2,331 research outputs found
COVID-19 lockdown and self-perceived changes of food choice, waste, impulse buying and their determinants in italy: Quaranteat, a cross-sectional study
Data about self-perceived food choice (FC) changes and their determinants during COVID-19 lockdowns are limited. This study investigated how the Italian lockdown affected self-perceived food purchases (FP), occurrence of impulse buying (IB), household food waste production (HFWP) and their determinants. A web-based cross-sectional survey was distributed in May 2020, collecting an opportunistic sample of the Italian population. A total of 1865 (70% females) people were enrolled, the median age was 29 (IQR 16.0). Most of the sample increased overall FP (53.4%), food consumption (43.4%), reduced HFWP (53.7%) and halved the prevalence of IB (20.9%) compared to the period before the lockdown (42.5%). Baking ingredients, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit and chocolate had the largest sales increase by individuals, while bakery products, fresh fish and salted snacks purchases highly decreased. Increased FP was associated with the occurrence of IB (adjOR 2.48, p p = 0.003). Multivariable logistic regressions revealed occurrence of IB was associated with low perceived dietary quality (adjOR 2.22, p p p p p = 0.002). The Italian lockdown highly affected FC behaviours, leading to positive and sustainable habits towards food purchase and consumption. Public health interventions are needed to keep these new positive effects and avoid negative consequences in case of future lockdowns
Ground state of the Kagome-like S=1/2 antiferromagnet, Volborthite Cu3V2O7(OH)2.2H2O
Volborthite compound is one of the very few realizations of S=1/2 quantum
spins on a highly frustrated kagome-like lattice. Low-T SQUID measurements
reveal a broad magnetic transition below 2K which is further confirmed by a
peak in the 51V nuclear spin relaxation rate (1/T1) at 1.4K0.2K. Through
51V NMR, the ground state (GS) appears to be a mixture of different spin
configurations, among which 20% correspond to a well defined short range order,
possibly of the type. While the freezing involve all
the Cu spins, only 40% of the copper moment is actually frozen which
suggests that quantum fluctuations strongly renormalize the GS.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in PR
Aging, rejuvenation and memory phenomena in spin glasses
In this paper, we review several important features of the out-of-equilibrium
dynamics of spin glasses. Starting with the simplest experiments, we discuss
the scaling laws used to describe the isothermal aging observed in spin glasses
after a quench down to the low temperature phase. We report in particular new
results on the sub-aging behaviour of spin glasses. We then discuss the
rejuvenation and memory effects observed when a spin glass is submitted to
temperature variations during aging, from the point of view of both energy
landscape pictures and of real space pictures. We highlight the fact that both
approaches point out the necessity of hierarchical processes involved in aging.
Finally, we report an investigation of the effect of small temperature
variations on aging in spin glass samples with various anisotropies which
indicates that this hierarchy depends on the spin anisotropy.Comment: submitted for the Proceedings of Stat Phys 22, Bangalore (India
Hexagons become second if symmetry is broken
Pattern formation on the free surface of a magnetic fluid subjected to a
magnetic field is investigated experimentally. By tilting the magnetic field
the symmetry can be broken in a controllable manner. When increasing the
amplitude of the tilted field, the flat surface gives way to liquid ridges. A
further increase results in a hysteretic transition to a pattern of stretched
hexagons. The instabilities are detected by means of a linear array of magnetic
hall sensors and compared with theoretical predictions.Comment: accepted for publication by Physical Review E/Rapid Communicatio
Non-Abelian Giant Gravitons
We argue that the giant graviton configurations known from the literature
have a complementary, microscopical description in terms of multiple
gravitational waves undergoing a dielectric (or magnetic moment) effect. We
present a non-Abelian effective action for these gravitational waves with
dielectric couplings and show that stable dielectric solutions exist. These
solutions agree in the large limit with the giant graviton configurations
in the literature.Comment: 8 pages. Contribution to the proceedings of the RTN workshop in
Leuven, Belgium, September 200
Quenched crystal field disorder and magnetic liquid ground states in Tb2Sn2-xTixO7
Solid-solutions of the "soft" quantum spin ice pyrochlore magnets Tb2B2O7
with B=Ti and Sn display a novel magnetic ground state in the presence of
strong B-site disorder, characterized by a low susceptibility and strong spin
fluctuations to temperatures below 0.1 K. These materials have been studied
using ac-susceptibility and muSR techniques to very low temperatures, and
time-of-flight inelastic neutron scattering techniques to 1.5 K. Remarkably,
neutron spectroscopy of the Tb3+ crystal field levels appropriate to at high
B-site mixing (0.5 < x < 1.5 in Tb2Sn2-xTixO7) reveal that the doublet ground
and first excited states present as continua in energy, while transitions to
singlet excited states at higher energies simply interpolate between those of
the end members of the solid solution. The resulting ground state suggests an
extreme version of a random-anisotropy magnet, with many local moments and
anisotropies, depending on the precise local configuration of the six B sites
neighboring each magnetic Tb3+ ion.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
On-Farm Integrated High-Solids Processing System for Biomass
A method for on-farm processing a biomass feedstock into a useful industrial chemicals includes the steps of (a) delignifying the biomass feedstock to produce a delignified biomass, (b) subjecting the deliguified biomass to cellulase production, (c) subjecting the deliguified biomass with attached cellulase to simultaneous cellulolytic and solventogenic reactions to produce useful industrial chemicals (d) collecting and separating the useful industrial chemical from the fermentation broth and (e) collecting the fermentation residues
A KK-monopole giant graviton in AdS_5 x Y_5
We construct a new giant graviton solution in AdS_5 x Y_5, with Y_5 a
quasi-regular Sasaki-Einstein manifold, consisting on a Kaluza-Klein monopole
wrapped around the Y_5 and with its Taub-NUT direction in AdS_5. We find that
this configuration has minimal energy when put in the centre of AdS_5, where it
behaves as a massless particle. When we take Y_5 to be S^5, we provide a
microscopical description in terms of multiple gravitational waves expanding
into the fuzzy S^5 defined as an S^1 bundle over the fuzzy CP^2. Finally we
provide a possible field theory dual interpretation of the construction.Comment: 11 pages, published versio
The baryon vertex with magnetic flux
In this letter we generalise the baryon vertex configuration of AdS/CFT by
adding a suitable instantonic magnetic field on its worldvolume, dissolving
D-string charge. A careful analysis of the configuration shows that there is an
upper bound on the number of dissolved strings. This should be a manifestation
of the stringy exclusion principle. We provide a microscopical description of
this configuration in terms of a dielectric effect for the dissolved strings.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures. V2: reference added. V3: version to appear in
JHE
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