Sex-specific facilitation and reproduction of the gynodioecious cushion plant Arenaria polytrichoides on the Himalaya-Hengduan mountains,SW China

When benefiting other beneficiaries,cushion plants may reciprocally receive feedback effects.The feedback effects on different sex morphs,however,remains unclear.In this study,taking the gynodioecious Arenaria polytrichiodes as a model species,we aimed to assess the sex-specific facilitation intensity of cushion plant by measuring the beneficiary cover ratio,and to assess the potential costs in cushion reproductive functions by measuring the flower and fruit cover ratios.The total beneficiary cover ratio was similar between females and hermaphrodites.Females produced much less flowers but more fruits than hermaphrodites.These results suggested that females and hermaphrodites possess similar facilitation intensity,and female cushion A.polytrichoides may allocate more resources saved from pollen production to seed production,while hermaphrodites possibly allocate more resources to pollen production hence reducing seed production.The surface areas covered by beneficiaries produced less flowers and fruits than areas without beneficiaries.In addition,strong negative correlations between beneficiary cover and flower cover were detected for both females and hermaphrodites,but the correlation strength were similar for these two sex morphs.However,the correlation between beneficiary cover and fruit cover was only significantly negative for females,suggesting that beneficiary plants negatively affect fruit reproduction of females while have neutral effects on hermaphrodites.All the results suggest that to facilitate other beneficiaries can induce reproductive costs on cushion A.polytrichoides,with females possibly suffering greater cost than hermaphrodites.Such differentiation in reproductive costs between sex morphs,in long-term perspective,may imply sex imbalance in population dynamics.

Growth Responses of Trees to Micronutrients and Their Feedback Effect in Various Soil-Forest Ecosystems of Taihu Lake Region

Vector analysis technique and ecological sequential comparison methods were adopted to study tree growth response to the micronutrients, B, Mo, Cu, Zn, Fe, and Mn, in soils derived from various parent materials in the forest area of Taihu Lake region in southeast China. The results showed that the dry weight of individual current-year needle of Chinese fir (Cunninghamia lanceolata) grown on the soi1 derived from granite parent rock was increased by 8% and 13% in comparison with that grown on the soils derived from sandstone and ash-tuff parent rock, respectively. And such dry weight of loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) grown on the soil derived from sandstone parent rock was increased by 21% in comparison with that on the soil derived from ash-tuff parent rock. One of the reasons for those results was that micronutrients content in the soil derived from ash-tuff parent rock were not sufficient to meet the requirement of the growth of Chinese fir and loblolly pine, i.e., micronutrients in soil were deficient and/or induced deficient. The amounts of Cu, Zn, Fe, and Mn uptake by Chinese fir and loblolly pine were in agreement with the contents of available micronutrients in soil respectively, except for B and Mo. Meanwhile, there might exist an "antagonism" between the uptake of B versus Mo by trees, although more studies are needed to confirm it. Regression analysis indicated that amount of a soil available micronutrient was correlated to the type of parent material and its total amount in the forest floor, except for B. The F test identified that the correlation of each equation reached the significant level to different extents, respectively. The t test confirmed that amount of available forms was mainly depended on the type of parent material for Mo, Cu, Zn and Mn but on the forest floor for Fe. There was a feedback effect of forest stand on the amount of soil available micronutrients. The ability of accumulating available micronutrients in soil was better by the sawtooth oak (Quercus acutissima) stand than by the Chinese fir stand (except for B). The ability of accumulating available Zn, Fe, Mn and Mo in soil was better by the Chinese fir stand than by the loblolly pine stand, while as for available B and Cu, by the latter was better than by the former. When discussing the effect of forest stand on the amount of soil available micronutrients, not only the amount of micronutrient in the forest floor and the parent materials but also the amount of micronutrient taken up by current-year needles have to be considered.

Developed mathematical technique for fractional stochastic point kinetics model in nuclear reactor dynamics

Fractional stochastic kinetics equations have proven to be valuable tools for the point reactor kinetics model, where the nuclear reactions are not fully described by deterministic relations. A fractional stochastic model for the point kinetics system with multi-group of precursors,including the effect of temperature feedback, has been developed and analyzed. A major mathematical and inflexible scheme to the point kinetics model is obtained by merging the fractional and stochastic technique. A novel split-step method including mathematical tools of the Laplace transforms, Mittage–Leffler function, eigenvalues of the coefficient matrix, and its corresponding eigenvectors have been used for the fractional stochastic matrix differential equation. The validity of the proposed technique has been demonstrated via calculations of the mean and standard deviation of neutrons and precursor populations for various reactivities: step, ramp, sinusoidal, and temperature reactivity feedback. The results of the proposed method agree well with the conventional one of the deterministic point kinetics equations.

Effects of Signal Spectrum Bandwidth on Different PMD Compensation Feedback Methods

We compared efficiencies of different PMD compensation feedback methods against transmission signal bandwidth, including NRZ, RZ, CRZ format under various duty cycles. We found that the critical factor determining the efficiency of PMD compensation is not the modulation format, but the spectral bandwidth of the transmission signal.

PROVIDING THE STUDENTS WITH EFFECTIVE FEEDBACK IN THE WRITING PROCESS

This paper focuses on providing effective feedback for the students in the writing process.Excessivemarking is defective as it reduces their motivation,whereas minimal marking is recommended as itimproves their inner drive for writing.In addition,there are other forms of feedback,such as peerfeedback,comments and face-to-face discussions.The students are required to act on the feedback totheir own advantage.It has been proved that the proposed correcting method is time-saving,chal-lenging and efficient.

Component ACD Model and Its Application in Studying the Price-Related Feedback Effect in Investor Trading Behaviors in Chinese Stock Market

This paper explores the investors＇ feedback to the price change by modelling the price- related dynamics of trading intensity. A component decomposition duration modeling approach, called the component autoregressive conditional duration （CACD） model, is proposed to capture the variation of trading intensity across time intervals between price change events. Based on the CACD model, an empirical analysis is carried out on the Chinese stock market that covers different market statuses. The empirical results suggest that the CACD model can capture the price-related dynamics of trading intensity, which supports the existence of the feedback effect and is robust across different market statuses. The authors also study how the investors react to the price change by examining the driven factors of the price-related dynamics of trading intensity. The authors find that the trading can be triggered by the fast rise in the price level and the high trading volume. Besides, investors are more sensitive to the price change direction in the sideways market than in the upward or downward markets.

The Effect of Market Quality on the Causality between Returns and Volatilities: Evidence from CSI 300 Index Futures

This paper investigates the impact of market quality on volatility asymmetry of CSI 300 index futures by using short-and long-run causality measures proposed by Dufour et al.(2012).We use a high-frequency-based noise variance estimator as the comprehensive proxy for market quality and find that volatility asymmetry is closely related to market quality.Specifically,in the period of poor market quality,the volatility asymmetry will vanish or even be reversed,which is mainly due to the sharp decline of the leverage effects.Moreover,the volatility feedback effect will be enhanced while the leverage effect will be weakened if the noise variance is taken into consideration in the causal analysis.Finally,we use other market quality indices as auxiliary variables in the robustness analysis and get similar results.

Accurate Determination for the Energy & Temperature Dependence of Electron Capture CrossSection of Si-SiO_2 Interface States Using a New Method

A new technique for accurate determination of the electron and hole capture cross-sections of interface states at the insulator-semiconductor interface has been developed through measuring the initial time variation in the carrier filling capacitance transient, and full consideration is given to the charge-potential feedback effect on carrier capture process. A simplified calculation of the effect is also given. The interface states have been investigated with this technique at the Si-SiO_2 interface in an n-type Si MOS diode. The results show that the electron capture cross-section strongly depends on both temperature and energy.