How expensive is vole damage?

Vole species, especially Arvicola terrestris and Microtus arvalis cause significant economical damage in organic pomiculture by gnawing the root system of trees. The importance of voles as pest organisms is well known. Nevertheless, the estimation of financial loss caused by voles is difficult for German fruit growers. We conducted a survey among organic fruit growers to get data on kind and amount of annual damage. Using the available publications and official statistics we calculated economical values of organic apple trees for different types of orchard processing and tree ages. Furthermore we calculated the number of trees lost due to voles in one year

Nanosecond Dynamics of Single-Molecule Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer

Motivated by recent experiments on photon statistics from individual dye pairs planted on biomolecules and coupled by fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), we show here that the FRET dynamics can be modelled by Gaussian random processes with colored noise. Using Monte-Carlo numerical simulations, the photon intensity correlations from the FRET pairs are calculated, and are turned out to be very close to those observed in experiment. The proposed stochastic description of FRET is consistent with existing theories for microscopic dynamics of the biomolecule that carries the FRET coupled dye pairs.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure. accepted to J.Phys.Chem.

On mechanisms that enforce complementarity

In a recent publication Luis and Sanchez-Soto arrive at the conclusion that complementarity is universally enforced by random classical phase kicks. We disagree. One could just as well argue that quantum entanglement is the universal mechanism. Both claims of universality are unjustified, however.Comment: 4 page

Ensemble versus individual system in quantum optics

Modern techniques allow experiments on a single atom or system, with new phenomena and new challenges for the theoretician. We discuss what quantum mechanics has to say about a single system. The quantum jump approach as well as the role of quantum trajectories are outlined and a rather sophisticated example is given.Comment: Fundamental problems in quantum theory workshop, invited lecture. 11 pages Latex + 7 figures. To appear in Fortschr. d. Physi

A Molecular Micromaser

We show that photoassociation of fermionic atoms into bosonic molecules inside an optical lattice can be described using a Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian with a nonlinear detuning. Using this equivalence to the Jaynes-Cummings dynamics, we show how one can construct a micromaser for the molecular field in each lattice site

Micromaser spectrum

We calculate the spectrum of the micromaser for a wide range of pump parameters and propose a multiple microwave field method similar to the Ramsey fringe technique to measure this spectrum. Thus it becomes possible to investigate the phase diffusion in a fundamental system such as the micromaser

Approaches to deal with the coypu (Myocastor coypus) in urban areas - an example of practice in southern Brandenburg, Germany

Walther, B., Lehmann, M., Fuelling, O