Cortisol levels are positively associated with pup-feeding rates in male meerkats

In societies of cooperative vertebrates, individual differences in contributions to offspring care are commonly substantial. Recent attempts to explain the causes of this variation have focused on correlations between contributions to care and the protein hormone prolactin, or the steroid hormone testosterone. However, such studies have seldom considered the importance of other hormones or controlled for non-hormonal factors that are correlative with both individual hormone levels and contributions to care. Using multivariate statistics, we show that hormone levels explain significant variation in contributions to pup-feeding by male meerkats, even after controlling for non-hormonal effects. However, long-term contributions to pup provisioning were significantly and positively correlated with plasma levels of cortisol rather than prolactin, while plasma levels of testosterone were not related to individual patterns of pup-feeding. Furthermore, a playback experiment that used pup begging calls to increase the feeding rates of male helpers gave rise to parallel increases in plasma cortisol levels, whilst prolactin and testosterone levels remained unchanged. Our findings confirm that hormones can explain significant amounts of variation in contributions to offspring feeding, and that cortisol, not prolactin, is the hormone most strongly associated with pup-feeding in cooperative male meerkats

High Temperature Electron Localization in dense He Gas

We report new accurate mesasurements of the mobility of excess electrons in high density Helium gas in extended ranges of temperature $[(26\leq T\leq 77) K ]$ and density $[ (0.05\leq N\leq 12.0) {atoms} \cdot {nm}^{-3}]$ to ascertain the effect of temperature on the formation and dynamics of localized electron states. The main result of the experiment is that the formation of localized states essentially depends on the relative balance of fluid dilation energy, repulsive electron-atom interaction energy, and thermal energy. As a consequence, the onset of localization depends on the medium disorder through gas temperature and density. It appears that the transition from delocalized to localized states shifts to larger densities as the temperature is increased. This behavior can be understood in terms of a simple model of electron self-trapping in a spherically symmetric square well.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figure

Peranan Poliembrioni Terhadap Produksi Benih Pada Tanaman Jeruk Siam (Citrus nobilis L.)

This study aims to determine the growth of polyembryonic seeds in Siamese oranges and to study the growth of seedlings from polyembryonic seeds which will be used as good seeds in overcoming the problem of availability of Siamese orange seeds. The research was carried out from May to October 2022 at the Green House of the Faculty of Agriculture, Sam Ratulangi University and Eris Village, Eris District. The research method used a randomized block design (RBD) with 5 treatments repeated 4 times and found a total of 20 treatments, namely Z11, Z12, Z13, Z14, P21, P22, P23, P24, P31, P32, P33, P34, B21, B22, B23 , B24, B31, B32, B33 and B34. Data analysis used ANOVA analysis (analysis of variance). If it has no effect, then proceed with the BNT test at the 5% test level. The results showed that the growth of Siamese orange sprouts resulted in the growth of embryos up to 6 intact in one seed. Polyembryony, the ability to germinate seeds above 80.00% is one of the conditions for seeds to be recommended for seed sources 20.95%

Torque magnetometry of an amorphous-alumina/strontium-titanate interface

We report torque magnetometry measurements of an oxide heterostructure consisting of an amorphous Al2O3 thin film grown on a crystalline SrTiO3 substrate (a-AO/STO) by atomic layer deposition. We find a torque response that resembles previous studies of crystalline LaAlO3/SrTiO3 (LAO/STO) heterointerfaces, consistent with strongly anisotropic magnetic ordering in the plane of the interface. Unlike crystalline LAO, amorphous Al2O3 is nonpolar, indicating that planar magnetism at an oxide interface is possible without the strong internal electric fields generated within the polarization catastrophe model. We discuss our results in the context of current theoretical efforts to explain magnetism in crystalline LAO/STO.Chemistry and Chemical Biolog

Heat to Electricity Conversion by a Graphene Stripe with Heavy Chiral Fermions

A conversion of thermal energy into electricity is considered in the electrically polarized graphene stripes with zigzag edges where the heavy chiral fermion (HCF) states are formed. The stripes are characterized by a high electric conductance Ge and by a significant Seebeck coefficient S. The electric current in the stripes is induced due to a non-equilibrium thermal injection of "hot" electrons. This thermoelectric generation process might be utilized for building of thermoelectric generators with an exceptionally high figure of merit Z{\delta}T \simeq 100 >> 1 and with an appreciable electric power densities \sim 1 MW/cm2.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figure

Multipliers for p-Bessel sequences in Banach spaces

Multipliers have been recently introduced as operators for Bessel sequences and frames in Hilbert spaces. These operators are defined by a fixed multiplication pattern (the symbol) which is inserted between the analysis and synthesis operators. In this paper, we will generalize the concept of Bessel multipliers for p-Bessel and p-Riesz sequences in Banach spaces. It will be shown that bounded symbols lead to bounded operators. Symbols converging to zero induce compact operators. Furthermore, we will give sufficient conditions for multipliers to be nuclear operators. Finally, we will show the continuous dependency of the multipliers on their parameters.Comment: 17 page

Structural and superconducting properties of MgB2−x_{2-x}Bex_x

We prepared MgB$_{2-x}$Be$_{x}$ ($x=0$, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.6) samples where B is substituted with Be. MgB$_{2}$ structure is maintained up to $x=0.6$. In-plane and inter-plane lattice constants were found to decrease and increase, respectively. Superconducting transition temperature $T_{c}$ decreases with $x$. We found that the $T_{c}$ decrease is correlated with in-plane contraction but is insensitive to carrier doping, which is consistent with other substitution studies such as Mg$_{1-x}$Al$_{x}$B$_{2}$ and MgB$_{2-x}$C$_{x}$. Implication of this work is discussed in terms of the 2D nature of $\sigma$-band.Comment: 3 pages,4 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Automatic initialization and quality control of large-scale cardiac MRI segmentations

Continuous advances in imaging technologies enable ever more comprehensive phenotyping of human anatomy and physiology. Concomitant reduction of imaging costs has resulted in widespread use of imaging in large clinical trials and population imaging studies. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), in particular, offers one-stop-shop multidimensional biomarkers of cardiovascular physiology and pathology. A wide range of analysis methods offer sophisticated cardiac image assessment and quantification for clinical and research studies. However, most methods have only been evaluated on relatively small databases often not accessible for open and fair benchmarking. Consequently, published performance indices are not directly comparable across studies and their translation and scalability to large clinical trials or population imaging cohorts is uncertain. Most existing techniques still rely on considerable manual intervention for the initialization and quality control of the segmentation process, becoming prohibitive when dealing with thousands of images. The contributions of this paper are three-fold. First, we propose a fully automatic method for initializing cardiac MRI segmentation, by using image features and random forests regression to predict an initial position of the heart and key anatomical landmarks in an MRI volume. In processing a full imaging database, the technique predicts the optimal corrective displacements and positions in relation to the initial rough intersections of the long and short axis images. Second, we introduce for the first time a quality control measure capable of identifying incorrect cardiac segmentations with no visual assessment. The method uses statistical, pattern and fractal descriptors in a random forest classifier to detect failures to be corrected or removed from subsequent statistical analysis. Finally, we validate these new techniques within a full pipeline for cardiac segmentation applicable to large-scale cardiac MRI databases. The results obtained based on over 1200 cases from the Cardiac Atlas Project show the promise of fully automatic initialization and quality control for population studies

A Green's function approach to transmission of massless Dirac fermions in graphene through an array of random scatterers

We consider the transmission of massless Dirac fermions through an array of short range scatterers which are modeled as randomly positioned $\delta$- function like potentials along the x-axis. We particularly discuss the interplay between disorder-induced localization that is the hallmark of a non-relativistic system and two important properties of such massless Dirac fermions, namely, complete transmission at normal incidence and periodic dependence of transmission coefficient on the strength of the barrier that leads to a periodic resonant transmission. This leads to two different types of conductance behavior as a function of the system size at the resonant and the off-resonance strengths of the delta function potential. We explain this behavior of the conductance in terms of the transmission through a pair of such barriers using a Green's function based approach. The method helps to understand such disordered transport in terms of well known optical phenomena such as Fabry Perot resonances.Comment: 22 double spaced single column pages. 15 .eps figure

Photonic realization of the relativistic Kronig-Penney model and relativistic Tamm surface states

Photonic analogues of the relativistic Kronig-Penney model and of relativistic surface Tamm states are proposed for light propagation in fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) with phase defects. A periodic sequence of phase slips in the FBG realizes the relativistic Kronig-Penney model, the band structure of which being mapped into the spectral response of the FBG. For the semi-infinite FBG Tamm surface states can appear and can be visualized as narrow resonance peaks in the transmission spectrum of the grating