879 research outputs found
The neonicotinoid insecticide Imidacloprid repels pollinating flies and beetles at field-realistic concentrations
Neonicotinoids are widely used systemic insecticides which, when applied to flowering crops, are translocated to the nectar and pollen where they may impact upon pollinators. Given global concerns over pollinator declines, this potential impact has recently received much attention. Field exposure of pollinators to neonicotinoids depends on the concentrations present in flowering crops and the degree to which pollinators choose to feed upon them. Here we describe a simple experiment using paired yellow pan traps with or without insecticide to assess whether the commonly used neonicotinoid imidacloprid repels or attracts flying insects. Both Diptera and Coleoptera exhibited marked avoidance of traps containing imidacloprid at a field-realistic dose of 1 μg L-1, with Diptera avoiding concentrations as low as 0.01 μg L-1. This is to our knowledge the first evidence for any biological activity at such low concentrations, which are below the limits of laboratory detection using most commonly available techniques. Catch of spiders in pan traps was also slightly reduced by the highest concentrations of imidacloprid used (1 μg L-1), but catch was increased by lower concentrations. It remains to be seen if the repellent effect on insects occurs when neonicotinoids are present in real flowers, but if so then this could have implications for exposure of pollinators to neonicotinoids and for crop pollination. © 2013 Easton, Goulson
P-splines with derivative based penalties and tensor product smoothing of unevenly distributed data
The P-splines of Eilers and Marx (1996) combine a B-spline basis with a
discrete quadratic penalty on the basis coefficients, to produce a reduced rank
spline like smoother. P-splines have three properties that make them very
popular as reduced rank smoothers: i) the basis and the penalty are sparse,
enabling efficient computation, especially for Bayesian stochastic simulation;
ii) it is possible to flexibly `mix-and-match' the order of B-spline basis and
penalty, rather than the order of penalty controlling the order of the basis as
in spline smoothing; iii) it is very easy to set up the B-spline basis
functions and penalties. The discrete penalties are somewhat less interpretable
in terms of function shape than the traditional derivative based spline
penalties, but tend towards penalties proportional to traditional spline
penalties in the limit of large basis size. However part of the point of
P-splines is not to use a large basis size. In addition the spline basis
functions arise from solving functional optimization problems involving
derivative based penalties, so moving to discrete penalties for smoothing may
not always be desirable. The purpose of this note is to point out that the
three properties of basis-penalty sparsity, mix-and-match penalization and ease
of setup are readily obtainable with B-splines subject to derivative based
penalization. The penalty setup typically requires a few lines of code, rather
than the two lines typically required for P-splines, but this one off
disadvantage seems to be the only one associated with using derivative based
penalties. As an example application, it is shown how basis-penalty sparsity
enables efficient computation with tensor product smoothers of scattered data
Chytrid epidemics may increase genetic diversity of a diatom spring-bloom
Contrary to expectation, populations of clonal organisms are often genetically highly diverse. In phytoplankton, this diversity is maintained throughout periods of high population growth (that is, blooms), even though competitive exclusion among genotypes should hypothetically lead to the dominance of a few superior genotypes. Genotype-specific parasitism may be one mechanism that helps maintain such high-genotypic diversity of clonal organisms. Here, we present a comparison of population genetic similarity by estimating the beta-dispersion among genotypes of early and peak bloom populations of the diatom Asterionella formosa for three spring-blooms under high or low parasite pressure. The Asterionella population showed greater beta-dispersion at peak bloom than early bloom in the 2 years with high parasite pressure, whereas the within group dispersion did not change under low parasite pressure. Our findings support that high prevalence parasitism can promote genetic diversification of natural populations of clonal hosts
Lowering IceCube's energy threshold for point source searches in the Southern Sky
Observation of a point source of astrophysical neutrinos would be a "smoking gun" signature of a cosmic-ray accelerator. While IceCube has recently discovered a diffuse flux of astrophysical neutrinos, no localized point source has been observed. Previous IceCube searches for point sources in the southern sky were restricted by either an energy threshold above a few hundred TeV or poor neutrino angular resolution. Here we present a search for southern sky point sources with greatly improved sensitivities to neutrinos with energies below 100 TeV. By selecting charged-current ν μ interacting inside the detector, we reduce the atmospheric background while retaining efficiency for astrophysical neutrino-induced events reconstructed with sub-degree angular resolution. The new event sample covers three years of detector data and leads to a factor of 10 improvement in sensitivity to point sources emitting below 100 TeV in the southern sky. No statistically significant evidence of point sources was found, and upper limits are set on neutrino emission from individual sources. A posteriori analysis of the highest-energy (~100 TeV) starting event in the sample found that this event alone represents a 2.8σ deviation from the hypothesis that the data consists only of atmospheric background.Fil: Aartsen, M. G.. University of Adelaide; AustraliaFil: Abraham, K.. Technische Universität München; AlemaniaFil: Ackermann, M.. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron; AlemaniaFil: Adams, J.. University Of Canterbury; Nueva ZelandaFil: Aguilar, J. A.. Université Libre de Bruxelles; BélgicaFil: Golup, Geraldina Tamara. Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica. Gerencia del Área de Energía Nuclear. Instituto Balseiro; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte; ArgentinaFil: Wallace, A.. University of Adelaide; AustraliaFil: Wallraff, M.. Rwth Aachen University; AlemaniaFil: Wandkowsky, N.. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Weaver, Ch.. University of Alberta; CanadáFil: Wendt, C.. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Westerhoff, S.. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Whelan, B. J.. University of Adelaide; AustraliaFil: Whitehorn, N.. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Wickmann, S.. Rwth Aachen University; AlemaniaFil: Wiebe, K.. Johannes Gutenberg Universitat Mainz; AlemaniaFil: Wiebusch, C. H.. Rwth Aachen University; AlemaniaFil: Wille, L.. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Williams, D. R.. University of Alabama at Birmingahm; Estados UnidosFil: Wills, L.. Drexel University; Estados UnidosFil: Wissing, H.. University of Maryland; Estados UnidosFil: Wolf, M.. Stockholms Universitet; SueciaFil: Wood, T. R.. University of Alberta; CanadáFil: Woschnagg, K.. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Xu, D. L.. University of Wisconsin; Estados UnidosFil: Xu, X. W.. Southern University; Estados UnidosFil: Xu, Y.. Stony Brook University; Estados UnidosFil: Yanez, J. P.. Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron; AlemaniaFil: Yodh, G.. University of California at Irvine; Estados UnidosFil: Yoshida, S.. Chiba University; JapónFil: Zoll, M.. Stockholms Universitet; Sueci
CMB Polarization B-mode Delensing with SPTpol and Herschel
We present a demonstration of delensing the observed cosmic microwave
background (CMB) B-mode polarization anisotropy. This process of reducing the
gravitational-lensing generated B-mode component will become increasingly
important for improving searches for the B modes produced by primordial
gravitational waves. In this work, we delens B-mode maps constructed from
multi-frequency SPTpol observations of a 90 deg patch of sky by subtracting
a B-mode template constructed from two inputs: SPTpol E-mode maps and a lensing
potential map estimated from the map of the
CIB. We find that our delensing procedure reduces the measured B-mode power
spectrum by 28% in the multipole range ; this is shown to be
consistent with expectations from theory and simulations and to be robust
against systematics. The null hypothesis of no delensing is rejected at . Furthermore, we build and use a suite of realistic simulations to
study the general properties of the delensing process and find that the
delensing efficiency achieved in this work is limited primarily by the noise in
the lensing potential map. We demonstrate the importance of including realistic
experimental non-idealities in the delensing forecasts used to inform
instrument and survey-strategy planning of upcoming lower-noise experiments,
such as CMB-S4.Comment: 17 pages, 10 figures. Comments are welcome
Measurements of Sub-degree B-mode Polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background from 100 Square Degrees of SPTpol Data
We present a measurement of the -mode polarization power spectrum (the
spectrum) from 100 of sky observed with SPTpol, a
polarization-sensitive receiver currently installed on the South Pole
Telescope. The observations used in this work were taken during 2012 and early
2013 and include data in spectral bands centered at 95 and 150 GHz. We report
the spectrum in five bins in multipole space, spanning the range , and for three spectral combinations: 95 GHz 95 GHz, 95
GHz 150 GHz, and 150 GHz 150 GHz. We subtract small ( in units of statistical uncertainty) biases from these spectra and
account for the uncertainty in those biases. The resulting power spectra are
inconsistent with zero power but consistent with predictions for the
spectrum arising from the gravitational lensing of -mode polarization. If we
assume no other source of power besides lensed modes, we determine a
preference for lensed modes of . After marginalizing over
tensor power and foregrounds, namely polarized emission from galactic dust and
extragalactic sources, this significance is . Fitting for a single
parameter, , that multiplies the predicted lensed -mode
spectrum, and marginalizing over tensor power and foregrounds, we find
, indicating that our measured spectra are
consistent with the signal expected from gravitational lensing. The data
presented here provide the best measurement to date of the -mode power
spectrum on these angular scales.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure
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