Population admixture can enhance establishment success of the introduced biological control agent Cryptolaemus montrouzieri

Background: Introduced biological control agents have opportunities of population admixture through multiple introductions in the field. However, the importance of population admixture for their establishment success often remains unclear. Previous studies based on genetic markers have suggested a history of population admixture in the predatory ladybird Cryptolaemus montrouzieri Mulsant in China. Results: We tested whether population admixture may lead to fitness changes under laboratory conditions. We first found no mating barrier or strong bias between two parental populations, despite their differences in genetics and phenotypes. Then, our experimental evidence supported the hypothesis that admixed populations have a higher potential of establishment success, due to their superior reproductive ability, and hunger and cold tolerance inherited from one of the parental populations. Conclusions: We suggest that population admixture can be a breeding method to improve the performance of biological control agents, particularly when used in a classical biological control approach, but that consequences for potential invasiveness need to be considered

Conditioning of BPM pickup signals for operations of the Duke storage ring with a wide range of single-bunch current

The Duke storage ring is a dedicated driver for the storage ring based oscillator free-electron lasers (FELs), and the High Intensity Gamma-ray Source (HIGS). It is operated with a beam current ranging from about 1 mA to 100 mA per bunch for various operations and accelerator physics studies. High performance operations of the FEL and gamma-ray source require a stable electron beam orbit, which has been realized by the global orbit feedback system. As a critical part of the orbit feedback system, the electron beam position monitors (BPMs) are required to be able to precisely measure the electron beam orbit in a wide range of the single-bunch current. However, the high peak voltage of the BPM pickups associated with high single-bunch current degrades the performance of the BPM electronics, and can potentially damage the BPM electronics. A signal conditioning method using low pass filters is developed to reduce the peak voltage to protect the BPM electronics, and to make the BPMs capable of working with a wide range of single-bunch current. Simulations and electron beam based tests are performed. The results show that the Duke storage ring BPM system is capable of providing precise orbit measurements to ensure highly stable FEL and HIGS operations

Particle Motion Around Tachyon Monopole

Recently, Li and Liu have studied global monoole of tachyon in a four dimensional static space-time. We analyze the motion of massless and massive particles around tachyon monopole. Interestingly, for the bending of light rays due to tachyon monopole instead of getting angle of deficit we find angle of surplus. Also we find that the tachyon monopole exerts an attractive gravitational force towards matter.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Short O-O separation in layered oxide Na0.67CoO2 enables an ultrafast oxygen evolution reaction.

The layered oxide Na0.67CoO2 with Na+ occupying trigonal prismatic sites between CoO2 layers exhibits a remarkably high room temperature oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity in alkaline solution. The high activity is attributed to an unusually short O-O separation that favors formation of peroxide ions by O--O- interactions followed by O2 evolution in preference to the conventional route through surface O-OH- species. The dependence of the onset potential on the pH of the alkaline solution was found to be consistent with the loss of H+ ions from the surface oxygen to provide surface O- that may either be attacked by solution OH- or react with another O-; a short O-O separation favors the latter route. The role of a strong hybridization of the O-2p and low-spin CoIII/CoIV π-bonding d states is also important; the OER on other CoIII/CoIV oxides is compared with that on Na0.67CoO2 as well as that on IrO2

A String-Inspired Quintom Model Of Dark Energy

We propose in this paper a quintom model of dark energy with a single scalar field $\phi$ given by the lagrangian ${\cal L}=-V(\phi)\sqrt{1-\alpha^\prime\nabla_{\mu}\phi\nabla^{\mu}\phi +\beta^\prime \phi\Box\phi}$. In the limit of $\beta^\prime\to$0 our model reduces to the effective low energy lagrangian of tachyon considered in the literature. We study the cosmological evolution of this model, and show explicitly the behaviors of the equation of state crossing the cosmological constant boundary.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted by PL