599 research outputs found
The impact of blocking natural peat pipes on water-table depth and water quality
No abstract available
Evidence for suppressed mid-Holocene northeastern Australian monsoon variability from coral luminescence
Summer monsoon rainfall in northeastern (NE) Australia exhibits substantial interannual variability resulting in highly variable river flows. The occurrence and magnitude of these seasonal river flows are reliably recorded in modern inshore corals as luminescent lines. Here we present reconstructed annual river flows for two ~120 year mid-Holocene windows based on luminescence measurements from five cores obtained from three separate coral colonies. We were able to cross-date the luminescence signatures in four cores from two of the colonies, providing confidence in the derived reconstruction. Present-day NE Australian rainfall and river flow are sensitive to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability, with La Niña (El Niño) events typically associated with wetter (drier) monsoon seasons. Thus, our replicated and annually resolved coral records provide valuable insights into the northern Australian summer monsoon and ENSO variability at a key period (6 ka) when greenhouse gas levels and ice sheet cover were comparable to the preindustrial period but orbital forcing was different. Average modern and mid-Holocene growth characteristics were very similar, suggesting that sea surface temperatures off NE Australia at 6 kyr were also close to present values. The reconstructed river flow record suggests, however, that the mid-Holocene Australian summer monsoon was weaker, less variable from year to year (possibly indicative of reduced ENSO variability), and characterized by more within-season flood pulses than present. In contrast to today, the delivery of moisture appears to have been dominated by eastward propagating convective coupled waves associated with the Madden-Julian Oscillation
Insights into dynamin-associated disorders through analysis of equivalent mutations in the yeast dynamin Vps1
The dynamins represent a superfamily of proteins that have been shown to function in a wide range of membrane fusion and fission events. An increasing number of mutations in the human classical dynamins, Dyn-1 and Dyn-2 has been reported, with diseases caused by these changes ranging from Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorder to epileptic encephalopathies. The budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae expresses a single dynamin-related protein that functions in membrane trafficking, and is considered to play a similar role to Dyn-1 and Dyn-2 during scission of endocytic vesicles at the plasma membrane. Large parts of the dynamin protein are highly conserved across species and this has enabled us in this study to select a number of disease causing mutations and to generate equivalent mutations in Vps1. We have then studied these mutants using both cellular and biochemical assays to ascertain functions of the protein that have been affected by the changes. Specifically, we demonstrate that the Vps1-G397R mutation (Dyn-2 G358R) disrupts protein oligomerization, Vps1-A447T (Dyn-1 A408T) affects the scission stage of endocytosis, while Vps1-R298L (Dyn-1 R256L) affects lipid binding specificity and possibly an early stage in endocytosis. Overall, we consider that the yeast model will potentially provide an avenue for rapid analysis of new dynamin mutations in order to understand the underlying mechanisms that they disrupt
Human perception in segmentation of sketches
In this paper, we study the segmentation of sketched engineering
drawings into a set of straight and curved segments. Our immediate objective is
to produce a benchmarking method for segmentation algorithms. The criterion
is to minimise the differences between what the algorithm detects and what
human beings perceive. We have created a set of sketched drawings and have
asked people to segment them. By analysis of the produced segmentations, we
have obtained the number and locations of the segmentation points which
people perceive. Evidence collected during our experiments supports useful
hypotheses, for example that not all kinds of segmentation points are equally
difficult to perceive. The resulting methodology can be repeated with other
drawings to obtain a set of sketches and segmentation data which could be used
as a benchmark for segmentation algorithms, to evaluate their capability to
emulate human perception of sketches
Field-Driven Transitions in the Dipolar Pyrochlore Antiferromagnet GdTiO
We present a mean-field theory for magnetic field driven transitions in
dipolar coupled gadolinium titanate GdTiO pyrochlore system. Low
temperature neutron scattering yields a phase that can be regarded as a 8
sublattice antiferromagnet, in which long-ranged ordered moments and
fluctuating moments coexist. Our theory gives parameter regions where such a
phase is realized, and predicts several other phases, with transitions amongst
them driven by magnetic field as well as temperature. We find several instances
of {\em local} disorder parameters describing the transitions.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. v2: longer version with 2 add.fig., to appear in
PR
Multilocus genetic models of handedness closely resemble single-locus models in explaining family data and are compatible with genome-wide association studies.
Right- and left-handedness run in families, show greater concordance in monozygotic than dizygotic twins, and are well described by single-locus Mendelian models. Here we summarize a large genome-wide association study (GWAS) that finds no significant associations with handedness and is consistent with a meta-analysis of GWASs. The GWAS had 99% power to detect a single locus using the conventional criterion of P < 5 × 10(-8) for the single locus models of McManus and Annett. The strong conclusion is that handedness is not controlled by a single genetic locus. A consideration of the genetic architecture of height, primary ciliary dyskinesia, and intelligence suggests that handedness inheritance can be explained by a multilocus variant of the McManus DC model, classical effects on family and twins being barely distinguishable from the single locus model. Based on the ENGAGE meta-analysis of GWASs, we estimate at least 40 loci are involved in determining handedness
Classical heisenberg antiferromagnet away from the pyrochlore lattice limit: entropic versus energetic selection
The stability of the disordered ground state of the classical Heisenberg
pyrochlore antiferromagnet is studied within extensive Monte Carlo simulations
by introducing an additional exchange interaction that interpolates
between the pyrochlore lattice () and the face-centered cubic lattice
(). It is found that for as low as , the system is
long range ordered : the disordered ground state of the pyrochlore
antiferromagnet is unstable when introducing very small deviations from the
pure limit. Furthermore, it is found that the selected phase is a
collinear state energetically greater than the incommensurate phase suggested
by a mean field analysis. To our knowledge this is the first example where
entropic selection prevails over the energetic one.Comment: 5 (two-column revtex4) pages, 1 table, 7 ps/eps figures. Submitted to
Phys. Rev.
Temporal fluctuations of waves in weakly nonlinear disordered media
We consider the multiple scattering of a scalar wave in a disordered medium
with a weak nonlinearity of Kerr type. The perturbation theory, developed to
calculate the temporal autocorrelation function of scattered wave, fails at
short correlation times. A self-consistent calculation shows that for
nonlinearities exceeding a certain threshold value, the multiple-scattering
speckle pattern becomes unstable and exhibits spontaneous fluctuations even in
the absence of scatterer motion. The instability is due to a distributed
feedback in the system "coherent wave + nonlinear disordered medium". The
feedback is provided by the multiple scattering. The development of instability
is independent of the sign of nonlinearity.Comment: RevTeX, 15 pages (including 5 figures), accepted for publication in
Phys. Rev.
On the valence-bond solid phase of the crossed-chain quantum spin model
Using a series expansion based on the flow-equation method we study the
ground state energy and the elementary triplet excitations of a generalized
model of crossed spin-1/2 chains starting from the limit of decoupled
quadrumers. The triplet dispersion is shown to be very sensitive to the
inter-quadrumer frustration, exhibiting a line of almost complete localization
as well as lines of quantum phase transitions limiting the stability of the
valence-bond solid phase. In the vicinity of the checkerboard-point a finite
window of exchange couplings is found with a non-zero spin-gap, consistent with
known results from exact diagonalization. The ground state energy is lower than
that of the bare quadrumer case for all exchange couplings investigated. In the
limiting situation of the fully frustrated checkerboard magnet our results
agree with earlier series expansion studies.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
SU(N) Evolution of a Frustrated Spin Ladder
Recent studies indicate that the weakly coupled spin-1/2 Heisenberg
antiferromagnet with next nearest neighbor frustration supports massive spinons
when suitably tuned. The straightforward SU(N) generalization of the low energy
ladder Hamiltonian yields two independent SU(N) Thirring models with N-1
multiplets of massive ``spinon'' excitations. We study the evolution of the
complete set of low-energy dynamical structure factors using form factors.
Those corresponding to the smooth (staggered) magnetizations are qualitatively
different (the same) in the N=2 and N>2 cases. The absence of single-particle
peaks preserves the notion of spinons stabilized by frustration. In contrast to
the ladder, we note that the N=infinity limit of the four chain magnet is not a
trivial free theory.Comment: 10 pages, RevTex, 5 figures; SU(N) approach clarifie
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