Sustainable design approaches towards green higher education campus

The primary goal of our work is to address the issues concerning the application of sustainability concepts in the Higher Education Campus of the Faculty of Architecture at Universidade de Lisboa. Sustainable actions and attitudes are part of the sustainable principles of the Sustainable Development Goals adopted in the 2030 Agenda by all United Nations member states. This exploratory research is based on a review of the international literature specialising in sustainability assessment in Higher Education Institutions. A qualitative research approach was applied, using a questionnaire adapted from the European University Association in 2021, as a research instrument to know the perception and opinion of the Faculty of Architecture (FA) academic community on some of the collective actions of greening. A qualitative interpretation and discussion of the obtained data were performed based on a survey conducted on a non-probabilistic sample selected from Campus users. With this investigation, we intend to know the challenges and initiatives practised on this Campus in defence of sustainability and contribute towards a changeover in the environmental, social, and economic awareness of the campus community.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Semiclassical Evolution of Dissipative Markovian Systems

A semiclassical approximation for an evolving density operator, driven by a "closed" hamiltonian operator and "open" markovian Lindblad operators, is obtained. The theory is based on the chord function, i.e. the Fourier transform of the Wigner function. It reduces to an exact solution of the Lindblad master equation if the hamiltonian operator is a quadratic function and the Lindblad operators are linear functions of positions and momenta. Initially, the semiclassical formulae for the case of hermitian Lindblad operators are reinterpreted in terms of a (real) double phase space, generated by an appropriate classical double Hamiltonian. An extra "open" term is added to the double Hamiltonian by the non-hermitian part of the Lindblad operators in the general case of dissipative markovian evolution. The particular case of generic hamiltonian operators, but linear dissipative Lindblad operators, is studied in more detail. A Liouville-type equivariance still holds for the corresponding classical evolution in double phase, but the centre subspace, which supports the Wigner function, is compressed, along with expansion of its conjugate subspace, which supports the chord function. Decoherence narrows the relevant region of double phase space to the neighborhood of a caustic for both the Wigner function and the chord function. This difficulty is avoided by a propagator in a mixed representation, so that a further "small-chord" approximation leads to a simple generalization of the quadratic theory for evolving Wigner functions.Comment: 33 pages - accepted to J. Phys.

Nanometric pitch in modulated structures of twist-bend nematic liquid crystals

The extended Frank elastic energy density is used to investigate the existence of a stable periodically modulate structure that appears as a ground state exhibiting a twist-bend molecular arrangement. For an unbounded sample, we show that the twist-bend nematic phase $N_{TB}$ is characterized by a heliconical structure with a pitch in the nano-metric range, in agreement with experimental results. For a sample of finite thickness, we show that the wave vector of the stable periodic structure depends not only on the elastic parameters but also on the anchoring energy, easy axis direction, and the thickness of the sample.Comment: 11 page

Nonadiabatic coherent evolution of two-level systems under spontaneous decay

In this paper we extend current perspectives in engineering reservoirs by producing a time-dependent master equation leading to a nonstationary superposition equilibrium state that can be nonadiabatically controlled by the system-reservoir parameters. Working with an ion trapped inside a nonindeal cavity we first engineer effective Hamiltonians that couple the electronic states of the ion with the cavity mode. Subsequently, two classes of decoherence-free evolution of the superposition of the ground and decaying excited levels are achieved: those with time-dependent azimuthal or polar angle. As an application, we generalise the purpose of an earlier study [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 150403 (2006)], showing how to observe the geometric phases acquired by the protected nonstationary states even under a nonadiabatic evolution.Comment: 5 pages, no figure

Decoherence of Semiclassical Wigner Functions

The Lindblad equation governs general markovian evolution of the density operator in an open quantum system. An expression for the rate of change of the Wigner function as a sum of integrals is one of the forms of the Weyl representation for this equation. The semiclassical description of the Wigner function in terms of chords, each with its classically defined amplitude and phase, is thus inserted in the integrals, which leads to an explicit differential equation for the Wigner function. All the Lindblad operators are assumed to be represented by smooth phase space functions corresponding to classical variables. In the case that these are real, representing hermitian operators, the semiclassical Lindblad equation can be integrated. There results a simple extension of the unitary evolution of the semiclassical Wigner function, which does not affect the phase of each chord contribution, while dampening its amplitude. This decreases exponentially, as governed by the time integral of the square difference of the Lindblad functions along the classical trajectories of both tips of each chord. The decay of the amplitudes is shown to imply diffusion in energy for initial states that are nearly pure. Projecting the Wigner function onto an orthogonal position or momentum basis, the dampening of long chords emerges as the exponential decay of off-diagonal elements of the density matrix.Comment: 23 pg, 2 fi

On the classical-quantum correspondence for the scattering dwell time

Using results from the theory of dynamical systems, we derive a general expression for the classical average scattering dwell time, tau_av. Remarkably, tau_av depends only on a ratio of phase space volumes. We further show that, for a wide class of systems, the average classical dwell time is not in correspondence with the energy average of the quantum Wigner time delay.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Eradication of Ralstonia solanacearum from tomato growth substrate using a solar collector.

Bacterial wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum constitutes one of the most difficult diseases to control. The use of disinfested substrates is important for the production of disease-free seedlings and prevents the dissemination of this pathogen. An equipment was developed at Embrapa Environment, in Brazil, aiming to disinfest substrates with solar radiation. The solar collector is efficient to control several fungal plant pathogens, including species of Fusarium, Pythium, Rhizoctonia, Sclerotium, Sclerotinia, Phytophthora, as well as nematodes such as Meloydogyne (1, 2), after the treatment of the substrate during only one sunny day. The purpose of this work was to determine the efficacy of the solar collector for the control of the bacterial wilt caused by R. solanacearum

Quenched disorder and spin-glass correlations in XY nematics

We present a theoretical study of the equilibrium ordering in a 3D XY nematic system with quenched random disorder. Within this model, treated with the replica trick and Gaussian variational method, the correlation length is obtained as a function of the local nematic order parameter and the effective disorder strength. These results clarify what happens in the limiting cases of diminishing order parameter and disorder strength, that is near a phase transition of a pure system. In particular, it is found that quenched disorder is irrelevant as the order parameter tends to zero and hence does not change the character of the continuous XY nematic to isotropic phase transition. We discuss how these results compare with experiments and simulationsComment: 19 pages, 6 figures, corrected typo

Estrutura genética do pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) na região de Santarém, PA, Brasil.

O pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) é um peixe encontrado na Bacia Amazônica e Araguaia/Tocantins que possui grande importância econômica para populações locais. Estudos para avaliação da estrutura genética das populações naturais de pirarucu são necessários a fim de prover informações para o manejo da espécie em seu habitat natural. Desta forma, este trabalho analisou quatro comunidades próximas à região de Santarém-PA (N=99) por meio do sequenciamento de 1059 pb do gene mitocondrial ATPase. Os resultados sugerem que a variabilidade genética encontrada é similar a encontrada em estudos de maior abrangência geográfica. A rede de haplótipos gerada, mostrou dois haplogrupos dentro dos quais estão distribuídos cinco haplótipos (H) referentes a este estudo distribuídos de forma semelhante à rede haplotípica disponibilizada na literatura