An empirical calibration of nebular abundances based on the sulphur emission lines

We present an empirical calibration of nebular abundances based on the strong emission lines of [SII] and [SIII] in the red part of the spectrum through the definition of a sulphur abundance parameter S23. This calibration presents two important advantages against the commonly used one based on the optical oxygen lines: it remains single-valued up to abundances close to solar and is rather independent of the degree of ionization of the nebula.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Numerical study of relaxation in electron glasses

We perform a numerical simulation of energy relaxation in three-dimensional electron glasses in the strongly localized regime at finite temperatures. We consider systems with no interactions, with long-range Coulomb interactions and with short-range interactions, obtaining a power law relaxation with an exponent of 0.15, which is independent of the parameters of the problem and of the type of interaction. At very long times, we always find an exponential regime whose characteristic time strongly depends on temperature, system size, interaction type and localization radius. We extrapolate the longest relaxation time to macroscopic sizes and, for interacting samples, obtain values much larger than the measuring time. We finally study the number of electrons participating in the relaxation processes of very low energy configurations.Comment: 6 eps figures. To be published in Phys. Rev.

Self-organized evolution in socio-economic environments

We propose a general scenario to analyze social and economic changes in modern environments. We illustrate the ideas with a model that incorporating the main trends is simple enough to extract analytical results and, at the same time, sufficiently complex to display a rich dynamic behavior. Our study shows that there exists a macroscopic observable that is maximized in a regime where the system is critical, in the sense that the distribution of events follow power-laws. Computer simulations show that, in addition, the system always self-organizes to achieve the optimal performance in the stationary state.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX; needs epsf.sty and rotate.sty; submitted to Phys Rev Let

Hyperonic crystallization in hadronic matter

Published in Hadrons, Nuclei and Applications, World Scientific, Singapore, Proc.of the Conference Bologna2000. Structure of the Nucleus at the Dawn of the Century, G. Bonsignori, M. Bruno, A. Ventura, D. Vretenar Editors, pag. 319.Comment: 4 pages, 2figure