1,735 research outputs found
It is not mine. Surrogacy between Natural Body and Artificial Body
Drawing on Jean Baudrillard\u2019s approach and his process of simulation, which is a useful key for interpreting and analysing the natural body-artificial body dichotomy, this article aims to raise questions about the repercussions that the new culture of the body and the practices associated with the medicalization of maternity have on the construction of personal and social identity. The debate encompasses issues in the realm of bioethics, the presence or absence of human rights, contractual exchange, the processes of commodification of the body, women and pregnancy, and processes that manipulate human life. The scope of the observations thus extends to subjects such as bioethics, body ownership and the manipulation of life, to the point of questioning the construction of gender identity and even the very concept of mother. The objective of this study is to render the complexity of the issue of surrogacy and highlight the resulting theoretical challenges faced by the social sciences. It is still essentially exploratory in nature and is intended as a starting point for the development of this research topic, raising certain questions in an attempt to provide the sociological debate with new theoretical and empirical challenges
Assessment of landfill leachate biodegradability and treatability by means of allochthonous and autochthonous biomasses
The biodegradability and treatability of a young (3 years old) municipal landfill leachate was evaluated by means of chemical oxygen demand (COD) fractionation tests, based on respirometric techniques. The tests were performed using two different biomasses: one cultivated from the raw leachate (autochthonous biomass) and the other collected from a conventional municipal wastewater treatment plant after its acclimation to leachate (allochthonous biomass). The long term performances of the two biomasses were also studied. The results demonstrated that the amount of biodegradable COD in the leachate was strictly dependent on the biomass that was used to perform the fractionation tests. Using the autochthonous biomass, the amount of biodegradable organic substrate resulted in approximately 75% of the total COD, whereas it was close to 40% in the case of the allochthonous biomass, indicating the capacity of the autochthonous biomass to degrade a higher amount of organic compounds present in the leachate. The autochthonous biomass was characterized by higher biological activity and heterotrophic active fraction (14% vs 7%), whereas the activity of the allochthonous biomass was significantly affected by inhibitory compounds in the leachate, resulting in a lower respiration rate (SOUR = 13 mg O2 gVSS-1 h-1 vs 37 mg O2 gVSS-1 h-1). The long-term performance of the autochthonous and allochthonous biomasses indicated that the former was more suitable for the treatment of raw landfill leachate, ensuring higher removal performance towards the organic pollutants
The Ay Problem for p-3He Elastic Scattering
We present evidence that numerically accurate quantum calculations employing
modern internucleon forces do not reproduce the proton analyzing power, A_y,
for p-3He elastic scattering at low energies. These calculations underpredict
new measured analyzing powers by approximately 30% at E_{c.m.} = 1.20 MeV and
by 40% at E_{c.m.} = 1.69 MeV, an effect analogous to a well-known problem in
p-d and n-d scattering. The calculations are performed using the complex Kohn
variational principle and the (correlated) Hyperspherical Harmonics technique
with full treatment of the Coulomb force. The inclusion of the three-nucleon
interaction does not improve the agreement with the experimental data.Comment: Latex file, 4 pages, 2 figures, to be published on Phys. Rev. Let
Calculation of the Alpha--Particle Ground State within the Hyperspherical Harmonic Basis
The problem of calculating the four--nucleon bound state properties for the
case of realistic two- and three-body nuclear potentials is studied using the
hyperspherical harmonic (HH) approach. A careful analysis of the convergence of
different classes of HH functions has been performed. A restricted basis is
chosen to allow for accurate estimates of the binding energy and other
properties of the 4He ground state. Results for various modern two-nucleon and
two- plus three-nucleon interactions are presented. The 4He asymptotic
normalization constants for separation in 2+2 and 1+3 clusters are also
computed.Comment: 29 pages, 4 figures, 11 tables, revtex
Realistic Calculation of the hep Astrophysical Factor
The astrophysical factor for the proton weak capture on 3He is calculated
with correlated-hyperspherical-harmonics bound and continuum wave functions
corresponding to a realistic Hamiltonian consisting of the Argonne v18
two-nucleon and Urbana-IX three-nucleon interactions. The nuclear weak charge
and current operators have vector and axial-vector components, that include
one- and many-body terms. All possible multipole transitions connecting any of
the p-3He S- and P-wave channels to the 4He bound state are considered. The
S-factor at a p-3He center-of-mass energy of 10 keV, close to the Gamow-peak
energy, is predicted to be 10.1 10^{-20} keV b, a factor of five larger than
the standard-solar-model value. The P-wave transitions are found to be
important, contributing about 40 % of the calculated S-factor.Comment: 8 pages RevTex file, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
The Solar hep Process in Effective Field Theory
Using effective field theory, we calculate the S-factor for the hep process
in a totally parameter-free formulation. The transition operators are organized
according to chiral counting, and their matrix elements are evaluated using the
realistic nuclear wave functions obtained in the
correlated-hyperspherical-harmonics method. Terms of up to
next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order in heavy-baryon chiral perturbation
theory are considered. Fixing the only parameter in the theory by fitting the
tritium \beta-decay rate, we predict the hep S-factor with accuracy better than
\sim 20 %.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex. Minor revision has been mad
Parameter-Free Calculation of the Solar Proton Fusion Rate in Effective Field Theory
Spurred by the recent complete determination of the weak currents in
two-nucleon systems up to in heavy-baryon chiral perturbation
theory, we carry out a parameter-free calculation of the solar proton fusion
rate in an effective field theory that combines the merits of the standard
nuclear physics method and systematic chiral expansion. Using the tritium
beta-decay rate as an input to fix the only unknown parameter in the effective
Lagrangian, we can evaluate with drastically improved precision the ratio of
the two-body contribution to the well established one-body contribution; the
ratio is determined to be (0.86\pm 0.05) %. This result is essentially
independent of the cutoff parameter for a wide range of its variation (500 MeV
\le \Lambda \le 800 MeV), a feature that substantiates the consistency of the
calculation.Comment: 10 pages. The argument is considerably more sharpened with a reduced
error ba
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