复合材料Terfenol-D/PMNT的磁电和逆磁电响应

给出了Terfenol-D/PMN-PT/Terfenol-D(TD/PMNT/TD)和PMNT/TD/PMNT两种层状复合材料的磁电和逆磁电响应的测试方法和测试结果. 这两种复合结构的优化直流偏置磁场大小均为350 Oe(1 Oe=79.58 A/m). 在1 kHz频率下, 这两种复合材料的最大磁电电压系数分别为384 mV/Oe和158 mV/Oe, 最大逆磁电系数分别为118 mG/V和162 mG/V (1 G = 10^-4 T). 另外研究了这两种复合材料在谐振频率下的磁电响应. 通过对两种复合结构的比较得知, 磁致/压电/磁致复合结构具有好的磁电响应; 而压电/磁致/压电复合结构具有好的逆磁电响应. 这一结果有助于优化设计高性能压电/磁致复合磁电材料.     

Parochial altruism in humans

Social norms and the associated altruistic behaviours are decisive for the evolution of human cooperation and the maintenance of social order, and they affect family life, politics and economic interactions. However, as altruistic norm compliance and norm enforcement often emerge in the context of inter-group conflicts, they are likely to be shaped by parochialism--a preference for favouring the members of one's ethnic, racial or language group. We have conducted punishment experiments, which allow 'impartial' observers to punish norm violators, with indigenous groups in Papua New Guinea. Here we show that these experiments confirm the prediction of parochialism. We found that punishers protect ingroup victims--who suffer from a norm violation--much more than they do outgroup victims, regardless of the norm violator's group affiliation. Norm violators also expect that punishers will be lenient if the latter belong to their social group. As a consequence, norm violations occur more often if the punisher and the norm violator belong to the same group. Our results are puzzling for evolutionary multi-level selection theories based on selective group extinction as well as for theories of individual selection; they also indicate the need to explicitly examine the interactions between individuals stemming from different groups in evolutionary models.     

Frequency-dependent survival in natural guppy populations

The maintenance of genetic variation in traits under natural selection is a long-standing paradox in evolutionary biology. Of the processes capable of maintaining variation, negative frequency-dependent selection (where rare types are favoured by selection) is the most powerful, at least in theory; however, few experimental studies have confirmed that this process operates in nature. One of the most extreme, unexplained genetic polymorphisms is seen in the colour patterns of male guppies (Poecilia reticulata). Here we manipulated the frequencies of males with different colour patterns in three natural populations to estimate survival rates, and found that rare phenotypes had a highly significant survival advantage compared to common phenotypes. Evidence from humans and other species implicates frequency-dependent survival in the maintenance of molecular, morphological and health-related polymorphisms. As a controlled manipulation in nature, this study provides unequivocal support for frequency-dependent survival--an evolutionary process capable of maintaining extreme polymorphism.