322 research outputs found
Resprouting grasses are associated with less frequent fire than seeders
Get PDFPlant populations persist under recurrent fire via resprouting from surviving tissues (resprouters) or seedling recruitment (seeders). Woody species are inherently slow maturing, meaning that seeders are confined to infrequent fire regimes. However, for grasses, which mature faster, the relationships between persistence strategy and fire regime remain unknown.
Globally, we analysed associations between fire regimes experienced by hundreds of grass species and their persistence strategy, within a phylogenetic context. We also tested whether persistence strategies are associated with morphological and physiological traits.
Resprouters were associated with less frequent fire than seeders. Whilst modal fire frequencies were similar (fire return interval of 4–6 yr), seeders were restricted to regions with more frequent fire than resprouters, suggesting that greater competition with long‐lived resprouters restricts seeder recruitment and survival when fire is rare. Resprouting was associated with lower leaf N, higher C:N ratios and the presence of belowground buds, but was unrelated to photosynthetic pathway.
Differences between the life histories of grasses and woody species led to a contrasting prevalence of seeders and resprouters in relation to fire frequency. Rapid sexual maturation in grasses means that seeder distributions, relative to fire regime, are determined by competitive ability and recruitment, rather than time to reproductive maturity
Competition between Fusion and Quasi-fission in the Formation of Super-heavy Elements
Get PDFQuasifission is a non-equilibrium dynamical process resulting in rapid separation of the dinuclear system initially formed after capture and sticking of two colliding heavy nuclei. This can inhibit fusion by many orders of magnitude, thus suppressing the cross section for formation of superheavy elements. Measurements with projectiles from C to Ni, made at the Australian National University Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility, have mapped out quasifission characteristics and systematics using mass-angle distributions (MAD) - the fission mass-split as a function of centre-of-mass angle. These provide information on quasifission dynamics in the least model-dependent way. Quasifission time-scale information in the MAD has been compared with TDHF calculations of the collisions, with good agreement being found. Most significantly, the nuclear structure of the two colliding nuclei has a dramatic effect on quasifission probabilities and characteristics in gentle collisions at near-barrier energies. The effect of static deformation alignment, closed shells and N/Z matching can completely change reaction outcomes. The realization of this strong dependence makes modelling quasifission and superheavy element formation a challenging task, but should ultimately allow more reliable prediction of superheavy element formation cross sections
Interference effect between neutron direct and resonance capture reactions for neutron-rich nuclei
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Multi-channel R-matrix analysis of CNO cycle reactions
Get PDFThe CNO cycle is the main process for hydrogen burning in stars somewhat more massive than the Sun. The reaction cross sections at Gamow energies are typically in the femto to pico-barn range and are consequently very difficult to measure experimentally. The CNO reaction rates are based on extrapolations of experimental data from higher energies. We are developing a multi-channel R-matrix code (AZURE) to provide a new and more comprehensive tool for fitting experimental data and making extrapolations to lower energies in all reaction and scattering channels. The 14N(p,γ )15O reaction is the slowest reaction of the CNO cycle and thus it determines the energy production rate of CNO burning. Furthermore, this reaction plays an important role in the determination of Globular Cluster age, since the position of the turnoff point, at which the GC stars escape from the Main Sequence, is powered by the onset of the CNO burning, whose bottleneck is the 14N(p, γ )15O. We have made a reanalysis of the most recent experimental data on the ground state and the 6.18 MeV transitions. The ratio of the cross sections of the 15N(p, γ )16O and 15N(p,α)12C reactions determines how much catalytic material passes to higher CNO cycles and has an effect on the production of heavier elements, particularly 16O and 17O. Simultaneous analysis of both reactions for all channels suggests that the ratio σγ/σα is smaller than previously reported
Search for Global Dipole Enhancements in the HiRes-I Monocular Data above 10^{18.5} eV
Full text linkSeveral proposed source models for Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs)
consist of dipole distributions oriented towards major astrophysical landmarks
such as the galactic center, M87, or Centaurus A. We use a comparison between
real data and simulated data to show that the HiRes-I monocular data for
energies above 10^{18.5} eV is, in fact, consistent with an isotropic source
model. We then explore methods to quantify our sensitivity to dipole source
models oriented towards the Galactic Center, M87, and Centaurus A.Comment: 17 pages, 31 figure
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