Gent CI 17293 Winter Wheat

Gent winter wheat is a Scout-type variety made by compositing nine selections developed at the Hays (Kansas) Branch Experiment Station by R. W. Livers. The selections were tested in South Dakota for several years for winter hardiness and nine of the better performing ones composited for an initial seed increase. Gent is from the cross Agent/4\u3c1 Scout. Agent was developed at the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station from the cross Triumph/ /Triticum species/ Agropyron elongatum. Agent was highly resistant to leaf rust at the time of its release in 1967 but is now taking some leaf rust in the Southern Great Plains. Agent/4 Scout derivatives have begun taking a little leaf rust in scattered locations. Scout was developed at the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station from the cross Nebred/Hope/ /Turkey/3/Cheyenne/Ponca

Refinement of the list of constituents for groundwater monitoring at M-area

For several years Westinghouse Savannah River Company (WSRC) has been examining ways of reducing monitoring costs. Most of these efforts have been aimed at reducing the number of wells sampled or reducing sample frequency. With regards to monitoring around the M-Area Settling Basin, we are now examining a possible reduction in the number of constituents analyzed. It is our opinion that many constituents can be dropped entirely. Several others should be dropped from analyses in the plume definition wells, while retained for analyses at the point of compliance (POC) wells. Constituents that can be dropped entirely are nonhazardous inorganics generally referred to as water quality indicators. Monitoring for these parameters is sensible when a facility is in detection monitoring, but it is much less useful at a facility like the M-Area Basin. The water quality indicators are helpful in detecting whether or not a facility has impacted the environment. But their concentrations are not important in themselves. At M-Area, it is well documented that the facility has impacted groundwater quite seriously with a known group of hazardous constituents. So the concentrations of the nonhazardous constituents are of little interest. Obviously, monitoring for the hazardous constituents should continue, but it should only continue at wells that are likely to yield useful data. At M-Area there are 41 Point of Compliance (POC) wells monitoring an area of about .25 square miles and about 236 plume definition wells monitoring the surround 4 square miles. The locations of well clusters and the point of compliance are shown in figure 1. The POC wells and plume definition wells are intended to serve entirely different purposes and should not, necessarily, be monitored for the same things. The POC wells form a picket line around the facility and are intended to detect any constituents leaching from it. They are also intended to determine whether such constituents exceed action levels. Plume definition wells are added to define the plume created y a particular set or subset of contaminants. They can also be used to monitor the effectiveness of corrective action upon a particular set of constituents, but one cannot assume that plume definition wells installed to monitor a plume of contaminants A and B are locate appropriately to monitor all other possible contaminants. The M-Area plume definition wells were installed in several phases over a ten year time span as SRS struggled to define the extent of a large plume of TCE and PCE. These wells were not located for the purpose of monitoring the numerous inorganics and radionuclides on the unit`s monitoring list. Many of the inorganics and radionuclides are relatively immobile in groundwater and cannot be expected to appear in the widely scattered TCE/PCE plume definition wells

Exposure to chorioamnionitis alters the monocyte transcriptional response to the neonatal pathogen Staphylococcus epidermidis

Preterm infants are uniquely susceptible to late-onset sepsis that is frequently caused by the skin commensal Staphylococcus epidermidis. Innate immune responses, particularly from monocytes, are a key protective mechanism. Impaired cytokine production by preterm infant monocytes is well described, but few studies have comprehensively assessed the corresponding monocyte transcriptional response. Innate immune responses in preterm infants may be modulated by inflammation such as prenatal exposure to histologic chorioamnionitis which complicates 40-70% of preterm pregnancies. Chorioamnionitis alters the risk of late-onset sepsis, but its effect on monocyte function is largely unknown. Here, we aimed to determine the impact of exposure to chorioamnionitis on the proportions and phenotype of cord blood monocytes using flow cytometry, as well as their transcriptional response to live S. epidermidis. RNA-seq was performed on purified cord blood monocytes from very preterm infants (<32 weeks gestation, with and without chorioamnionitis-exposure) and term infants (37-40 weeks), pre- and postchallenge with live S. epidermidis. Preterm monocytes from infants without chorioamnionitis-exposure did not exhibit an intrinsically deficient transcriptional response to S. epidermidis compared to term infants. In contrast, chorioamnionitis-exposure was associated with hypo-responsive transcriptional phenotype regarding a subset of genes involved in antigen presentation and adaptive immunity. Overall, our findings suggest that prenatal exposure to inflammation may alter the risk of sepsis in preterm infants partly by modulation of monocyte responses to pathogens

Reheating Temperature and Gauge Mediation Models of Supersymmetry Breaking

For supersymmetric theories with gravitino dark matter, the maximal reheating temperature consistent with big bang nucleosynthesis bounds arises when the physical gaugino masses are degenerate. We consider the cases of a stau or sneutrino next-to-lightest superpartner, which have relatively less constraint from big bang nucleosynthesis. The resulting parameter space is consistent with leptogenesis requirements, and can be reached in generalized gauge mediation models. Such models illustrate a class of theories that overcome the well-known tension between big bang nucleosynthesis and leptogenesis.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures; v2: refs adde

Unitarity of Quantum Theory and Closed Time-Like Curves

Interacting quantum fields on spacetimes containing regions of closed timelike curves (CTCs) are subject to a non-unitary evolution $X$. Recently, a prescription has been proposed, which restores unitarity of the evolution by modifying the inner product on the final Hilbert space. We give a rigorous description of this proposal and note an operational problem which arises when one considers the composition of two or more non-unitary evolutions. We propose an alternative method by which unitarity of the evolution may be regained, by extending $X$ to a unitary evolution on a larger (possibly indefinite) inner product space. The proposal removes the ambiguity noted by Jacobson in assigning expectation values to observables localised in regions spacelike separated from the CTC region. We comment on the physical significance of the possible indefiniteness of the inner product introduced in our proposal.Comment: 13 pages, LaTeX. Final revised paper to be published in Phys Rev D. Some changes are made to expand our discussion of Anderson's Proposal for restoring unitarit

Quantum dots in magnetic fields: thermal response of broken symmetry phases

We investigate the thermal properties of circular semiconductor quantum dots in high magnetic fields using finite temperature Hartree-Fock techniques. We demonstrate that for a given magnetic field strength quantum dots undergo various shape phase transitions as a function of temperature, and we outline possible observable consequences.Comment: In Press, Phys. Rev. B (2001

Toeplitz Quantization of K\"ahler Manifolds and gl(N)gl(N) N→∞N\to\infty

For general compact K\"ahler manifolds it is shown that both Toeplitz quantization and geometric quantization lead to a well-defined (by operator norm estimates) classical limit. This generalizes earlier results of the authors and Klimek and Lesniewski obtained for the torus and higher genus Riemann surfaces, respectively. We thereby arrive at an approximation of the Poisson algebra by a sequence of finite-dimensional matrix algebras $gl(N)$, $N\to\infty$.Comment: 17 pages, AmsTeX 2.1, Sept. 93 (rev: only typos are corrected

Progress Report on E356

This research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation Grant NSF PHY-931478

N=2 Topological Yang-Mills Theory on Compact K\"{a}hler Surfaces

We study a topological Yang-Mills theory with $N=2$ fermionic symmetry. Our formalism is a field theoretical interpretation of the Donaldson polynomial invariants on compact K\"{a}hler surfaces. We also study an analogous theory on compact oriented Riemann surfaces and briefly discuss a possible application of the Witten's non-Abelian localization formula to the problems in the case of compact K\"{a}hler surfaces.Comment: ESENAT-93-01 & YUMS-93-10, 34pages: [Final Version] to appear in Comm. Math. Phy

Fully Gapped Single-Particle Excitations in the Lightly Doped Cuprates

The low-energy excitations of the lightly doped cuprates were studied by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. A finite gap was measured over the entire Brillouin zone, including along the d_{x^2 - y^2} nodal line. This effect was observed to be generic to the normal states of numerous cuprates, including hole-doped La_{2-x}Sr_{x}CuO_{4} and Ca_{2-x}Na_{x}CuO_{2}Cl_{2} and electron-doped Nd_{2-x}Ce_{x}CuO_{4}. In all compounds, the gap appears to close with increasing carrier doping. We consider various scenarios to explain our results, including the possible effects of chemical disorder, electronic inhomogeneity, and a competing phase.Comment: To appear in Phys. Rev.