Treatment of Wine Distillery Wastewater: A Review with Emphasis on Anaerobic Membrane Reactors

This review summarises research efforts and case studies in the treatment of wine distillery wastewaters.Experiences in treating wine distillery wastewaters can contribute to the field of oenology, as many oenologists areconcerned with the selection, efficiency and economy of their wastewaters. Characteristics of wastewaters fromdifferent distilleries and various methods for treating these wastes are discussed. Wine distillery wastewaters arestrongly acidic, have a high chemical oxygen demand, high polyphenol content and are highly variable. Primaryattention is focused on the sustainable biological treatment of wine distillery wastewaters, mainly by energyefficientanaerobic digestion in different reactor configurations from bench to pilot and full-scale treatment. Finally,areas where further research and attention are required are identified

Nontrival Cosmological Constant in Brane Worlds with Unorthodox Lagrangians

In self-tuning brane-world models with extra dimensions, large contributions to the cosmological constant are absorbed into the curvature of extra dimensions and consistent with flat 4d geometry. In models with conventional Lagrangians fine-tuning is needed nevertheless to ensure a finite effective Planck mass. Here, we consider a class of models with non conventional Lagrangian in which known problems can be avoided. Unfortunately these models are found to suffer from tachyonic instabilities. An attempt to cure these instabilities leads to the prediction of a positive cosmological constant, which in turn needs a fine-tuning to be consistent with observations.Comment: 17 pages, 1 figur

Regular S-Brane Backgrounds

We construct time-dependent S-brane solutions to the supergravity field equations in various dimensions which (unlike most such geometries) do not contain curvature singularities. The configurations we consider are less symmetric than are earlier solutions, with our simplest solution being obtained by a simple analytical continuation of the Kerr geometry. We discuss in detail the global structure and properties of this background. We then generalize it to higher dimensions and to include more complicated field configurations - like non vanishing scalars and antisymmetric tensor gauge potentials - by the usual artifice of applying duality symmetries.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures. Typos in eq.(2.6) correcte

Development and characterisation of microsatellite markers for the fungus Lasiodiploidia theobromae

Abstract in Portuguese and English Title in Portugese: Desenvolvimento e caracterização de marcadores microsatélites para o fungo Lasiodiplodia theobromaeLasiodiplodia theobromae is an important fungal pathogen of higher plants from tropical and sub-tropical regions. The fungus infects divergent hosts in a wide range of environmental conditions, suggesting that it is highly variable. The aim of this study was to develop new polymorphic microsatellite markers from a Brazilian isolate of L. theobromae that can be used in population studies of this and related fungi. The nine microsatellite markers developed included six that revealed allelic polymorphisms among nine isolates of the disease collected from infected plants in Brazil. Preliminary evaluation of the markers suggested substantial genetic variability among Brazilian L. theobromae populations. These markers have potential utility for evolutionary and epidemiologic studies of this fungus.José Emilson Cardoso and Michael James Wilkinso

Supergravity Solutions for Harmonic, Static and Flux S-Branes

We seek S-brane solutions in D=11 supergravity which can be characterized by a harmonic function H on the flat transverse space. It turns out that the Einstein's equations force H to be a linear function of the transverse coordinates. The codimension one H=0 hyperplane can be spacelike, timelike or null and the spacelike case reduces to the previously obtained SM2 or SM5 brane solutions. We then consider static S-brane configurations having smeared timelike directions where the transverse Lorentzian symmetry group is broken down to its maximal orthogonal subgroup. Assuming that the metric functions depend on a radial spatial coordinate, we construct explicit solutions in D=11 supergravity which are non-supersymmetric and asymptotically flat. Finally, we obtain spacelike fluxbrane backgrounds which have timelike electric or magnetic fluxlines extending from past to future infinity.Comment: 22 pages, v2: references adde

Poly-instanton Inflation

We propose a new inflationary scenario in type IIB Calabi-Yau compactifications, where the inflaton is a K\"ahler modulus parameterising the volume of an internal four-cycle. The inflaton potential is generated via poly-instanton corrections to the superpotential which give rise to a naturally flat direction due to their double exponential suppression. Given that the volume mode is kept stable during inflation, all the inflaton-dependent higher dimensional operators are suppressed. Moreover, string loop effects can be shown to be negligible throughout all the inflationary dynamics for natural values of the underlying parameters. The model is characterised by a reheating temperature of the order $T_{\rm rh}\simeq 10^6$ GeV which requires $N_e \simeq 54$ e-foldings of inflation. All the inflationary observables are compatible with current observations since the spectral index is $n_s \simeq 0.96$, while the tensor-to-scalar ratio is $r\simeq 10^{-5}$. The volume of the Calabi-Yau is of order $10^3$ in string units, corresponding to an inflationary scale around $10^{15}$ GeVComment: 20 pages, 4 figure

Inflationary Cosmology with Five Dimensional SO(10)

We discuss inflationary cosmology in a five dimensional SO(10) model compactified on $S^1/(Z_2\times Z_2')$, which yields $SU(3)_c\times SU(2)_L\times U(1)_Y\times U(1)_X$ below the compactification scale. The gauge symmetry $SU(5)\times U(1)_X$ is preserved on one of the fixed points, while ``flipped'' $SU(5)'\times U(1)'_X$ is on the other fixed point. Inflation is associated with $U(1)_X$ breaking, and is implemented through $F$-term scalar potentials on the two fixed points. A brane-localized Einstein-Hilbert term allows both branes to have positive tensions during inflation. The scale of $U(1)_X$ breaking is fixed from $\delta T/T$ measurements to be around $10^{16}$ GeV, and the scalar spectral index $n=0.98-0.99$. The inflaton field decays into right-handed neutrinos whose subsequent out of equilibrium decay yield the observed baryon asymmetry via leptogenesis.Comment: 1+19 pages, improved discussion of 5D cosmology, Version to appear in PR

Geometrical Tachyon Kinks and NS5 Branes

We further investigate the $NS$5 ring background using the tachyon map. Mapping the radion fields to the rolling tachyon helps to explain the motion of a probe $Dp$-brane in this background. It turns out that the radion field becomes tachyonic when the brane is confined to one dimensional motion inside the ring. We find explicit solutions for the geometrical tachyon field that describe stable kink solutions which are similar to those of the open string tachyon. Interestingly in the case of the geometric tachyon, the dynamics is controlled by a cosine potential. In addition, we couple a constant electric field to the probe-brane, but find that the only stable kink solutions occur when there is zero electric field or a critical field value. We also investigate the behaviour of Non-BPS branes in this background, and find that the end state of any probe brane is that of tachyonic matter 'trapped' around the interior of the ring. We conclude by considering compactification of the ring solution in one of the transverse directions.Comment: Latex, 24 pages, 1 eps fig; clarifying comments added to Section 2; typos correcte

How to Stop (Worrying and Love) the Bubble: Boundary Changing Solutions

We discover that a class of bubbles of nothing are embedded as time dependent scaling limits of previous spacelike-brane solutions. With the right initial conditions, a near-bubble solution can relax its expansion and open the compact circle. Thermodynamics of the new class of solutions is discussed and the relationships between brane/flux transitions, tachyon condensation and imaginary D-branes are outlined. Finally, a related class of simultaneous connected S-branes are also examined.Comment: 47 pages; v2 introduction to Weyl cards added, comments added, references added, typos corrected, matches JHEP versio

Classical Nambu-Goldstone fields

It is shown that a Nambu-Goldstone (NG) field may be coherently produced by a large number of particles in spite of the fact that the NG bosons do not couple to flavor conserving scalar densities like $\bar{\psi}\psi$. If a flavor oscillation process takes place the phases of the pseudo-scalar or flavor violating densities of different particles do not necessarily cancel each other. The NG boson gets a macroscopic source whenever the total (spontaneously broken) quantum number carried by the source particles suffers a net increase or decrease in time. If the lepton numbers are spontaneously broken such classical NG (majoron) fields may significantly change the neutrino oscillation processes in stars pushing the observational capabilities of neutrino-majoron couplings down to $m_{\nu}/300$ GeV.Comment: 11 pages, updated, to appear in PR