Postrelease survival, vertical and horizontal movements, and thermal habitats of five species of pelagic sharks in the central Pacific Ocean

From 2001 to 2006, 71 pop-up satellite archival tags (PSATs) were deployed on five species of pelagic shark (blue shark [Prionace glauca]; shortfin mako [Isurus oxyrinchus]; silky shark [Carcharhinus falciformis]; oceanic whitetip shark [C. longimanus]; and bigeye thresher [Alopias superciliosus]) in the central Pacific Ocean to determine species-specific movement patterns and survival rates after release from longline fishing gear. Only a single postrelease mortality could be unequivocally documented: a male blue shark which succumbed seven days after release. Meta-analysis of published reports and the current study (n=78 reporting PSATs) indicated that the summary effect of postrelease mortality for blue sharks was 15% (95% CI, 8.5–25.1%) and suggested that catch-and-release in longline fisheries can be a viable management tool to protect parental biomass in shark populations. Pelagic sharks displayed species-specific depth and temperature ranges, although with significant individual temporal and spatial variability in vertical movement patterns, which were also punctuated by stochastic events (e.g., El Niño-Southern Oscillation). Pelagic species can be separated into three broad groups based on daytime temperature preferences by using the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averaging clustering on a Kolmogorov-Smirnov Dmax distance matrix: 1) epipelagic species (silky and oceanic whitetip sharks), which spent >95% of their time at temperatures within 2°C of sea surface temperature; 2) mesopelagic-I species (blue sharks and shortfin makos, which spent 95% of their time at temperatures from 9.7° to 26.9°C and from 9.4° to 25.0°C, respectively; and 3) mesopelagic-II species (bigeye threshers), which spent 95% of their time at temperatures from 6.7° to 21.2°C. Distinct thermal niche partitioning based on body size and latitude was also evident within epipelagic species

Finite-Temperature Properties of Ba(Zr,Ti)O3_3 Relaxors From First Principles

A first-principles-based technique is developed to investigate properties of Ba(Zr,Ti)O$_3$ relaxor ferroelectrics as a function of temperature. The use of this scheme provides answers to important, unresolved and/or controversial questions, such as: what do the different critical temperatures usually found in relaxors correspond to? Do polar nanoregions really exist in relaxors? If yes, do they only form inside chemically-ordered regions? Is it necessary that antiferroelectricity develops in order for the relaxor behavior to occur? Are random fields and random strains really the mechanisms responsible for relaxor behavior? If not, what are these mechanisms? These {\it ab-initio-based} calculations also leads to a deep microscopic insight into relaxors.Comment: 3 figures + Supplemen

Lattice QCD at non-zero isospin chemical potential

Quantum chromodynamics (QCD) at non-zero isospin chemical potential is studied in a canonical approach by analyzing systems of fixed isospin number density. To construct these systems, we develop a range of new algorithms for performing the factorially large numbers of Wick contractions required in multi-hadron systems. We then use these methods to study systems with the quantum numbers of up to 72 $\pi^+$'s on three ensembles of gauge configurations with spatial extents $L\sim$ 2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 fm, and light quark masses corresponding to a pion mass of {390 MeV}. The ground state energies of these systems are extracted and the volume dependence of these energies is utilized to determine the two- and three- body interactions amongst $\pi^+$'s. The systems studied correspond to isospin densities of up to $\rho_I\sim 9\ {\rm fm}^{-3}$ and probe isospin chemical potentials, $\mu_I$, in the range m_\pi\ \lsim \mu_I\ \lsim 4.5\ m_\pi, allowing us to investigate aspects of the QCD phase diagram at low temperature and for varying isospin chemical potential. By studying the energy density of the system, we provide numerical evidence for the conjectured transition of the system to a Bose-Einstein condensed phase at \mu_I\ \gsim m_\pi.Comment: 32 pages, 22 figure

Linear Choosability of Sparse Graphs

We study the linear list chromatic number, denoted \lcl(G), of sparse graphs. The maximum average degree of a graph $G$, denoted \mad(G), is the maximum of the average degrees of all subgraphs of $G$. It is clear that any graph $G$ with maximum degree $\Delta(G)$ satisfies \lcl(G)\ge \ceil{\Delta(G)/2}+1. In this paper, we prove the following results: (1) if \mad(G)<12/5 and $\Delta(G)\ge 3$, then \lcl(G)=\ceil{\Delta(G)/2}+1, and we give an infinite family of examples to show that this result is best possible; (2) if \mad(G)<3 and $\Delta(G)\ge 9$, then \lcl(G)\le\ceil{\Delta(G)/2}+2, and we give an infinite family of examples to show that the bound on \mad(G) cannot be increased in general; (3) if $G$ is planar and has girth at least 5, then \lcl(G)\le\ceil{\Delta(G)/2}+4.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Phase transition from quark-meson coupling hyperonic matter to deconfined quark matter

We investigate the possibility and consequences of phase transitions from an equation of state (EOS) describing nucleons and hyperons interacting via mean fields of sigma, omega, and rho mesons in the recently improved quark-meson coupling (QMC) model to an EOS describing a Fermi gas of quarks in an MIT bag. The transition to a mixed phase of baryons and deconfined quarks, and subsequently to a pure deconfined quark phase, is described using the method of Glendenning. The overall EOS for the three phases is calculated for various scenarios and used to calculate stellar solutions using the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff equations. The results are compared with recent experimental data, and the validity of each case is discussed with consequences for determining the species content of the interior of neutron stars.Comment: 12 pages, 14 figures; minor typos correcte

Proton structure corrections to hyperfine splitting in muonic hydrogen

We present the derivation of the formulas for the proton structure-dependent terms in the hyperfine splitting of muonic hydrogen. We use compatible conventions throughout the calculations to derive a consistent set of formulas that reconcile differences between our results and some specific terms in earlier work. Convention conversion corrections are explicitly presented, which reduce the calculated hyperfine splitting by about 46 ppm. We also note that using only modern fits to the proton elastic form factors gives a smaller than historical spread of Zemach radii and leads to a reduced uncertainty in the hyperfine splitting. Additionally, hyperfine splittings have an impact on the muonic hydrogen Lamb shift/proton radius measurement, however the correction we advocate has a small effect there.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

A missing dimension in measures of vaccination impacts

Immunological protection, acquired from either natural infection or vaccination, varies among hosts, reflecting underlying biological variation and affecting population-level protection. Owing to the nature of resistance mechanisms, distributions of susceptibility and protection entangle with pathogen dose in a way that can be decoupled by adequately representing the dose dimension. Any infectious processes must depend in some fashion on dose, and empirical evidence exists for an effect of exposure dose on the probability of transmission to mumps-vaccinated hosts [1], the case-fatality ratio of measles [2], and the probability of infection and, given infection, of symptoms in cholera [3]. Extreme distributions of vaccine protection have been termed leaky (partially protects all hosts) and all-or-nothing (totally protects a proportion of hosts) [4]. These distributions can be distinguished in vaccine field trials from the time dependence of infections [5]. Frailty mixing models have also been proposed to estimate the distribution of protection from time to event data [6], [7], although the results are not comparable across regions unless there is explicit control for baseline transmission [8]. Distributions of host susceptibility and acquired protection can be estimated from dose-response data generated under controlled experimental conditions [9]–[11] and natural settings [12], [13]. These distributions can guide research on mechanisms of protection, as well as enable model validity across the entire range of transmission intensities. We argue for a shift to a dose-dimension paradigm in infectious disease science and community health

Fish assemblages found in tidal-creek and seagrass habitats in the Suwannee River estuary

Fish assemblages were investigated in tidal-creek and seagrass habitats in the Suwannee River estuary, Florida. A total of 91,571 fish representing 43 families were collected in monthly seine samples from January 1997 to December 1999. Tidal creeks supported greater densities of fish (3.89 fish/m2; 83% of total) than did seagrass habitats (0.93 fish/m2). We identified three distinct fish assemblages in each habitat: winter−spring, summer, and fall. Pinfish (Lagodon rhomboides), pigfish (Orthopristis chrysoptera), and syngnathids characterized seagrass assemblages, whereas spot (Leiostomus xanthurus), bay anchovy (Anchoa mitchilli), silversides (Menidia spp.), mojarras (Eucinostomus spp.), and fundulids characterized tidal-creek habitats. Important recreational and commercial species such as striped mullet (Mugil cephalus) and red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) were found primarily in tidal creeks and were among the top 13 taxa in the fish assemblages found in the tidal-creek habitats. Tidal-creek and seagrass habitats in the Suwannee River estuary were found to support diverse fish assemblages. Seasonal patterns in occurrence, which were found to be associated with recruitment of early-life-history stages, were observed for many of the fish species

Inhomogenous electronic structure, transport gap, and percolation threshold in disordered bilayer graphene

The inhomogenous real-space electronic structure of gapless and gapped disordered bilayer graphene is calculated in the presence of quenched charge impurities. For gapped bilayer graphene we find that for current experimental conditions the amplitude of the fluctuations of the screened disorder potential is of the order of (or often larger than) the intrinsic gap $\Delta$ induced by the application of a perpendicular electric field. We calculate the crossover chemical potential, $\Delta_{\rm cr}$, separating the insulating regime from a percolative regime in which less than half of the area of the bilayer graphene sample is insulating. We find that most of the current experiments are in the percolative regime with $\Delta_{\rm cr}<<\Delta$. The huge suppression of $\Delta_{\rm cr}$ compared with $\Delta$ provides a possible explanation for the large difference between the theoretical band gap $\Delta$ and the experimentally extracted transport gap.Comment: 5 Pages, 2 figures. Published versio

Enhanced vaccine control of epidemics in adaptive networks

We study vaccine control for disease spread on an adaptive network modeling disease avoidance behavior. Control is implemented by adding Poisson distributed vaccination of susceptibles. We show that vaccine control is much more effective in adaptive networks than in static networks due to an interaction between the adaptive network rewiring and the vaccine application. Disease extinction rates using vaccination are computed, and orders of magnitude less vaccine application is needed to drive the disease to extinction in an adaptive network than in a static one