BACKGROUND Animal vision spans a great range of complexity, with systems evolving to detect variations in light intensity, distribution, colour, and polarisation. Polarisation vision systems studied to date detect one to four channels of linear polarisation, combining them in opponent pairs to provide intensity-independent operation. Circular polarisation vision has never been seen, and is wide...

We provide high-precision predictions for muon-pair and tau-pair productions in a photon-photon collision by considering complete set of one-loop-level scattering amplitudes, i.e., electroweak (EW) corrections together with soft hard QED radiation. Accordingly, we present detailed numerical discussion particular emphasis on the pure as well genuinely weak corrections. The effects angular initia...

Polarisation control is demonstrated in circular gainguided top-surface emitting vertical cavity lasers by etching a narrow trench near the cavity aperture. An optimum etch depth exists for which all modes are pinned in a single polarisation. The etch orientation determines the dominant polarisation state of emission by modifying the spontaneous emission coupling into each polarisation state. P...

Microbial anodes were formed from compost leachate on carbon cloth electrodes. The biofilms formed at the surface of electrodes kept at open circuit contained microorganisms that switched their metabolism towards electrode respiration in response to a few minutes of polarisation. When polarisation at -0.2 V/SCE (+0.04 V/SHE) was applied to a pre-established biofilm formed at open circuit (delay...

We derive the wave equation obeyed by electromagnetic fields in curved spacetime. We find that there are Riemann and Ricci curvature coupling terms to the photon polarisation which result in a polarisation dependent deviation of the photon trajectories from null geodesics. Photons are found to have an effective mass in an external gravitational field and their velocity in an inertial frame is i...

The justification for doing the work presented in this paper lies in the recent and disturbing rumours regarding the reflectivity of the current SCIAMACHY Level 1b product. The reflectivity was claimed to show an overall 20-percent loss in magnitude compared to GOME. We will show that the reported discrepancy in the reflectivity is indeed not a fictional one, but that it is certainly not caused...

In recent years there has been much discussion of the difference between inequality and polarisation. The vast literature on inequality is held to miss out key features of distributional change, which are better described as changes in polarisation. Axioms have been proposed which capture some of these differences, and measures of polarisation, as distinct from inequality, have been suggested. ...

We have used the University of Tasmania Mt Pleasant 26-m radio telescope to investigate the polarisation characteristics of a sample of strong 6.7GHz methanol masers, the first spectral line polarisation observations to be undertaken with this instrument. As part of this process we have developed a new technique for calibrating linear polarisation spectral line observations. This calibration me...

We present the rst imaging circular polarimetry of the Orion Molecular Cloud, OMC-1. The observations, taken in the J , H , K n and nbL bands, reveal a complex pattern of circular polarisation. Globally, there is a background circular polarisation of the order of 2 percent in the K n band, conforming to the typical quadrupolar patterns that have been observed in other outtow sources. Overlaying...