A quantitative evaluation of the role of the Argentinean Col and the Low Pressure Tongue East of the Andes for frontogenesis in the South American subtropics

Previous studies have found the South American subtropics to exhibit high climatological frontogenesis in equivalent potential temperature during the austral summer. An important contribution to this pattern is given by frontogenesis over the Argentinean Col (AC), which separates the Northwestern Argentinean Low (NAL) from transient troughs to the south of it. The NAL and the Low Pressure Tongue east of the Andes (LPT) promote efficient transport of Amazonian humidity to the subtropics during the incursion of transient disturbances over the continent. The convergence of this strong warm and humid flow with mid-latitude air brought into the subtropics by the disturbance occurs preferentially in the neighborhood of the AC. The main difficulty in quantifying the contribution of the NAL, AC and LPT structure to frontogenesis in the South American subtropics is the automatic detection of the AC and LPT. In this paper an algorithm developed to this end is briefly presented and applied to obtain statistics on the role of these structures in frontogenesis. Six-hourly data from ECMWF ERA-40 Reanalysis over 21 austral summer periods (December–March) is used. Occurrences of the AC are highly concentrated between 34–39° S and 66–69° W, being present in this region in 42% of the time instants analyzed. The spatial average of the positive values of the frontogenesis over this region was calculated for each time step as a measure of intensity and histograms were built for the cases when the AC was and was not found inside this region. Mean, median and mode are larger for the distribution of cases with the presence of the AC. In addition, we present the frequency of occurrence of the AC as a function of the frontogenesis, showing that it grows with the intensity of the frontogenesis, rising above the 0.955 quantile. We have not found any correlation between the AC frequency and the frontolysis intensity

Tripartite Graph Clustering for Dynamic Sentiment Analysis on Social Media

The growing popularity of social media (e.g, Twitter) allows users to easily share information with each other and influence others by expressing their own sentiments on various subjects. In this work, we propose an unsupervised \emph{tri-clustering} framework, which analyzes both user-level and tweet-level sentiments through co-clustering of a tripartite graph. A compelling feature of the proposed framework is that the quality of sentiment clustering of tweets, users, and features can be mutually improved by joint clustering. We further investigate the evolution of user-level sentiments and latent feature vectors in an online framework and devise an efficient online algorithm to sequentially update the clustering of tweets, users and features with newly arrived data. The online framework not only provides better quality of both dynamic user-level and tweet-level sentiment analysis, but also improves the computational and storage efficiency. We verified the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approaches on the November 2012 California ballot Twitter data.Comment: A short version is in Proceeding of the 2014 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of dat

Sunyaev - Zel'dovich fluctuations from spatial correlations between clusters of galaxies

We present angular power spectra of the cosmic microwave background radiation anisotropy due to fluctuations of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect through clusters of galaxies. A contribution from the correlation among clusters is especially focused on, which has been neglected in the previous analyses. Employing the evolving linear bias factor based on the Press-Schechter formalism, we find that the clustering contribution amounts to 20-30% of the Poissonian one at degree angular scales. If we exclude clusters in the local universe, it even exceeds the Poissonian noise, and makes dominant contribution to the angular power spectrum. As a concrete example, we demonstrate the subtraction of the ROSAT X-ray flux-limited cluster samples. It indicates that we should include the clustering effect in the analysis of the SZ fluctuations. We further find that the degree scale spectra essentially depend upon the normalization of the density fluctuations, i.e., \sigma_8, and the gas mass fraction of the cluster, rather than the density parameter of the universe and details of cluster evolution models. Our results show that the SZ fluctuations at the degree scale will provide a possible measure of \sigma_8, while the arc-minute spectra a probe of the cluster evolution. In addition, the clustering spectrum will give us valuable information on the bias at high redshift, if we can detect it by removing X-ray luminous clusters.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journa

Aporte de serrapilheira ao solo em estágios sucessionais florestais na reserva biológica de Poço das Antas, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil.

Foram definidos mosaícos de fitofisionomias temporais em sistemas tropicais de baixada localizados na REBIO de Poço das Antas, RJ - Brasil. A serrapilheira foi quantificada com coletas quinzenais e determinada sua concentração de nutrientes via fração foliar em intervalos bimestrais. A floresta avançada apresentou o maior aporte de 6,9 mais ou menos 1,1 ton ha-1 ano-1 total, o estágio intermediário com 5,5 mais ou menos 0,5 ton ha-1 ano-1 total e para o plantio 3 mais ou menos 0,7 ton ha-1 ano-1 total. As concentrações via serrapilheira (fração foliar) dos nutrientes N, P, K e Ca foram maiores com o uso de Mimosa bimucronata (DC) O. kuntze nos reflorestamentos, demonstrando ser esta uma espécie de potencial elevado quanto ao conteúdo nutricional à recomposição de ecossistemas. Sua estratégia de renovação foliar ocorre sob o ritmo perenifólio, com maior contribuição na estação chuvosa e sincronizado a fase reprodutiva. A magnitude de transferência dos nutrientes na fração foliar para os estágios estudados segue a ordem de concentração: P < K < Mg < Ca < N < C. Não foram encontradas diferenças significativas quanto as concentrações de entrada dos nutrientes entre as estações nos estágios estudados. Gaps of temporal fitofisionoms were defined on lowland tropical systems localized in the Biologic Reserve of Poço das Antas RJ - Brazil. The litter-fall was quantificated by each fifteen days and was determinated the nutrient concentration of foliar fraction each two months. The oldest forest had the major litter-fall, 6.9 l l.l ton ha-1 total as the other fractions, when compared with the intermediate age forest with 5.5 1 0.5 ton ha-1 year-1 total. The plantation had the lowest values, 3.0 1 0.7 ton ha-1 year1 total. The foliar litter-fall concentration of N, P, K, Ca nutrients were bigger for Mimosa bimucronata (DC.). O. kuntze crop, showing then the great ecosystems nutritional recomposition potential of this specie with foliar renovation strategy occurs under perenifolial rhythm, mostly in the rain season synchronized to the reproduction phase. The transference rate of nutrients in the studied foliar fraction follows this concentration order: P < K < Mg < Ca < N < C.Parceria: UFRRJ

Viscous Cosmology

We discuss the possibility to implement a viscous cosmological model, attributing to the dark matter component a behaviour described by bulk viscosity. Since bulk viscosity implies negative pressure, this rises the possibility to unify the dark sector. At the same time, the presence of dissipative effects may alleviate the so called small scale problems in the $\Lambda$CDM model. While the unified viscous description for the dark sector does not lead to consistent results, the non-linear behaviour indeed improves the situation with respect to the standard cosmological model.Comment: Latex file, 7 pages, 6 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the XIIth International Conference on Gravitation, Astrophysics and Cosmology, June 28-July 5, 2015, PFUR, Moscow, Russi

Indexação de plantas básicas de citros da Embrapa Mandioca e Fruticultura para a presença de viróides.

Os citros são hospedeiros naturais de espécies de viróides: viróide da exocorte dos citros (Citrus exocortis viroid, CEVd), viróide do nanismo do lúpulo (Hop stunt viroid, HSVd), Citrus bark cracking viroid (CBCVd), viróide da folha curvada dos citros (Citrus bent leaf viroid, CBLVd), viróide do nanismo dos citros (Citrus dwarfing viroid, CDVd) e, mais recentemente, também foi descrita a ocorrência do Citrus Viroid V (CVd-V) e Citrus viroid VI (CVd-VI). Somente o CEVd e variantes do HSVd são agentes causais de doenças, exocorte e xiloporose, respectivamente. No Brasil já foram identificados as espécies CEVd, HSVd e o CDVd