7,022 research outputs found
Nitrate and phosphate availability and distribution have different effects on root system architecture of Arabidopsis
Plant root systems can respond to nutrient availability and distribution by changing the three-dimensional deployment of their roots: their root system architecture (RSA). We have compared RSA in homogeneous and heterogeneous nitrate and phosphate supply in Arabidopsis. Changes in nitrate and phosphate availability were found to have contrasting effects on primary root length and lateral root density, but similar effects on lateral root length. Relative to shoot dry weight (DW), primary root length decreased with increasing nitrate availability, while it increased with increasing phosphate supply. Lateral root density remained constant across a range of nitrate supplies, but decreased with increasing phosphate supply. In contrast, lateral root elongation was suppressed both by high nitrate and high phosphate supplies. Local supplies of high nitrate or phosphate in a patch also had different effects. Primary root growth was not affected by a high nitrate patch, but growth through a high phosphate patch reduced primary root growth after the root left the patch. A high nitrate patch induced an increase in lateral root density in the patch, whereas lateral root density was unaffected by a high phosphate patch. However, both phosphate- and nitrate-rich patches induced lateral root elongation in the patch and suppressed it outside the patch. This co-ordinated response of lateral roots also occurs in soil-grown plants exposed to a nutrient-rich patch. The auxin-resistant mutants axr1, axr4 and aux1 all showed the wild-type lateral root elongation responses to a nitrate-rich patch, suggesting that auxin is not required for this response
Commissioning of the electron injector for the AWAKE experiment
The advanced wakefield experiment (AWAKE) at CERN is the first proton beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration experiment. The main goal of AWAKE RUN 1 was to demonstrate seeded self-modulation (SSM) of the proton beam and electron witness beam acceleration in the plasma wakefield. For the AWAKE experiment, a 10-meter-long Rubidium-vapor cell together with a high-power laser for ionization was used to generate the plasma. The plasma wakefield is driven by a 400 GeV/c proton beam extracted from the super proton synchrotron (SPS), which undergoes a seeded self-modulation process in the plasma. The electron witness beam used to probe the wakefields is generated from an S-band RF photo-cathode gun and then accelerated by a booster structure up to energies between 16 and 20 MeV. The first run of the AWAKE experiment revealed that the maximum energy gain after the plasma cell is 2 GeV, and the SSM mechanism of the proton beam was verified. In this paper, we will present the details of the AWAKE electron injector. A comparison of the measured electron beam parameters, such as beam size, energy, and normalized emittance, with the simulation results was performed
Coulomb Charging Effects in an Open Quantum Dot
Low-temperature transport properties of a lateral quantum dot formed by
overlaying finger gates in a clean one-dimensional channel are investigated.
Continuous and periodic oscillations superimposed upon ballistic conductance
steps are observed, when the conductance G of the dot changes within a wide
range 0<G<6e^2/h. Calculations of the electrostatics confirm that the measured
periodic conductance oscillations correspond to successive change of the total
charge of the dot by . By modelling the transport it is shown that the
progression of the Coulomb oscillations into the region G>2e^2/h may be due to
suppression of inter-1D-subband scattering. Fully transmitted subbands
contribute to coherent background of conductance, while sequential tunneling
via weakly transmitted subbands leads to Coulomb charging of the dot.Comment: 12 pages, RevTeX, 15 eps figures included, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Anomalous scattering of highly dispersed pulsars
We report multifrequency measurements of scatter broadening times for nine
highly dispersed pulsars over a wide frequency range (0.6 -- 4.9 GHz). We find
the scatter broadening times to be larger than expected and to scale with
frequency with an average power-law index of , i.e. significantly
less than that expected from standard theories. Such possible discrepancies
have been predicted very recently by Cordes & Lazio.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
The Ethics of Corporate Governance
How should corporate directors determine what is the right decision? For at least the past 30 years the debate has raged as to whether shareholder value should take precedence over corporate social responsibility when crucial decisions arise. Directors face pressure, not least from ethical investors, to do the good thing when they seek to make the right choice. Corporate governance theory has tended to look to agency theory and the need of boards to curb excessive executive power to guide directors' decisions. While useful for those purposes, agency theory provides only limited guidance. Supplementing it with the alternatives - stakeholder theory and stewardship theory - tends to put directors in conflict with their legal obligations to work in the interests of shareholders. This paper seeks to reframe the discussion about corporate governance in terms of the ethical debate between consequential, teleological approaches to ethics and idealist, deontological ones, suggesting that directors are - for good reason - more inclined toward utilitarian judgments like those underpinning shareholder value. But the problems with shareholder value have become so great that a different framework is needed: strategic value, with an emphasis on long-term value creation judged from a decidedly utilitarian standpoint
The governance of formal universityâindustry interactions: understanding the rationales for alternative models
This article develops a conceptual framework to explain the economic rationale underpinning the choice of different modes of governance of formal universityâindustry interactions: personal contractual interactions, where the contract regulating the collaboration involves a firm and an individual academic researcher, and institutional interactions, where the relationship between the firm and the academic is mediated by the university. Although institutional interactions, for numerous reasons, have become more important, both governance modes are currently being implemented. We would argue that they have some important specificities that need to be understood if universityâindustry knowledge transfer is to be managed effectively and efficiently
Theoretical interpretation of the experimental electronic structure of lens shaped, self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots
We adopt an atomistic pseudopotential description of the electronic structure
of self-assembled, lens shaped InAs quantum dots within the ``linear
combination of bulk bands'' method. We present a detailed comparison with
experiment, including quantites such as the single particle electron and hole
energy level spacings, the excitonic band gap, the electron-electron, hole-hole
and electron hole Coulomb energies and the optical polarization anisotropy. We
find a generally good agreement, which is improved even further for a dot
composition where some Ga has diffused into the dots.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to Physical Review
A luminosity constraint on the origin of unidentified high energy sources
The identification of point sources poses a great challenge for the high
energy community. We present a new approach to evaluate the likelihood of a set
of sources being a Galactic population based on the simple assumption that
galaxies similar to the Milky Way host comparable populations of gamma-ray
emitters. We propose a luminosity constraint on Galactic source populations
which complements existing approaches by constraining the abundance and spatial
distribution of any objects of Galactic origin, rather than focusing on the
properties of a specific candidate emitter. We use M31 as a proxy for the Milky
Way, and demonstrate this technique by applying it to the unidentified EGRET
sources. We find that it is highly improbable that the majority of the
unidentified EGRET sources are members of a Galactic halo population (e.g.,
dark matter subhalos), but that current observations do not provide any
constraints on all of these sources being Galactic objects if they reside
entirely in the disk and bulge. Applying this method to upcoming observations
by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has the potential to exclude association
of an even larger number of unidentified sources with any Galactic source
class.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, to appear in JPhys
Mind the Costs: Rescaling and Multi-Level Environmental Governance in Venice Lagoon
Competences over environmental matters are distributed across agencies at different scales on a national-to-local continuum. This article adopts a transaction costs economics perspective in order to explore the question whether, in the light of a particular problem, the scale at which a certain competence is attributed can be reconsidered. Specifically, it tests whether a presumption of least-cost operation concerning an agency at a given scale can hold. By doing so, it investigates whether the rescaling of certain tasks, aiming at solving a scale-related problem, is likely to produce an increase in costs for day-to-day agency operations as compared to the status quo. The article explores such a perspective for the case of Venice Lagoon. The negative aspects of the present arrangement concerning fishery management and morphological remediation are directly linked to the scale of the agencies involved. The analysis suggests that scales have been chosen correctly, at least from the point of view of the costs incurred to the agencies involved. Consequently, a rescaling of those agencies does not represent a viable option
Superscaling in inclusive electron-nucleus scattering
We investigate the degree to which the scaling functions derived
from cross sections for inclusive electron-nucleus quasi-elastic scattering
define the same function for different nuclei. In the region where the scaling
variable , we find that this superscaling is experimentally realized
to a high degree.Comment: Corrected previously mislabeled figures and cross references; 9
pages, 4 color figures, using BoxedEPS and REVTeX; email correspondence to
[email protected]
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