48 research outputs found
Zooplankton of the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean: Similarities and dissimilarities
A synthesis of data on abundance and biomass of zooplankton in the Eastern Mediterranean (EMED) and the Black Sea shows major differences in the composition and structure of pelagic communities in the two basins. Few Mediterranean planktonic animals have invaded and acclimatised in the Black Sea. The great bulk of Black Sea species is represented by coastal inhabitants that spread throughout the whole basin. This process has been called “neritization” of the Black Sea fauna. Peculiarities in zooplankton assemblages of the Black Sea have been further strengthened over the last few decades due to increasing eutrophication and the massive invasion of the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi. The relative contribution of copepods, cladocerans, chaetognaths, and appendicularians to total zooplankton biomass has notably decreased , whereas gelatinous groups (mainly represented by Mnemiopsis and Aurelia aurita) contributed up to 99% of total wet weight in 1995 in the Black Sea.The basic features of planktonic fauna in the Black Sea are mainly due do the geo-morphological characters of the basin and the limited exchanges with the EMED, that are confined to the surface-subsurface layers in the Dardanelles and Bosphorus Straits. However, the dramatic changes that recently occurred in the structure of zooplankton assemblages seem to have been caused by heavy anthropogenic impact on the pelagic system
Determination of the Fermi Velocity by Angle-dependent Periodic Orbit Resonance Measurements in the Organic Conductor alpha-(BEDT-TTF)2KHg(SCN)4
We report detailed angle-dependent studies of the microwave (f=50 to 90 GHz)
interlayer magneto-electrodynamics of a single crystal sample of the organic
charge-density-wave (CDW) conductor alpha-(BEDT-TTF)2KHg(SCN)4. Recently
developed instrumentation enables both magnetic field (B) sweeps for a fixed
sample orientation and, for the first time, angle sweeps at fixed f/B. We
observe series' of resonant absorptions which we attribute to periodic orbit
resonances (POR) - a phenomenon closely related to cyclotron resonance. The
angle dependence of the POR indicate that they are associated with the low
temperature quasi-one-dimensional (Q1D) Fermi surface (FS) of the title
compound; indeed, all of the resonance peaks collapse beautifully onto a single
set of f/B versus angle curves, generated using a semiclassical
magneto-transport theory for a single Q1D FS. We show that Q1D POR measurements
provide one of the most direct methods for determining the Fermi velocity,
without any detailed assumptions concerning the bandstructure; our analysis
yields an average value of v_F=6.5x10^4 m/s. Quantitative analysis of the POR
harmonic content indicates that the Q1D FS is strongly corrugated. This is
consistent with the assumption that the low-temperature FS derives from a
reconstruction of the high temperature quasi-two-dimensional FS, caused by the
CDW instability. Detailed analysis of the angle dependence of the POR yields
parameters associated with the CDW superstructure which are consistent with
published results. Finally, we address the issue as to whether or not the
interlayer electrodynamics are coherent in the title compound.Comment: 28 pages, including 6 figures. Submitted to PR
Orbital quantization in the high magnetic field state of a charge-density-wave system
A superposition of the Pauli and orbital coupling of a high magnetic field to
charge carriers in a charge-density-wave (CDW) system is proposed to give rise
to transitions between subphases with quantized values of the CDW wavevector.
By contrast to the purely orbital field-induced density-wave effects which
require a strongly imperfect nesting of the Fermi surface, the new transitions
can occur even if the Fermi surface is well nested at zero field. We suggest
that such transitions are observed in the organic metal
-(BEDT-TTF)KHg(SCN) under a strongly tilted magnetic field.Comment: 14 pages including 4 figure
Magnetothermopower and Nernst effect in unconventional charge density waves
Recently we have shown that the striking angular dependent magnetoresistance
in the low temperature phase (LTP) of alpha-(BEDT-TTF)_2KHg(SCN)_4 is
consistently described in terms of unconventional charge density wave (UCDW).
Here we investigate theoretically the thermoelectric power and the Nernst
effect in UDW. The present results account consistently for the recent data of
magnetothermopower in alpha-(BEDT-TTF)_2KHg(SCN)_4 obtained by Choi et al.
(Phys. Rev. B, 65, 205119 (2002)). This confirms further our identification of
LTP in this salt as UCDW. We propose also that the Nernst effect provides a
clear signature of UDW.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
The Dependence of the Superconducting Transition Temperature of Organic Molecular Crystals on Intrinsically Non-Magnetic Disorder: a Signature of either Unconventional Superconductivity or Novel Local Magnetic Moment Formation
We give a theoretical analysis of published experimental studies of the
effects of impurities and disorder on the superconducting transition
temperature, T_c, of the organic molecular crystals kappa-ET_2X and beta-ET_2X
(where ET is bis(ethylenedithio)tetrathiafulvalene and X is an anion eg I_3).
The Abrikosov-Gorkov (AG) formula describes the suppression of T_c both by
magnetic impurities in singlet superconductors, including s-wave
superconductors and by non-magnetic impurities in a non-s-wave superconductor.
We show that various sources of disorder lead to the suppression of T_c as
described by the AG formula. This is confirmed by the excellent fit to the
data, the fact that these materials are in the clean limit and the excellent
agreement between the value of the interlayer hopping integral, t_perp,
calculated from this fit and the value of t_perp found from angular-dependant
magnetoresistance and quantum oscillation experiments. If the disorder is, as
seems most likely, non-magnetic then the pairing state cannot be s-wave. We
show that the cooling rate dependence of the magnetisation is inconsistent with
paramagnetic impurities. Triplet pairing is ruled out by several experiments.
If the disorder is non-magnetic then this implies that l>=2, in which case
Occam's razor suggests that d-wave pairing is realised. Given the proximity of
these materials to an antiferromagnetic Mott transition, it is possible that
the disorder leads to the formation of local magnetic moments via some novel
mechanism. Thus we conclude that either kappa-ET_2X and beta-ET_2X are d-wave
superconductors or else they display a novel mechanism for the formation of
localised moments. We suggest systematic experiments to differentiate between
these scenarios.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure
The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes
Analysis of 273 ancient horse genomes reveals that modern domestic horses originated in the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region.Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare(1). However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling(2-4) at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc(3). Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia(5) and Anatolia(6), have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 bc, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association(7) between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 bc(8,9) driving the spread of Indo-European languages(10). This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium bc Sintashta culture(11,12).Descriptive and Comparative Linguistic
The origins and spread of domestic horses from the Western Eurasian steppes
Domestication of horses fundamentally transformed long-range mobility and warfare. However, modern domesticated breeds do not descend from the earliest domestic horse lineage associated with archaeological evidence of bridling, milking and corralling at Botai, Central Asia around 3500 bc. Other longstanding candidate regions for horse domestication, such as Iberia and Anatolia, have also recently been challenged. Thus, the genetic, geographic and temporal origins of modern domestic horses have remained unknown. Here we pinpoint the Western Eurasian steppes, especially the lower Volga-Don region, as the homeland of modern domestic horses. Furthermore, we map the population changes accompanying domestication from 273 ancient horse genomes. This reveals that modern domestic horses ultimately replaced almost all other local populations as they expanded rapidly across Eurasia from about 2000 bc, synchronously with equestrian material culture, including Sintashta spoke-wheeled chariots. We find that equestrianism involved strong selection for critical locomotor and behavioural adaptations at the GSDMC and ZFPM1 genes. Our results reject the commonly held association between horseback riding and the massive expansion of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists into Europe around 3000 bc driving the spread of Indo-European languages. This contrasts with the scenario in Asia where Indo-Iranian languages, chariots and horses spread together, following the early second millennium bc Sintashta culture
Insights into the high-energy γ-ray emission of Markarian 501 from extensive multifrequency observations in the Fermi era
We report on the γ-ray activity of the blazar Mrk 501 during the first 480 days of Fermi operation. We find that the average Large Area Telescope (LAT) γ-ray spectrum of Mrk 501 can be well described by a single power-law function with a photon index of 1.78 ± 0.03. While we observe relatively mild flux variations with the Fermi-LAT (within less than a factor of two), we detect remarkable spectral variability where the hardest observed spectral index within the LAT energy range is 1.52 ± 0.14, and the softest one is 2.51 ± 0.20. These unexpected spectral changes do not correlate with the measured flux variations above 0.3 GeV. In this paper, we also present the first results from the 4.5 month long multifrequency campaign (2009 March 15-August 1) on Mrk 501, which included the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), Swift, RXTE, MAGIC, and VERITAS, the F-GAMMA, GASP-WEBT, and other collaborations and instruments which provided excellent temporal and energy coverage of the source throughout the entire campaign. The extensive radio to TeV data set from this campaign provides us with the most detailed spectral energy distribution yet collected for this source during its relatively low activity. The average spectral energy distribution of Mrk 501 is well described by the standard one-zone synchrotron self-Compton (SSC) model. In the framework of this model, we find that the dominant emission region is characterized by a size ≲0.1 pc (comparable within a factor of few to the size of the partially resolved VLBA core at 15-43 GHz), and that the total jet power (≃1044 erg s-1) constitutes only a small fraction (∼10-3) of the Eddington luminosity. The energy distribution of the freshly accelerated radiating electrons required to fit the time-averaged data has a broken power-law form in the energy range 0.3 GeV-10 TeV, with spectral indices 2.2 and 2.7 below and above the break energy of 20 GeV. We argue that such a form is consistent with a scenario in which the bulk of the energy dissipation within the dominant emission zone of Mrk 501 is due to relativistic, proton-mediated shocks. We find that the ultrarelativistic electrons and mildly relativistic protons within the blazar zone, if comparable in number, are in approximate energy equipartition, with their energy dominating the jet magnetic field energy by about two orders of magnitude. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society
Giant angular magnetoresistance oscillations in (BEDT-TTF) TlHg(SCN) : the warped plane Fermi surface effect
Measurements of magnetoresistance anisotropy in a quasi-two-dimensional conductor (BEDT-TTF)TlHg(SCN) have been performed. Giant angular magnetoresistance oscillations have been found upon rotating the magnetic field in different planes perpendicular to the highly conducting ac-plane. The phenomenon is proposed to be associated with specifics of th electron motion along the open FS sheets under the magnetic field. The analysis of the oscillations reveals some qualitative differences between a calculated high temperature position of the open Fermi surface sheets and that found at low temperatures