Ameliorating Effect of Chloride on Nitrite Toxicity to Freshwater Invertebrates with Different Physiology: a Comparative Study Between Amphipods and Planarians

High nitrite concentrations in freshwater ecosystems may cause toxicity to aquatic animals. These living organisms can take nitrite up from water through their chloride cells, subsequently suffering oxidation of their respiratory pigments (hemoglobin, hemocyanin). Because NO2¿ and Cl¿ ions compete for the same active transport site, elevated chloride concentrations in the aquatic environment have the potential of reducing nitrite toxicity. Although this ameliorating effect is well documented in fish, it has been largely ignored in wild freshwater invertebrates. The aim of this study was to compare the ameliorating effect of chloride on nitrite toxicity to two species of freshwater invertebrates differing in physiology: Eulimnogammarus toletanus (amphipods) and Polycelis felina (planarians). The former species presents gills (with chloride cells) and respiratory pigments, whereas in the latter species these are absent. Test animals were exposed in triplicate for 168 h to a single nitrite concentration (5 ppm NO2-N for E. toletanus and 100 ppm NO2-N for P. felina) at four different environmental chloride concentrations (27.8, 58.3, 85.3, and 108.0 ppm Cl¿). The number of dead animals and the number of affected individuals (i.e., number of dead plus inactive invertebrates) were monitored every day. LT50 (lethal time) and ET50 (effective time) were estimated for each species and each chloride concentration. LT50 and ET50 values increased with increases in the environmental chloride concentration, mainly in amphipods. Results clearly show that the ameliorating effect of chloride on nitrite toxicity was more significant in amphipods than in planarians, likely because of the absence of gills (with chloride cells) and respiratory pigments in P. felina. Additionally, this comparative study indicates that the ecological risk assessment of nitrite in freshwater ecosystems should take into account not only the most sensitive and key species in the communities, but also chloride levels in the aquatic environmen

216 Jewish Hospital of St. Louis

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Complete confined bases for beam propagation in Cartesian coordinates

Complete bases that are useful for beam propagation problems and that present the distinct property of being spatially confined at the initial plane are proposed. These bases are constructed in terms of polynomials of Gaussians, in contrast with standard alternatives such as the Hermite-Gaussian basis that are given by a Gaussian times a polynomial. The property of spatial confinement implies that, for all basis elements, the spatial extent at the initial plane is roughly the same. This property leads to an optimal scaling parameter that is independent of truncation order for the fitting of a confined initial field. Given their form as combinations of Gaussians, the paraxial propagation of these basis elements can be modeled analytically.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, \c{opyright} 2017 Optical Society of America. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modifications of the content of this paper are prohibite

Hydrodynamic reductions and solutions of a universal hierarchy

The diagonal hydrodynamic reductions of a hierarchy of integrable hydrodynamic chains are explicitly characterized. Their compatibility with previously introduced reductions of differential type is analyzed and their associated class of hodograph solutions is discussed.Comment: 19 page

Ab initio calculations of structures and stabilities of (NaI)_nNa+ and (CsI)_nCs+ cluster ions

Ab initio calculations using the Perturbed Ion model, with correlation contributions included, are presented for nonstoichiometric (NaI)_nNa+ and (CsI)_nCs+ (n=1-14) cluster ions. The ground state and several low-lying isomers are identified and described. Rocksalt ground states are common and appear at cluster sizes lower than in the corresponding neutral systems. The most salient features of the measured mobilities seem to be explained by arguments related to the changes of the compactness of the clusters as a function of size. The stability of the cluster ions against evaporation of a single alkali halide molecule shows variations that explain the enhanced stabilities found experimentally for cluster sizes n=4, 6, 9, and 13. Finally, the ionization energies and the orbital eigenvalue spectrum of two (NaI)_13Na+ isomers are calculated and shown to be a fingerprint of the structure.Comment: 8 pages plus 13 postscript figures, LaTeX. Accepted for publication in Phys, Rev. B; minor changes including a more complete comparison to pair potential result

Chiral low-energy constants from tau data

We analyze how the recent precise hadronic tau-decay data on the V-A spectral function and general properties of QCD such as analyticity, the operator product expansion and chiral perturbation theory (ChPT), can be used to improve the knowledge of some of the low-energy constants of ChPT. In particular we find the most precise values of L_{9,10} (or equivalently l_{5,6}) at order p^4 and p^6 and the first phenomenological determination of C_87 (c_50).Comment: Proceedings of the 6th International Workshop on Chiral Dynamics (Bern, Switzerland, July 6-10, 2009). 9 pages, 3 figure

Gaussian tripartite entanglement out of equilibrium

The stationary multipartite entanglement between three interacting harmonic oscillators subjected to decoherence is analyzed in the largely unexplored non-equilibrium strong dissipation regime. We compute the exact asymptotic Gaussian state of the system and elucidate its separability properties, qualitatively assessing the regions of the space of parameters in which fully inseparable states are generated. Interestingly, the sharing structure of bipartite entanglement is seen to degrade as dissipation increases even for very low temperatures, at which the system approaches its ground state. We also find that establishing stationary energy currents across the harmonic chain does not correspond with the build-up of biseparable steady states, which relates instead just to the relative intensity of thermal fluctuations.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures; accepte