Grass-endophytes in plant protection

Agriculturists have long known that certain grass species infected with systemic fungal endophytes are highly resistant to both vertebrate and invertebrate herbivores

Sequences with long range exclusions

Given an alphabet $S$, we consider the size of the subsets of the full sequence space $S^{\rm {\bf Z}}$ determined by the additional restriction that $x_i\not=x_{i+f(n)},\ i\in {\rm {\bf Z}},\ n\in {\rm {\bf N}}.$ Here $f$ is a positive, strictly increasing function. We review an other, graph theoretic, formulation and then the known results covering various combinations of $f$ and the alphabet size. In the second part of the paper we turn to the fine structure of the allowed sequences in the particular case where $f$ is a suitable polynomial. The generation of sequences leads naturally to consider the problem of their maximal length, which turns out highly random asymptotically in the alphabet size.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figures. Replaces earlier version, submission 1204.3439, major updat

QCD-like technicolor on the lattice

This talk gives an overview, aimed at non-experts, of the recent progress on the studies of technicolor models on the lattice. Phenomenologically successful technicolor models require walking coupling; thus, an emphasis is put on the determination of the beta-function of various models. As a case study we consider SU(2) gauge field theory with two adjoint representation fermions, so-called minimal walking technicolor theory.Comment: 6 pages; talk presented at "Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum IX", Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 30 August--3 September 201

Recent progress in Affleck-Dine baryogenesis

In the MSSM, cosmological scalar field condensates formed along flat directions of the scalar potential (Affleck-Dine condensates) are typically unstable with respect to formation of Q-balls, a type of non-topological soliton. I discuss the creation and growth of the quantum seed fluctuations which catalyse the collapse of the condensate. In D-term inflation models, the fluctuations of squark fields in the flat directions also give rise to isocurvature density fluctuations stored in the Affleck-Dine condensate. After the condensate breaks up, these can be perturbations in the baryon number, or, in the case where the present neutralino density comes directly from B-ball decay, perturbations in the number of dark matter neutralinos. The latter case results in a large enhancement of the isocurvature perturbation, which should be observable by PLANCK.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures; invited talk at COSMO9

Behavior, neurobiology, and behavioral ecology (session summary; all summaries compiled by R.A. Wahle)

Published versio