Population dynamics of a cladoceran zooplankter, Daphnia magna, in two poultry-cum-fish (duck-fish and chicken-fish) integrated ponds

The population dynamics of Daphnia magna was studied in two integrated fish-cum-poultry ponds (duck-fish and chicken-fish). The seasonal changes in the population of D. magna were recorded. Peak population of the zooplankter was recorded in the month of January in both ponds. The birth rate (b), growth rate (r) and death rate {d) of D. magna were studied in field as well as in the laboratory. Three temperatures and three different food concentrations were selected for laboratory study. The maximum values of (b) and (r) were recorded during December-January in field. Under laboratory conditions, highest birth and death rate occurred at lowest temperature (15 °C). Both food and temperature were found to affect the population dynamics of the species; longest life span and maximum population were recorded at lowest temperature and maximum food concentration

Selection and characterization of non-ideal ionic liquids mixtures to be used in CO

Due to the costs involved, the capture of CO2 in post-combustion is not currently seen as economically viable. Aiming at changing the perception of post-combustion CO2 from a costly and non-profitable process to a valuable commodity and fostering the development of the next-generation of technologies, novel solvents and their mixtures have been investigated. In this work, mixtures of non-volatile ionic liquids were screened by COSMO-RS aiming to find mixtures with positive excess volumes that could present an increased CO2 capture by physical sorption. The most promising mixtures identified by COSMO-RS, [C4C1im][DMP] or [C4C1im][NTf2] þ carboxylate-based protic ILs were characterized through the measurement of their thermophysical properties, namely density and viscosity. Both properties were measured for pure ILs and their binary mixtures at different temperatures and compositions. The temperature dependence of density of pure ILs was described using the Gardas and Coutinho model while viscosity was accurately described using the Vogel Tammann Fulcher equation. The Redlich-Kister equation was used to predict the excess molar volumes and the non-ideality of the mixtures’ viscosity was assessed using the Grunberg and Nissan mixing law. The excess molar volumes for mixtures containing [C4C1im][DMP] show large positive values all over the range of compositions and temperatures, making them good candidates for CO2 capture. To the best of our knowledge, the excess molar volumes obtained in this work were the highest reported so far. COSMO-RS was able to correctly predict the trend of the experimental excess molar volumes for these mixtures. Regarding viscosity, mixtures of [C4C1im] [DMP] with the carboxylate-based protic ILs led to the desired viscosity decrease compared to the pure aprotic IL, and large deviations from ideality were observed. The mixing of ILs is thus an efficient way to fine-tune the properties, in this case decreasing the viscosity while increasing the sorption capacity.This work is a result of the Indo-Portuguese Program for Cooperation in Science & Technology DST/INT/Portugal/P-01/2017, financed by FCT and the Government of India. This work was also developed within the scope of the project CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, UIDB/50011/2020 & UIDP/50011/2020, and CIMOMountain Research Center, UIDB/00690/2020, both financed by national funds through the FCT, MEC and when appropriate cofinanced by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement. MARM acknowledges the project “AIProcMat@N2020 - Advanced Industrial Processes and Materials for a Sustainable Northern Region of Portugal 2020”, with the reference NORTE-01-0145-FEDER- 000006, supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020). P.J.C. acknowledges FCT for his contract under the Investigator FCT 2015 contract number IF/00758/2015.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Non-linear stability in photogravitational non-planar restricted three body problem with oblate smaller primary

We have discussed non-linear stability in photogravitational non-planar restricted three body problem with oblate smaller primary. By photogravitational we mean that both primaries are radiating. We normalised the Hamiltonian using Lie transform as in Coppola and Rand (1989). We transformed the system into Birkhoff's normal form. Lie transforms reduce the system to an equivalent simpler system which is immediately solvable. Applying Arnold's theorem, we have found non-linear stability criteria. We conclude that $L_6$ is stable. We plotted graphs for $(\omega_1, D_2).$ They are rectangular hyperbola.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astrophysics & Space Scienc

Rho-Nucleon Tensor Coupling and Charge-Exchange Resonances

The Gamow-Teller resonances are discussed in the context of a self-consistent RPA, based on the relativistic mean field theory. We inquire on the possibility of substituting the phenomenological Landau-Migdal force by a microscopic nucleon-nucleon interaction generated from the rho-nucleon tensor coupling. The effect of this coupling turns out to be very small when the short range correlations are not taken into account, but too large when these correlations are simulated by the simple extraction of the contact terms from the resulting nucleon-nucleon interaction.Comment: 15 pages, LaTeX, 2 figures; extended text, improved figures, new references added, the version appearing in Phys.Lett.

Synthesis of a base-stock for electrical insulating fluid based on palm kernel oil

This report presents a method for synthesizing base-stock for green industrial product from a vegetable oil with a high composition of unsaturated fatty acids. Epoxy methyl ester of palm kernel oil was synthesized from laboratory purified palm kernel oil using a two-step reaction and the products were used as a base-stock for green electrical insulation fluid. Epoxidized palm kernel oil was first prepared through epoxidation reaction involving purified palm kernel oil, acetic acid and hydrogen peroxide in the presence of amberlite as catalyst which lasted for 4 h. It was then followed by transesterification reaction involving the epoxidized product and methanol in the presence of sodium hydroxide as catalyst to synthesize the corresponding epoxy methyl ester. The thermal and electrical breakdown properties of the epoxy methyl ester demonstrated significantly improved properties for its use as raw material for bio-based industrial products such as electrical insulation fluids

Low-dimensional representations of exact coherent states of the Navier-Stokes equations from the resolvent model of wall turbulence

We report that many exact invariant solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations for both pipe and channel flows are well represented by just few modes of the model of McKeon & Sharma J. Fl. Mech. 658, 356 (2010). This model provides modes that act as a basis to decompose the velocity field, ordered by their amplitude of response to forcing arising from the interaction between scales. The model was originally derived from the Navier-Stokes equations to represent turbulent flows and has been used to explain coherent structure and to predict turbulent statistics. This establishes a surprising new link between the two distinct approaches to understanding turbulence

Resonance approximation and charge loading/unloading in adiabatic quantum pumping

Quantum pumping through mesoscopic quantum dots is known to be enhanced by resonant transmission. The pumped charge is close to an integer number of electrons when the pumping contour surrounds a resonance, but the transmission remains small on the contour. For non-interacting electrons, we give a quantitative account of the detailed exchange of electrons between the dot and the leads (to the electron reservoirs) during a pumping cycle. Near isolated distinct resonances, we use approximate Breit-Wigner expressions for the dot's Green function to discuss the loading/unloading picture of the pumping: the fractional charge exchanged between the dot and each lead through a single resonance point is related to the relative couplings of the dot and the leads at this resonance. If each resonance point along the pumping contour is dominated by the coupling to a single lead (which also implies a very small transmission), then the crossing of each such resonance results in a single electron exchange between the dot and that lead, ending up with a net quantized charge. When the resonance approximation is valid, the fractional charges can also be extracted from the peaks of the transmissions between the various leads.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Bag-of-Colors for Biomedical Document Image Classification

The number of biomedical publications has increased noticeably in the last 30 years. Clinicians and medical researchers regularly have unmet information needs but require more time for searching than is usually available to find publications relevant to a clinical situation. The techniques described in this article are used to classify images from the biomedical open access literature into categories, which can potentially reduce the search time. Only the visual information of the images is used to classify images based on a benchmark database of ImageCLEF 2011 created for the task of image classification and image retrieval. We evaluate particularly the importance of color in addition to the frequently used texture and grey level features. Results show that bags–of–colors in combination with the Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) provide an image representation allowing to improve the classification quality. Accuracy improved from 69.75% of the best system in ImageCLEF 2011 using visual information, only, to 72.5% of the system described in this paper. The results highlight the importance of color for the classification of biomedical images