976 research outputs found
Meeting forest ecosystem objectives with wildland fire use
Three 2003 Grand Canyon National Park fires burned 83 plots across the park’s North
Rim old-growth forests that range from open ponderosa pine groves to dense spruce–fir–aspen stands at 7,300 to 8,800 feet (2,225 to 2,682 m) elevation.
Ignited by lightning, these
fires were managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior (USDI) National Park Service as wildland fire use (WFU) to meet resource objectives. As outlined below, they provided an excellent opportunity to evaluate low to mixed-severity fire effects
Spin Hall Effect and Spin Transfer in Disordered Rashba Model
Based on numerical study of the Rashba model, we show that the spin Hall
conductance remains finite in the presence of disorder up to a characteristic
length scale, beyond which it vanishes exponentially with the system size. We
further perform a Laughlin's gauge experiment numerically and find that all
energy levels cannot cross each other during an adiabatic insertion of the flux
in accordance with the general level-repulsion rule. It results in zero spin
transfer between two edges of the sample as each state always evolves back
after the insertion of one flux quantum, in contrast to the quantum Hall
effect. It implies that the topological spin Hall effect vanishes with the
turn-on of disorder.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures final versio
A century of increasing pine density and associated shifts in understory plant strategies
We analyzed one of the longest-term ecological data sets to evaluate how forest overstory structure is related to herbaceous understory plant strategies in a ponderosa pine forest. Eighty-two permanent 1-m2 chart quadrats that were established as early as 1912 were remeasured in 2007. We reconstructed historical forest structure using dendrochronological techniques. Ponderosa pine basal area increased from an average of 4 m2/ha in the early 1900s to 29 m2/ha in 2007. Understory plant foliar cover declined by 21%, species richness declined by two species per square meter, and functional diversity also declined. The relative cover of C4 graminoids decreased by 18% and C3 graminoids increased by 19%. Herbaceous plant species with low leaf and fine root nitrogen concentrations, low specific leaf area, high leaf dry matter content, large seed mass, low specific root length, short maximum height, and early flowering date increased in relative abundance in sites where pine basal area increased the most. Overall, we observed a long-term shift in composition toward more conservative shade- and stress-tolerant herbaceous species. Our analysis of temporal changes in plant strategies provides a general framework for evaluating compositional and functional changes in terrestrial plant communities
Evidence for Quasiparticle Decay in Photoemission from Underdoped Cuprates
I argue that the ``gap'' recently observed at the Brillouin zone face of
cuprate superconductors in photoemission by Marshall et al [Phys. Rev. Lett.
76, 4841 (1996)] and Ding et al [Nature 382, 54 (1996)] is evidence for the
decay of the injected hole into a spinon-holon pair.Comment: 4 pages of ReVTeX, 3 eps figure
Introducing a framework to assess newly created questions with Natural Language Processing
Statistical models such as those derived from Item Response Theory (IRT)
enable the assessment of students on a specific subject, which can be useful
for several purposes (e.g., learning path customization, drop-out prediction).
However, the questions have to be assessed as well and, although it is possible
to estimate with IRT the characteristics of questions that have already been
answered by several students, this technique cannot be used on newly generated
questions. In this paper, we propose a framework to train and evaluate models
for estimating the difficulty and discrimination of newly created Multiple
Choice Questions by extracting meaningful features from the text of the
question and of the possible choices. We implement one model using this
framework and test it on a real-world dataset provided by CloudAcademy, showing
that it outperforms previously proposed models, reducing by 6.7% the RMSE for
difficulty estimation and by 10.8% the RMSE for discrimination estimation. We
also present the results of an ablation study performed to support our features
choice and to show the effects of different characteristics of the questions'
text on difficulty and discrimination.Comment: Accepted at the International Conference of Artificial Intelligence
in Educatio
Transverse voltage in zero external magnetic fields, its scaling and violation of the time reversal symmetry in MgB2
The longitudinal and transverse voltages (resistances) have been measured for
MgB in zero external magnetic fields. Samples were prepared in the form of
thin film and patterned into the usual Hall bar shape. In close vicinity of the
critical temperature T non-zero transverse resistance has been observed.
Its dependence on the transport current has been also studied. New scaling
between transverse and longitudinal resistivities has been observed in the form
. Several models for explanation of the
observed transverse resistances and breaking of reciprocity theorem are
discussed. One of the most promising explanation is based on the idea of
time-reversal symmetry violation
Theory for superconductivity in (Tl,K)FeSe as a doped Mott insulator
Possible superconductivity in recently discovered (Tl,K)FeSe
compounds is studied from the viewpoint of doped Mott insulator. The Mott
insulating phase is examined to be preferred in the parent compound at
due to the presence of Fe vacancies. Partial filling of vacancies at the
Fe-sites introduces electron carriers and leads to electron doped
superconductivity. By using a two-orbital Hubbard model in the strong coupling
limit, we find that the s-wave pairing is more favorable at small Hund's
coupling, and d wave pairing is more favorable at large Hund's
coupling.Comment: 4+ pages, 3 figures, to appear in EP
Extraordinary Aggressive Behavior from the Giant Coral Reef Fish, Bolbometopon muricatum, in a Remote Marine Reserve
Human impacts to terrestrial and marine communities are widespread and typically begin with the local extirpation of large-bodied animals. In the marine environment, few pristine areas relatively free of human impact remain to provide baselines of ecosystem function and goals for restoration efforts. Recent comparisons of remote and/or protected coral reefs versus impacted sites suggest remote systems are dominated by apex predators, yet in these systems the ecological role of non-predatory, large-bodied, highly vulnerable species such as the giant bumphead parrotfish (Bolbometopon muricatum) has received less attention. Overfishing of Bolbometopon has lead to precipitous declines in population density and avoidance of humans throughout its range, contributing to its status as a candidate species under the U. S. Endangered Species Act and limiting opportunities to study unexploited populations. Here we show that extraordinary ecological processes, such as violent headbutting contests by the world’s largest parrotfish, can be revealed by studying unexploited ecosystems, such as the coral reefs of Wake Atoll where we studied an abundant population of Bolbometopon. Bolbometopon is among the largest of coral reef fishes and is a well known, charismatic species, yet to our knowledge, no scientific documentation of ritualized headbutting exists for marine fishes. Our observations of aggressive headbutting by Bolbometopon underscore that remote locations and marine reserves, by inhibiting negative responses to human observers and by allowing the persistence of historical conditions, can provide valuable opportunities to study ecosystems in their natural state, thereby facilitating the discovery, conservation, and interpretation of a range of sometimes remarkable behavioral and ecological processes
Ferromagnetism without flat bands in thin armchair nanoribbons
Describing by a Hubbard type of model a thin armchair graphene ribbon in the
armchair hexagon chain limit, one shows in exact terms, that even if the system
does not have flat bands at all, at low concentration a mesoscopic sample can
have ferromagnetic ground state, being metallic in the same time. The mechanism
is connected to a common effect of correlations and confinement.Comment: 37 pages, 12 figures, in press at Eur. Phys. Jour.
Magnetic Induction of d + i d Order in High-Tc Superconductors
I propose that the phase transition in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 recently observed by by
Krishana et al [Science 277, 83 (1997)] is the development of a small d-xy
superconducting order parameter phased by pi/2 with respect to the principal
d-(x2-y2) one to produce a minimum energy gap delta. The violation of both
parity and time-reversal symmetry allows the development of a magnetic moment,
the key to explaining the experiment. The origin of this moment is a quantized
boundary current of I = 2 e delta / h at zero temperature.Comment: 4 pages of ReVTeX, 3 eps figure
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