider operated at the Upsilon(4S) resonance. The
sum of branching fractions B(B^0->D+D*-)+B(B^0->D-D*+) is measured to be
(1.17+-0.26+0.22-0.25)x10^-3 using the full reconstruction method where both
charmed mesons from B^0 decays are reconstructed. A consistent value
((1.48+-0.38+0.28-0.31)x10^-3) is obtained using a partial reconstruction
technique that only uses the slow pion from the D*- ->bar D^0pi- decay and a
fully reconstructed D+ to reconstruct the B^0.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Measurement of Branching Fractions and Charge Asymmetries for Two-Body B Meson Decays with Charmonium
We report branching fractions and charge asymmetries for exclusive decays of
charged and neutral B mesons to two-body final states containing a charmonium
meson, J/psi or psi(2S). This result is based on a 29.4 fb^{-1} data sample
collected at the Upsilon(4S) resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB
asymmetric e+e- collider.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, revte
Measurement of the Branching Fraction for B->eta' K and Search for B->eta'pi+
We report measurements for two-body charmless B decays with an eta' meson in
the final state. Using 11.1X10^6 BBbar pairs collected with the Belle detector,
we find BF(B^+ ->eta'K^+)=(79^+12_-11 +-9)x10^-6 and BF(B^0 ->
eta'K^0)=(55^+19_-16 +-8)x10^-6, where the first and second errors are
statistical and systematic, respectively. No signal is observed in the mode B^+
-> eta' pi^+, and we set a 90% confidence level upper limit of BF(B^+->
eta'pi^+) eta'K^+- decays is
investigated and a limit at 90% confidence level of -0.20<Acp<0.32 is obtained.Comment: Submitted to Physics Letters
Study of B meson decays to three-body charmless hadronic final states
We report results of a study of charmless B meson decays to three-body KPiPi,
KKPi and KKK final states. Measurements of branching fractions for B decays to
K+0Pi+Pi-, K+K+K-, K0K+K-, KsKsK+ and KsKsKs final states are presented. The
decays B0=>K0K+K-, B+=>KsKsK+ and B0=>KsKsKs are observed for the first time.
We also report evidence for B+=>K+K-Pi+ decay. For the three-body final states
K0K+K-, KsKsPi+, K+K+Pi- and K-Pi+Pi+ 90% confidence level upper limits are
reported. Finally, we discuss the possibility of using the three-body
B0=>KsK+K- decay for CP violation studies. The results are obtained with a 78
fb^-1 data sample collected at the Y(4S) resonance by the Belle detector
operating at the KEKB asymmetric energy e+e- collider.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures. To be submitted to PR
Observation of Cabibbo-suppressed and W-exchange Lambda_c^+ baryon decays
We present measurements of the Cabibbo-suppressed decays Lambda_c^+ -->
Lambda0 K+ and Lambda_c^+ --> Sigma0 K+ (both first observations), Lambda_c^+
--> Sigma+ K+ pi- (seen with large statistics for the first time), Lambda_c^+
--> p K+ K- and Lambda_c^+ --> p phi (measured with improved accuracy).
Improved branching ratio measurements for the decays Lambda_c^+ --> Sigma+ K+
K- and Lambda_c^+ --> Sigma+ phi, which are attributed to W-exchange diagrams,
are shown. We also present the first evidence for Lambda_c^+ --> Xi(1690)^0 K+
and set an upper limit on the non-resonant decay Lambda_c^+ --> Sigma+ K+ K-.
This analysis was performed using 32.6 fb^{-1} of data collected by the Belle
detector at the asymmetric e+ e- collider KEKB.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Lett. B. v2: A small correction to the Authorlist
was made. An earlier version of this analysis was released as
BELLE-CONF-0130, hep-ex/010800
Observation of B+- -> omega K+- Decay
We report the first observation of the charmless two-body mode decay, and a new measurement of the branching fraction for the
decay. The measured branching fractions are
and . %and we set 90% confidence
level upper limits of %.
We also measure the partial rate asymmetry of decays
and obtain . The results are based on
a data sample of 29.4 fb collected on the resonance by
the Belle detector at the KEKB collider.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, resubmitted to Phys. Rev. Let
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