Angra Neutrino Project: status and plans

We present the status and plans of the Angra Project, a new nuclear reactor neutrino oscillation experiment, proposed to be built in Brazil at the Angra dos Reis nuclear reactor complex. This experiment is aimed to measure theta_13, the last unknown of the three neutrino mixing angles. Combining a high luminosity design, very low background from cosmic rays and careful control of systematic errors at the 1% level, we propose a high sensitivity multi-detector experiment, able to reach a sensitivity to antineutrino disappearance down to sin^2(2*theta_13) = 0.006 in a three years running period, improving present limits constrained by the CHOOZ experiment by more than an order of magnitude.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, talk presented by J.C. Anjos ([email protected]) at NuFact05, 21-26 June 2005, Frascati, Ital

A coordination model for interactive components

Although presented with a variety of ‘flavours’, the notion of an interactor, as an abstract characterisation of an interactive com- ponent, is well-known in the area of formal modelling techniques for interactive systems. This paper replaces traditional, hierarchical, ‘tree-like’ composition of interactors in the specification of complex interactive sys- tems, by their exogenous coordination through general-purpose software connectors which assure the flow of data and the meet of synchronisation constraints. The paper’s technical contribution is twofold. First a modal logic is defined to express behavioural properties of both interactors and connectors. The logic is new in the sense that its modalities are indexed by fragments of sets of actions to cater for action co-occurrence. Then, this logic is used in the specification of both interactors and coordination layers which orchestrate their interconnection

Evaluation of a distributed numerical simulation optimization approach applied to aquifer remediation

AbstractIn this paper we evaluate a distributed approach which uses numerical simulation and optimization techniques to automatically find remediation solutions to a hypothetical contaminated aquifer. The repeated execution of the numerical simulation model of the aquifer through the optimization cycles tends to be computationally expensive. To overcome this drawback, the numerical simulations are executed in parallel using a network of heterogeneous workstations. Performance metrics for heterogeneous environments are not trivial; a new way of calculating speedup and efficiency for Bag-of-Tasks (BoT) applications is proposed. The performance of the parallel approach is evaluated

Mild And Moderate Extraction Methods To Assess Potentially Available Soil Organic Nitrogen

The use of chemical methods to assess the soil organic nitrogen (N) potentially available to plants is not a common practice in Brazil. However, associated with others, this tool might improve efficiency in the use of waste and nitrogen fertilizers. In our study, chemical methods were tested to assess potentially available soil N in samples of 17 representative soils of the western plateau of the state of São Paulo (10 Oxisols and 7 Ultisols). Available soil N was extracted from the collected soil samples using moderate (ISNT-Illinois Soil Nitrogen Test) and mild (hot water and heated solutions of 2 mol L-1 KCl and 0.01 mol L-1 CaCl2) extraction methods. The levels of potentially available N obtained from these chemical methods were correlated with dry matter (DM) and N uptake (Nup) by corn plants grown in pots in a greenhouse experiment carried out with the same 17 soil samples. The ISNT method showed the highest available N extraction capacity, whereas hot water showed the lowest capacity, followed closely by the hot 0.01 mol L-1 CaCl2 solution. Despite the differences among the quantities of available N extracted, the methods correlated with each other and with DM and Nup, but the values from the ISNT method showed the lowest correlation with plant variables (rDM = 0.67** and rNup = 0.81**). Procedures of extraction with water or 0.01 mol L-1 CaCl2 heated for 16 h, and 2 mol L-1 KCl heated for 4 h, resulted in similar correlation values (r) with plant DM and Nup. Thus, water (rDM = 0.77** and rNup = 0.90**) and 0.01 mol L-1 CaCl2 (rDM = 0.82** and rNup = 0.93**) heated for 16 h can be recommended as the best options for N extraction. considering the possibility for predicting N availability, lower generation of waste, and lower cost of analysis. © 2016, Revista Brasileira de Ciencia do Solo. All rights reserved.4

Land use and environmental factors affecting red-legged partridge (Alectoris rufa) hunting yields in southern Spain

The red-legged partridge is a small game species widely hunted in southern Spain. Its commercial use has important socioeconomic effects in rural areas where other agrarian uses are of marginal importance. The aims of the present work were to identify areas in Andalusia (southern Spain) where game yields for the red-legged partridge reach high values and to establish the environmental and land use factors that determine them. We analysed 32,134 annual hunting reports (HRs) produced by 6,049 game estates during the hunting seasons 1993/1994 to 2001/2002 to estimate the average hunting yields of red-legged partridge in each Andalusian municipality (n=771). We modelled the favourability for obtaining good hunting yields using stepwise logistic regression on a set of climatic, topographical, land use and vegetation variables that were available as digital coverages or tabular data applied to municipalities. Good hunting yields occur mainly in plain areas located in the Guadalquivir valley, at the bottom of Betic Range and in the Betic depressions. Favourable areas are related to highly mechanised, lowelevation areas mainly dedicated to intensive dry crops. The most favourable areas predicted by our model are mainly located in the Guadalquivir valley

The transfer of dry-land strength & power into thrust in competitive swimming

The aim was to compare the transfer of dry-land strength and power (S&P) of the shoulder into thrust in front-crawl between swimmers of different competitive levels. Four elite and six sub-elite swimmers were selected to perform a dry-land or an in-water test in random order. The dry-land S&P measurements comprised mean torque, peak torque and mean power of the shoulder rotators of the dominant and non-dominant upper-limbs that were assessed on an isokinetic dynamometer at 90°/s and 180°/s. In-water mean thrust, peak thrust and peak power were collected using an in-house customised system composed of differential pressure sensors and an underwater camera during a 25 m freestyle swim at three different paces (400 m pace, 200 m pace, all-out). There were non-significant and trivial variations in dry-land S&P between elite and sub-elite swimmers. The variations were non-significant but mostly large in the case of thrust. Correlation coefficients of elite swimmers were significantly larger than sub-elite counterparts. In conclusion, elite swimmers seem to be more efficient than sub-elite swimmers at transferring dry-land S&P into thrust.This work was supported by the Singapore Sports Science & Technology Research Grantinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Distribution modelling of wild rabbit hunting yields in its original area (S Iberian Peninsula)

In this work we used the information of the Annual Hunting Reports (AHRs) to obtain a high-resolution model of the potential favourableness for wild rabbit harvesting in Andalusia (southern Spain), using environmental and land-use variables as predictors. We analysed 32,134 AHRs from the period 1993/2001 reported by 6049 game estates to estimate the average hunting yields of wild rabbit in each Andalusian municipality (n5771). We modelled the favourableness for obtaining good hunting yields using stepwise logistic regression on a set of climatic, orographical, land use, and vegetation variables. The favourability equation was used to create a downscaled image representing the favourableness of obtaining good hunting yields for the wild rabbit in 161 km squares in Andalusia, using the Idrisi Image Calculator. The variables that affected hunting yields of wild rabbit were altitude, dry wood crops (mainly olive groves, almond groves, and vineyards), temperature, pasture, slope, and annual number of frost days. The 161 km squares with high favourableness values are scattered throughout the territory, which seems to be caused mainly by the effect of vegetation. Finally, we obtained quality categories for the territory by combining the probability values given by logistic regression with those of the environmental favourability function