Evolution of the Sun's large-scale magnetic field since the Maunder minimum

The most striking feature of the Sun's magnetic field is its cyclic behaviour. The number of sunspots, which are dark regions of strong magnetic field on the Sun's surface, varies with a period of about 11 years. Superposed on this cycle are secular changes that occur on timescales of centuries and events like the Maunder minimum in the second half of the seventeenth century, when there were very few sunspots. A part of the Sun's magnetic field reaches out from the surface into interplanetary space, and it was recently discovered that the average strength of this interplanetary field has doubled in the past 100 years. There has hitherto been no clear explanation for this doubling. Here we present a model describing the long-term evolution of the Sun's large-scale magnetic field, which reproduces the doubling of the interplanetary field. The model indicates that there is a direct connection between the length of the sunspot cycle and the secular variations.     

Elevated UV-B radiation reduces genome stability in plants

Long-term depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer contributes to an increase in terrestrial solar ultraviolet-B radiation. This has deleterious effects on living organisms, such as DNA damage. When exposed to elevated ultraviolet-B radiation (UV-B; 280-315 nm), plants display a wide variety of physiological and morphological responses characterized as acclimation and adaptation. Here we show, using special sun simulators, that elevated solar UV-B doses increase the frequency of somatic homologous DNA rearrangements in Arabidopsis and tobacco plants. Increases in recombination are accompanied by a strong induction of photolyase and Rad51 gene expression. These genes are putatively involved in major DNA repair pathways, photoreactivation and recombination repair. In mutant Arabidopsis plants that are deficient in photoreactivating ultraviolet-induced cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers, recombination under elevated UV-B regimes greatly exceeds wild-type levels. Our results show that homologous recombination repair pathways might be involved in eliminating UV-B-induced DNA lesions in plants. Thus, increases in terrestrial solar UV-B radiation as forecasted for the early 21st century may affect genome stability in plants.     

A multiple intelligent agent system for credit risk prediction via an optimization of localized generalization error with diversity

Company bankruptcies cost billions of dollars in losses to banks each year. Thus credit risk prediction is a critical part of a bank＇s loan approval decision process. Traditional financial models for credit risk prediction are no longer adequate for describing today＇s complex relationship between the financial health and potential bankruptcy of a company. In this work, a multiple classifier system （embedded in a multiple intelligent agent system） is proposed to predict the financial health of a company. In our model, each individual agent （classifier） makes a prediction on the likelihood of credit risk based on only partial information of the company. Each of the agents is an expert, but has limited knowledge （represented by features） about the company. The decisions of all agents are combined together to form a final credit risk prediction. Experiments show that our model out-performs other existing methods using the benchmarking Compustat American Corporations dataset.     

Impedance Studies on Starch-NH_4NO_3 Films

1 Results Starch is considered a suitable source material because of its inherent biodegradability,ready viability and relatively low cost[1].In the present work,polymer electrolytes based on starch have been prepared by the solution cast technique.The conductivity of the films is characterized using impedance spectroscopy at room temperatures.The imaginary impedance (Zi) versus real impedance (ZR) plot of pure starch films consists of a semicircle.The bulk resistance (Rb) was taken from the intercept o...