Invasive Species Offer Less Resources for Native Insects

Biodiversity is a critical component in keeping a habitat functional. A well-functioning habitat requires interdependency among species to keep relationships such as predator-prey interactions in balance. High biodiversity, especially at the lowest trophic levels, increases the number of possible interactions between plant and animal species. This allows nutrients to cycle to the highest levels of the food web most efficiently. It is widely accepted that the presence of exotic plant species reduces the biodiversity of insects because it creates deficiencies of palatable food sources for native leaf eating organisms. My research focused on determining the abundance and species richness of Lepitoptera larvae (caterpillars) on R. cathartica (common buckthorn), an invasive species, and various woody native species (i.e. oak, hickory, hackberry, maples, etc.) to test how the presence of invasive species compares to native species in promoting high biodiversity. Through my research at Tifft Nature Preserve in Buffalo, NY, I found that there was less diversity and less abundance of Lepidoptera on common buckthorn than on the native woody trees by a large margin. This further supports that invasive plants harbor less insects than native plant species, making it more clear that the effort to control invasive organisms could potentially provide great value to a habitat by promoting biodiversity through the removal of invasive species which would allow for native plant succession or replanting, giving native insects and other wildlife more suitable habitat in which to thrive

Statistic Whitelisting for Enterprise Network Incident Response

This research seeks to satisfy the need for the rapid evaluation of enterprise network hosts in order to identify items of significance through the introduction of a statistic whitelist based on the behavior of the processes on each host. By taking advantage of the repetition of processes and the resources they access, a whitelist can be generated using large quantities of host machines. For each process, the Modules and the TCP & UDP Connections are compared to identify which resources are most commonly accessed by each process. Results show 47% of processes receiving a whitelist score of 75% or greater in the five hosts identified as having the worst overall scores and 60% of processes when the hosts more closely match the hosts used to build the whitelist

Three-Dimensional Imaging of Magnetic Domains with Neutron Grating Interferometry

This paper gives a brief overview on3D imaging of magnetic domains with shearing grating neutron tomography. We investigated the three-dimensional distribution of magnetic domain walls in the bulk of a wedge-shaped FeSi single crystal. The width of the magnetic domains wasanalyzed at different locations within the crystal. Magnetic domains close to the tip of the wedge are much smaller than in the bulk. Furthermore, the three-dimensional shape of individual domains wasinvestigated. We discuss prospects and limitations of the applied measurement technique

Sub-pixel correlation length neutron imaging:Spatially resolved scattering information of microstructures on a macroscopic scale

Neutron imaging and scattering give data of significantly different nature and traditional methods leave a gap of accessible structure sizes at around 10 micrometers. Only in recent years overlap in the probed size ranges could be achieved by independent application of high resolution scattering and imaging methods, however without providing full structural information when microstructures vary on a macroscopic scale. In this study we show how quantitative neutron dark-field imaging with a novel experimental approach provides both sub-pixel resolution with respect to microscopic correlation lengths and imaging of macroscopic variations of the microstructure. Thus it provides combined information on multiple length scales. A dispersion of micrometer sized polystyrene colloids was chosen as a model system to study gravity induced crystallisation of microspheres on a macro scale, including the identification of ordered as well as unordered phases. Our results pave the way to study heterogeneous systems locally in a previously impossible manner.ISSN:2045-232

Grain morphology reconstruction of crystalline materials from Laue three-dimensional neutron diffraction tomography

The macroscopic properties of advanced engineering and functional materials are highly dependent on their overall grain orientation distribution, size, and morphology. Here we present Laue 3D neutron diffraction tomography providing reconstructions of the grains constituting a coarse-grained polycrystalline material. Reconstructions of the grain morphology of a highly pure Fe cylinder and a Cu cube sample are presented. A total number of 23 and 9 grains from the Fe and Cu samples, respectively, were indexed and reconstructed. Validation of the grain morphological reconstruction is performed by post-mortem EBSD of the Cu specimen

Hyperfine Spectroscopy of Optically Trapped Atoms

We perform spectroscopy on the hyperfine splitting of $^{85}$Rb atoms trapped in far-off-resonance optical traps. The existence of a spatially dependent shift in the energy levels is shown to induce an inherent dephasing effect, which causes a broadening of the spectroscopic line and hence an inhomogeneous loss of atomic coherence at a much faster rate than the homogeneous one caused by spontaneous photon scattering. We present here a number of approaches for reducing this inhomogeneous broadening, based on trap geometry, additional laser fields, and novel microwave pulse sequences. We then show how hyperfine spectroscopy can be used to study quantum dynamics of optically trapped atoms.Comment: Review/Tutoria

Land Surface Temperature from Ka-band (37 GHZ) Passive Microwave Observations

An alternative to thermal infrared satellite sensors for measuring land surface temperature (T<inf>s</inf>) is presented. The 37 GHz vertical polarized brightness temperature is used to derive T<inf>s</inf> because it is considered the most appropriate microwave frequency for temperature retrieval. This channel balances a reduced sensitivity to soil surface characteristics with a relatively high atmospheric transmissivity. It is shown that with a simple linear relationship, accurate values for T<inf>s</inf> can be obtained from this frequency, with a theoretical bias of within 1 K for 70% of vegetated land areas of the globe. Barren, sparsely vegetated, and open shrublands cannot be accurately described with this single channel approach because variable surface conditions become important. The precision of the retrieved land surface temperature is expected to be better than 2.5 K for forests and 3.5 K for low vegetation. This method can be used to complement existing infrared derived temperature products, especially during clouded conditions. With several microwave radiometers currently in orbit, this method can be used to observe the diurnal temperature cycles with surprising accuracy. © 2009 by the American Geophysical Union

The handbook for standardized field and laboratory measurements in terrestrial climate change experiments and observational studies (ClimEx)

Climate change is a world-wide threat to biodiversity and ecosystem structure, functioning and services. To understand the underlying drivers and mechanisms, and to predict the consequences for nature and people, we urgently need better understanding of the direction and magnitude of climate change impacts across the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. An increasing number of climate change studies are creating new opportunities for meaningful and high-quality generalizations and improved process understanding. However, significant challenges exist related to data availability and/or compatibility across studies, compromising opportunities for data re-use, synthesis and upscaling. Many of these challenges relate to a lack of an established 'best practice' for measuring key impacts and responses. This restrains our current understanding of complex processes and mechanisms in terrestrial ecosystems related to climate change. To overcome these challenges, we collected best-practice methods emerging from major ecological research networks and experiments, as synthesized by 115 experts from across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Our handbook contains guidance on the selection of response variables for different purposes, protocols for standardized measurements of 66 such response variables and advice on data management. Specifically, we recommend a minimum subset of variables that should be collected in all climate change studies to allow data re-use and synthesis, and give guidance on additional variables critical for different types of synthesis and upscaling. The goal of this community effort is to facilitate awareness of the importance and broader application of standardized methods to promote data re-use, availability, compatibility and transparency. We envision improved research practices that will increase returns on investments in individual research projects, facilitate second-order research outputs and create opportunities for collaboration across scientific communities. Ultimately, this should significantly improve the quality and impact of the science, which is required to fulfil society's needs in a changing world.Peer reviewe

The importance of mesophyll conductance in regulating forest ecosystem productivity during drought periods

Water availability is the most limiting factor to global plant productivity, yet photosynthetic responses to seasonal drought cycles are poorly understood, with conflicting reports on which limiting process is the most important during drought. We address the problem using a model-data synthesis approach to look at canopy level fluxes, integrating twenty years of half hour data gathered by the FLUXNET network across six Mediterranean sites. The measured canopy level, water and carbon fluxes were used, together with an inverse canopy ecophysiological model, to estimate the bulk canopy conductance, bulk mesophyll conductance, and the canopy scale carbon pools in both the intercellular spaces and at the site of carboxylation in the chloroplasts. Thus the roles of stomatal and mesophyll conductance in the regulation of internal carbon pools and photosynthesis could be separated. A quantitative limitation analysis allowed for the relative seasonal responses of stomatal, mesophyll, and biochemical limitations to be gauged. The concentration of carbon in the chloroplast was shown to be a potentially more reliable estimator of assimilation rates than the intercellular carbon concentration. Both stomatal conductance limitations and mesophyll conductance limitations were observed to regulate the response of photosynthesis to water stress in each of the six species studied. The results suggest that mesophyll conductance could bridge the gap between conflicting reports on plant responses to soil water stress, and that the inclusion of mesophyll conductance in biosphere-atmosphere transfer models may improve their performance, in particular their ability to accurately capture the response of terrestrial vegetation productivity to drought

Direct soil moisture controls of future global soil carbon changes: An important source of uncertainty

The nature of the climate–carbon cycle feedback depends critically on the response of soil carbon to climate, including changes in moisture. However, soil moisture–carbon feedback responses have not been investigated thoroughly. Uncertainty in the response of soil carbon to soil moisture changes could arise from uncertainty in the relationship between soil moisture and heterotrophic respiration. We used twelve soil moisture–respiration functions (SMRFs) with a soil carbon model (RothC) and data from a coupled climate–carbon cycle general circulation model to investigate the impact of direct heterotrophic respiration dependence on soil moisture on the climate carbon cycle feedback. Global changes in soil moisture acted to oppose temperature‐driven decreases in soil carbon and hence tended to increase soil carbon storage. We found considerable uncertainty in soil carbon changes due to the response of soil respiration to soil moisture. The use of different SMRFs resulted in both large losses and small gains in future global soil carbon stocks, whether considering all climate forcings or only moisture changes. Regionally, the greatest range in soil carbon changes across SMRFs was found where the largest soil carbon changes occurred. Further research is needed to constrain the soil moisture–respiration relationship and thus reduce uncertainty in climate–carbon cycle feedbacks. There may also be considerable uncertainty in the regional responses of soil carbon to soil moisture changes since climate model predictions of regional soil moisture changes are less coherent than temperature changes