A mixed life-cycle stage bloom of Syracosphaera bannockii (Borsetti and Cati, 1976) Cros et al. 2000 (Bay of Biscay, April 2010)

High concentrations (464 cells mL-1) of Syracosphaera bannockii have been identified for the first time, in the Bay of Biscay during April 2010. These high concentrations combined with coccolithophore community dominance (~87%) indicated that a bloom of S. bannockii had formed. While the bloom consisted mostly of heterococcolith coccospheres, both holococcolith coccospheres and holococcolith-heterococcolith combination coccospheres were observed. This is only the second time that combination coccospheres of S. bannockii have been observed

Two unusual silicoflagellate double skeletons

A study of silicoflagellate double skeletons revealed two unusual doublets that are illustrated and discussed here. One of these comprises two ten-sided Octactis skeletons that appear to form a doublet, but both in the same (apical) orientation. The other specimen is a double skeleton of Dictyocha that is slightly disarticulated, with a third, less robust skeleton in between. These unusual double skeletons suggest that there is much more to be learned about the formation of silicoflagellate skeletons and the reproductive processes in this protist grou

Improving Trade in Large Ruminants and Products by Transboundary Animal Disease Control in Lao PDR

Within the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) the nation of Lao PDR has a small population of ~6.3 million people and a relatively large population of large ruminants (cattle and buffalo) at ~2.7 million head. With the growing demand for red meat in South-East Asia driven by a rising middle class and the associated changes in dietary intake, Lao smallholder farmers have the opportunity to satisfy this demand provided key constraints are addressed. Recent research has highlighted a series of best practice interventions directed at the smallholder level to improve animal health and production. Animal movement and trade have been identified as a major risk factor involved in transboundary animal disease (TAD) transmission including foot and mouth disease. Hence, understanding the supply chain is important for effective TAD control. The results of a survey of 32 large ruminant traders in northern Laos in 2011 were matched to a longitudinal production survey from 6 villages in northern Laos to develop a value chain analysis. The 32 traders provided details on 8,796 large ruminant trades, operating locations, large ruminant purchase prices, transport methods, major costs, livestock destinations and trader views on major constraints to development of the large ruminant market. The 2011 farm gate value of the national large ruminant herd was estimated as USD 835.8 million based on trader purchase price and village herd production data. As improvement of large ruminant production has been linked to reducing regional rural poverty and food insecurity in smallholder communities through opportunities for business development and rural employment, addressing both TADs and the underdeveloped market in the GMS is important. Whilst control of TADs will need to remain a medium term priority, further research is needed to ensure that market development remains aligned with disease control efforts

Strange quarks and lattice QCD

The last few years have seen a dramatic improvement in our knowledge of the strange form factors of the nucleon. With regard to the vector from factors the level of agreement between theory and experiment gives us considerable confidence in our ability to calculate with non-perturbative QCD. The calculation of the strange scalar form factor has moved significantly in the last two years, with the application of new techniques which yield values considerably smaller than believed for the past 20 years. These new values turn out to have important consequences for the detection of neutralinos, a favourite dark matter candidate. Finally, very recent lattice studies have resurrected interest in the famed H-dibaryon, with modern chiral extrapolation of lattice data suggesting that it may be only slightly unbound. We review some of the major sources of uncertainty in that chiral extrapolation.Comment: Invited talk at the Asia-Pacific few Body Conference, Seoul Kore

The Effects of Test Temperature, Temper, and Alloyed Copper on the Hydrogen-Controlled Crack Growth Rate of an Al-Zn-Mg-(Cu) Alloy

The hydrogen embrittlement controlled stage II crack growth rate of AA 7050 (6.09 wt.% Zn, 2.14 wt% Mg, 2.19 wt.% Cu) was investigated as a function of temper and alloyed copper level in a humid air environment at various temperatures. Three tempers representing the underaged, peak aged, and overaged conditions were tested in 90% relative humidity (RH) air at temperatures between 25 and 90 C. At all test temperatures, an increased degree of aging (from underaged to overaged) produced slower stage II crack growth rates. The stage II crack growth rate of each alloy and temper displayed Arrhenius-type temperature dependence with activation energies between 58 and 99 kJ/mol. For both the normal copper and low copper alloys, the fracture path was predominantly intergranular at all test temperatures (25-90 C) in each temper investigated. Comparison of the stage II crack growth rates for normal (2.19 wt.%) and low (0.06 wt.%) copper alloys in the peak aged and overaged tempers showed the beneficial effect of copper additions on stage II crack growth rate in humid air. In the 2.19 wt.% copper alloy, the significant decrease ({approx} 10 times at 25 C) in stage II crack growth rate upon overaging is attributed to an increase in the apparent activation energy for crack growth. IN the 0.06 wt.% copper alloy, overaging did not increase the activation energy for crack growth but did lower the pre-exponential factor, {nu}{sub 0}, resulting in a modest ({approx} 2.5 times at 25 C) decrease in crack growth rate. These results indicate that alloyed copper and thermal aging affect the kinetic factors that govern stage II crack growth rate. Overaged, copper bearing alloys are not intrinsically immune to hydrogen environment assisted cracking but are more resistant due to an increased apparent activation energy for stage II crack growth

The Zero-Removing Property and Lagrange-Type Interpolation Series

The classical Kramer sampling theorem, which provides a method for obtaining orthogonal sampling formulas, can be formulated in a more general nonorthogonal setting. In this setting, a challenging problem is to characterize the situations when the obtained nonorthogonal sampling formulas can be expressed as Lagrange-type interpolation series. In this article a necessary and sufficient condition is given in terms of the zero removing property. Roughly speaking, this property concerns the stability of the sampled functions on removing a finite number of their zeros

Signal and System Approximation from General Measurements

In this paper we analyze the behavior of system approximation processes for stable linear time-invariant (LTI) systems and signals in the Paley-Wiener space PW_\pi^1. We consider approximation processes, where the input signal is not directly used to generate the system output, but instead a sequence of numbers is used that is generated from the input signal by measurement functionals. We consider classical sampling which corresponds to a pointwise evaluation of the signal, as well as several more general measurement functionals. We show that a stable system approximation is not possible for pointwise sampling, because there exist signals and systems such that the approximation process diverges. This remains true even with oversampling. However, if more general measurement functionals are considered, a stable approximation is possible if oversampling is used. Further, we show that without oversampling we have divergence for a large class of practically relevant measurement procedures.Comment: This paper will be published as part of the book "New Perspectives on Approximation and Sampling Theory - Festschrift in honor of Paul Butzer's 85th birthday" in the Applied and Numerical Harmonic Analysis Series, Birkhauser (Springer-Verlag). Parts of this work have been presented at the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing 2014 (ICASSP 2014

Nab: Measurement Principles, Apparatus and Uncertainties

The Nab collaboration will perform a precise measurement of 'a', the electron-neutrino correlation parameter, and 'b', the Fierz interference term in neutron beta decay, in the Fundamental Neutron Physics Beamline at the SNS, using a novel electric/magnetic field spectrometer and detector design. The experiment is aiming at the 10^{-3} accuracy level in (Delta a)/a, and will provide an independent measurement of lambda = G_A/G_V, the ratio of axial-vector to vector coupling constants of the nucleon. Nab also plans to perform the first ever measurement of 'b' in neutron decay, which will provide an independent limit on the tensor weak coupling.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, talk presented at the International Workshop on Particle Physics with Slow Neutrons, Grenoble, 29-31 May 2008; to appear in Nucl. Instrum. Meth. in Physics Research