Spatial variability of soil properties and soil erodibility in the Alqueva reservoir watershed

The aim of this work is to investigate how the spatial variability of soil properties and soil erodibility (K factor) were affected by the changes in land use allowed by irrigation with water from a reservoir in a semiarid area. To this end, three areas representative of different land uses (agroforestry grassland, lucerne crop and olive orchard) were studied within a 900 ha farm. The interrelationships between variables were analyzed by multivariate techniques and extrapolated using geostatistics. The results confirmed differences between land uses for all properties analyzed, which was explained mainly by the existence of diverse management practices (tillage, fertilization and irrigation), vegetation cover and local soil characteristics. Soil organic matter, clay and nitrogen content decreased significantly, while the K factor increased with intensive cultivation. The HJ-Biplot methodology was used to represent the variation of soil erodibility properties grouped in land uses. Native grassland was the least correlated with the other land uses. The K factor demonstrated high correlation mainly with very fine sand and silt. The maps produced with geostatistics were crucial to understand the current spatial variability in the Alqueva region. Facing the intensification of land-use conversion, a sustainable management is needed to introduce protective measures to control soil erosion

Mass Generation from Lie Algebra Extensions

Applied to the electroweak interactions, the theory of Lie algebra extensions suggests a mechanism by which the boson masses are generated without resource to spontaneous symmetry breaking. It starts from a gauge theory without any additional scalar field. All the couplings predicted by the Weinberg-Salam theory are present, and a few others which are nevertheless consistent within the model.Comment: 11 pages; revtex; title and PACS have been changed; comments included in the manuscrip

Importance of Granular Structure in the Initial Conditions for the Elliptic Flow

We show effects of granular structure of the initial conditions (IC) of hydrodynamic description of high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions on some observables, especially on the elliptic-flow parameter v2. Such a structure enhances production of isotropically distributed high-pT particles, making v2 smaller there. Also, it reduces v2 in the forward and backward regions where the global matter density is smaller, so where such effects become more efficacious.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Fluctuation of the Initial Conditions and Its Consequences on Some Observables

We show effects of the event-by-event fluctuation of the initial conditions (IC) in hydrodynamic description of high-energy nuclear collisions on some observables. Such IC produce not only fluctuations in observables but, due to their bumpy structure, several non-trivial effects appear. They enhance production of isotropically distributed high-pT particles, making v2 smaller there. Also, they reduce v2 in the forward and backward regions where the global matter density is smaller, so where such effects become more efficacious. They may also produce the so-called ridge effect in the two large-pT particle correlation.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, presented at the IV Workshop on Particle Correlations and Femtoscopy (WPCF2008), Krakow, Poland, 11-14 Sep 200

Memory effects on the statistics of fragmentation

We investigate through extensive molecular dynamics simulations the fragmentation process of two-dimensional Lennard-Jones systems. After thermalization, the fragmentation is initiated by a sudden increment to the radial component of the particles' velocities. We study the effect of temperature of the thermalized system as well as the influence of the impact energy of the ``explosion'' event on the statistics of mass fragments. Our results indicate that the cumulative distribution of fragments follows the scaling ansatz $F(m)\propto m^{-\alpha}\exp{[-(m/m_0)^\gamma]}$, where $m$ is the mass, $m_0$ and $\gamma$ are cutoff parameters, and $\alpha$ is a scaling exponent that is dependent on the temperature. More precisely, we show clear evidence that there is a characteristic scaling exponent $\alpha$ for each macroscopic phase of the thermalized system, i.e., that the non-universal behavior of the fragmentation process is dictated by the state of the system before it breaks down.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figure

Gravitation and Duality Symmetry

By generalizing the Hodge dual operator to the case of soldered bundles, and working in the context of the teleparallel equivalent of general relativity, an analysis of the duality symmetry in gravitation is performed. Although the basic conclusion is that, at least in the general case, gravitation is not dual symmetric, there is a particular theory in which this symmetry shows up. It is a self dual (or anti-self dual) teleparallel gravity in which, due to the fact that it does not contribute to the interaction of fermions with gravitation, the purely tensor part of torsion is assumed to vanish. The ensuing fermionic gravitational interaction is found to be chiral. Since duality is intimately related to renormalizability, this theory may eventually be more amenable to renormalization than teleparallel gravity or general relativity.Comment: 7 pages, no figures. Version 2: minor presentation changes, references added. Accepted for publication in Int. J. Mod. Phys.