Movement between crops and weeds: temporal refuges for aphidophagous insects in Central Chile

Villegas, CM (Villegas, Cinthya M.)[ 1 ] ; Verdugo, JA (Verdugo, Jaime A.)[ 1,3 ] ; Tapia, J (Tapia, Jaime)[ 2 ] ; Lavandero, B (Lavandero, Bias)[ 1 ].1 ] Univ Talca, Inst Biol Vegetal & Biotecnol, Talca, Chile.2 ] Univ Talca, Inst Quim Recursos Nat, Talca, ChileCrop edges have significant effects on populations of natural enemies, acting as source or sink habitats during the growing season. Previous observations have shown that coccinellid species are associated with thistle (Sylibum marianum (L.) Gaertn), a common exotic weed in the central valley of Chile. To determine whether thistles growing at crop edges act as a putative refuge for natural enemies, the seasonal relative abundance of aphidophagous coccinellids was estimated at 0, 10 and 25 m from the edges of three alfalfa fields. Mark-recapture studies were carried out using the trace element rubidium (Rb) to determine whether coccinellids moved between the edges and the alfalfa. The most common aphidophagous coccinellid species were Hippodamia convergens (63%), H. variegata (11%), Rhyzobius lophantae (4%) and Adalia angulifera (4%). In mid-November, the abundance of coccinellids at the edge of (0 m from the edge) the alfalfa plot increased compared to that at the center of the field (25 m from the edge), coinciding with a reduction in the population of aphids at all sampling points. Of the coccinellids captured at the thistle edge, 68% were marked with rubidium, suggesting movement of coccinellids from the alfalfa plot to the thistle growing at its edges. After the thistles were removed, coccinellids returned to the crop, as shown by the presence of marked coccinellids within the alfalfa fields at all three sampling distances. The results of this study suggest that thistles can act as a refuge for coccinellids when aphids are not available in the alfalfa fields

Filter-induced bias in Lyα emitter surveys: a comparison between standard and tunable filters. gran telescopio Canarias preliminary results

Lyα emitter (LAE) surveys have successfully used the excess in a narrowband filter compared to a nearby broadband image to find candidates. However, the odd spectral energy distribution (SED) of LAEs combined with the instrumental profile has important effects on the properties of the candidate samples extracted from these surveys. We investigate the effect of the bandpass width and the transmission profile of the narrowband filters used for extracting LAE candidates at redshifts z sime 6.5 through Monte Carlo simulations, and we present pilot observations to test the performance of tunable filters to find LAEs and other emission-line candidates. We compare the samples obtained using a narrow ideal rectangular filter, the Subaru NB921 narrowband filter, and sweeping across a wavelength range using the ultra-narrow-band tunable filters of the instrument OSIRIS, installed at the 10.4 m Gran Telescopio Canarias. We use this instrument for extracting LAE candidates from a small set of real observations. Broadband data from the Subaru, Hubble Space Telescope, and Spitzer databases were used for fitting SEDs to calculate photometric redshifts and to identify interlopers. Narrowband surveys are very efficient in finding LAEs in large sky areas, but the samples obtained are not evenly distributed in redshift along the filter bandpass, and the number of LAEs with equivalent widths <60 Å can be underestimated. These biased results do not appear in samples obtained using ultra-narrow-band tunable filters. However, the field size of tunable filters is restricted because of the variation of the effective wavelength across the image. Thus, narrowband and ultra-narrow-band surveys are complementary strategies to investigate high-redshift LAEs.This research has been partially funded by the UNAMDGAPA-PAPIIT IN110013 Program. J.A.D. and M.A.D. are grateful for support from CONACyT grant CB-128556. J.A.D. is grateful for support from grant SAB2010-0011 awarded by the Spanish MIED through the “Programa Nacional de Movilidad de Recursos Humanos” included in the Plan Nacional de I-D+i 2008-2011. T.V. acknowledges support from CONACYT grant 165365 through the program “Estancias posdoctorales y sabáticas al extranjero para la consolidación de grupos de investigación.” This work has been partially funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN) under the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Program grant CSD2006-00070: First Science with the GTC (http://www.iac.es/consolider-ingenio-gtc), AYA2011-29517-C03-01, and AYA2011-29517-C03-02. Observations presented in this paper were made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), installed in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, on the island of La Palma. The authors are thankful to the anonymous referee for the critical and constructive suggestion

Global surveillance of cancer survival 1995-2009: analysis of individual data for 25,676,887 patients from 279 population-based registries in 67 countries (CONCORD-2)

BACKGROUND: Worldwide data for cancer survival are scarce. We aimed to initiate worldwide surveillance of cancer survival by central analysis of population-based registry data, as a metric of the effectiveness of health systems, and to inform global policy on cancer control. METHODS: Individual tumour records were submitted by 279 population-based cancer registries in 67 countries for 25·7 million adults (age 15-99 years) and 75,000 children (age 0-14 years) diagnosed with cancer during 1995-2009 and followed up to Dec 31, 2009, or later. We looked at cancers of the stomach, colon, rectum, liver, lung, breast (women), cervix, ovary, and prostate in adults, and adult and childhood leukaemia. Standardised quality control procedures were applied; errors were corrected by the registry concerned. We estimated 5-year net survival, adjusted for background mortality in every country or region by age (single year), sex, and calendar year, and by race or ethnic origin in some countries. Estimates were age-standardised with the International Cancer Survival Standard weights. FINDINGS: 5-year survival from colon, rectal, and breast cancers has increased steadily in most developed countries. For patients diagnosed during 2005-09, survival for colon and rectal cancer reached 60% or more in 22 countries around the world; for breast cancer, 5-year survival rose to 85% or higher in 17 countries worldwide. Liver and lung cancer remain lethal in all nations: for both cancers, 5-year survival is below 20% everywhere in Europe, in the range 15-19% in North America, and as low as 7-9% in Mongolia and Thailand. Striking rises in 5-year survival from prostate cancer have occurred in many countries: survival rose by 10-20% between 1995-99 and 2005-09 in 22 countries in South America, Asia, and Europe, but survival still varies widely around the world, from less than 60% in Bulgaria and Thailand to 95% or more in Brazil, Puerto Rico, and the USA. For cervical cancer, national estimates of 5-year survival range from less than 50% to more than 70%; regional variations are much wider, and improvements between 1995-99 and 2005-09 have generally been slight. For women diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2005-09, 5-year survival was 40% or higher only in Ecuador, the USA, and 17 countries in Asia and Europe. 5-year survival for stomach cancer in 2005-09 was high (54-58%) in Japan and South Korea, compared with less than 40% in other countries. By contrast, 5-year survival from adult leukaemia in Japan and South Korea (18-23%) is lower than in most other countries. 5-year survival from childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia is less than 60% in several countries, but as high as 90% in Canada and four European countries, which suggests major deficiencies in the management of a largely curable disease. INTERPRETATION: International comparison of survival trends reveals very wide differences that are likely to be attributable to differences in access to early diagnosis and optimum treatment. Continuous worldwide surveillance of cancer survival should become an indispensable source of information for cancer patients and researchers and a stimulus for politicians to improve health policy and health-care systems

Volume I. Introduction to DUNE

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay—these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. This TDR is intended to justify the technical choices for the far detector that flow down from the high-level physics goals through requirements at all levels of the Project. Volume I contains an executive summary that introduces the DUNE science program, the far detector and the strategy for its modular designs, and the organization and management of the Project. The remainder of Volume I provides more detail on the science program that drives the choice of detector technologies and on the technologies themselves. It also introduces the designs for the DUNE near detector and the DUNE computing model, for which DUNE is planning design reports. Volume II of this TDR describes DUNE\u27s physics program in detail. Volume III describes the technical coordination required for the far detector design, construction, installation, and integration, and its organizational structure. Volume IV describes the single-phase far detector technology. A planned Volume V will describe the dual-phase technology

Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), far detector technical design report, volume III: DUNE far detector technical coordination

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay—these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. Volume III of this TDR describes how the activities required to design, construct, fabricate, install, and commission the DUNE far detector modules are organized and managed. This volume details the organizational structures that will carry out and/or oversee the planned far detector activities safely, successfully, on time, and on budget. It presents overviews of the facilities, supporting infrastructure, and detectors for context, and it outlines the project-related functions and methodologies used by the DUNE technical coordination organization, focusing on the areas of integration engineering, technical reviews, quality assurance and control, and safety oversight. Because of its more advanced stage of development, functional examples presented in this volume focus primarily on the single-phase (SP) detector module

Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) Conceptual Design Report Volume 2: The Physics Program for DUNE at LBNF

The Physics Program for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) at the Fermilab Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) is described

Highly-parallelized simulation of a pixelated LArTPC on a GPU

The rapid development of general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is allowing the implementation of highly-parallelized Monte Carlo simulation chains for particle physics experiments. This technique is particularly suitable for the simulation of a pixelated charge readout for time projection chambers, given the large number of channels that this technology employs. Here we present the first implementation of a full microphysical simulator of a liquid argon time projection chamber (LArTPC) equipped with light readout and pixelated charge readout, developed for the DUNE Near Detector. The software is implemented with an end-to-end set of GPU-optimized algorithms. The algorithms have been written in Python and translated into CUDA kernels using Numba, a just-in-time compiler for a subset of Python and NumPy instructions. The GPU implementation achieves a speed up of four orders of magnitude compared with the equivalent CPU version. The simulation of the current induced on 10^3 pixels takes around 1 ms on the GPU, compared with approximately 10 s on the CPU. The results of the simulation are compared against data from a pixel-readout LArTPC prototype

Responses of fruit growth, quality, and productivity to crop load in apple cv. Ultra Red Gala/MM111

Yuri, JA (Yuri, J. A.)1; Talice, JG (Gonzalez Talice, J.)1; Verdugo, J (Verdugo, J.)1; del Pozo, A (del Pozo, A.)2. ..............1.Univ Talca, Fac Ciencias Agr, Ctr Pomaceas, Talca, Chile ......... 2. Univ Talca, Fac Ciencias Agr, Dept Agr Prod, Talca, ChileThe effects of three crop load densities (4, 6 and 8 fruit per cm(2) of the cross-section of each tree branch, BCSA) on fruit growth, yield, fruit quality and vegetative growth were studied in apples (Mains x domestica Borkh) Ultrared Gala/MM111, from the fourth leaf (2006-2007 season) to the sixth (2008-2009 season). The maximum fruit growth rate was reached between 90 and 108 days after full bloom (DAFB), with values above 2.6 g day(-1). Accumulated yields to the sixth leaf reached 181, 157 and 123 Mg ha(-1) in the high, medium and low crop loads, respectively. Mean fruit weight decreased with increasing fruit crop load but the yields of fruit weight over 194 g were similar in all crop loads; the highest crop load exceeded the lowest crop load by 18.8 and 27.5 Mg ha(-1) of fruit weight of more than 172 and 154 g, respectively. The yields of harvested fruit exceeding 75% with red coloring did not show major differences, while fruit classified as 50-75% with red coloring were less common in the low crop load. No major differences were found at the end of the study in vegetative growth in the different seasons, nor in plant size. The reduction in mean fruit weight and in the percentage of fruit with good coloring was compensated by the increase in yields, thus not resulting in an effective reduction in the quality of the harvested fruit. The level of plant development reached with a semi-vigorous rootstock and high fruit loads allowed obtaining high fruit yield earlier and of good quality. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserve