Currents and pseudomagnetic fields in strained graphene rings

We study the effects of strain on the electronic properties and persistent current characteristics of a graphene ring using the Dirac representation. For a slightly deformed graphene ring flake, one obtains sizable pseudomagnetic (gauge) fields that may effectively reduce or enhance locally the applied magnetic flux through the ring. Flux-induced persistent currents in a flat ring have full rotational symmetry throughout the structure; in contrast, we show that currents in the presence of a circularly symmetric deformation are strongly inhomogeneous, due to the underlying symmetries of graphene. This result illustrates the inherent competition between the `real' magnetic field and the `pseudo' field arising from strains, and suggest an alternative way to probe the strength and symmetries of pseudomagnetic fields on graphene systems

Treatment of predominantly antibody primary immunodeficiency diseases

As imunodeficiências primárias (IDP) por défice predominante de anticorpos são as IDP mais frequentes. Apresentam fenótipos muito diversos, com espectro de manifestações clinicas muito variável que pode atrasar o diagnóstico. O seguimento destes doentes implica na maioria dos casos, a instituição a longo prazo de terapêutica substitutiva com gamaglobulina intravenosa ou subcutânea. A dose terapêutica com gamablobulina deve ser ajustada a cada doente com o objectivo de manter os níveis de IgG superiores a 500mg/dl. Apresenta-se um protocolo, elaborado a partir da experiência partilhada no estágio efectuado no Hospital de Vall d´Hebron. Inclui-se as doses, forma de administração de GGIV, reacções adversas e medidas de avaliação clínica e laboratorial da sua eficácia e eventual iatrogenia. São referidas as principais complicações associadas a este tipo de IDP: infecciosa, envolvendo diversos sistemas e outras menos frequentes como doenças autoimunes, neoplásicas e linfoproliferativas. O diagnóstico precoce e instituição terapêutica adequada são factores determinantes na evolução clínica, qualidade de vida e prognóstico destes doentes

Existence criteria for stabilization from the scaling behaviour of ionization probabilities

We provide a systematic derivation of the scaling behaviour of various quantities and establish in particular the scale invariance of the ionization probability. We discuss the gauge invariance of the scaling properties and the manner in which they can be exploited as consistency check in explicit analytical expressions, in perturbation theory, in the Kramers-Henneberger and Floquet approximation, in upper and lower bound estimates and fully numerical solutions of the time dependent Schroedinger equation. The scaling invariance leads to a differential equation which has to be satisfied by the ionization probability and which yields an alternative criterium for the existence of atomic bound state stabilization.Comment: 12 pages of Latex, one figur

Analysis of the Bronze Age Heslington Brain by FTIR Imaging and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis

Analysis of the Bronze Age Heslington Brain by FTIR Imaging and Hierarchical Cluster AnalysisFTIR has over the past years proven to be a technique capable of discriminating between different tissue structures. Herein we report the preliminary analysis of Heslington brain tissue by FTIR imaging and Hierarchical Cluster Analysis (HCA). Analysis of the average spectra for the different clusters showed bands that are characteristic of proteins and lipids, indicating that these were still present in the tissue. Comparison with spectra obtained by Kraft et al.1 for normal brain tissue that had been snap frozen in liquid nitrogen immediately after post-mortem resection, showed the absence of the C=O lipid stretching band in the spectra from the Heslington brain and a broad spread of absorbance in the region between 1000 to 1350cm-1, which might be due to the degradation of the tissue.Four different areas of tissue were identified from the Hierarchical Cluster Analysis. However, analysis of the average spectra for those areas showed that there was little difference between three of them. The fourth area, related to three small areas at the edge of the tissue analysed, varied significantly from the other three areas, in that it had lower absorbance in the amide bands and in the 1140 to 1430 cm-1 region and it exhibited much higher absorbance in the 1000 to 1140 cm-1 region with maxima at 1120 and 1038 cm-1. Absorption bands around 1120 cm-1 have been associated with RNA2 and bands around 1044 cm-1 have been attributed to the phosphate monoester asymmetric P-O stretch.3 The region between 1000 and 1140 cm-1 is also associated with glycogen and collagen. However, it is not possible to say which type of molecules these observed bands can be attributed to without further analysis. 1 C. Krafft, L. Shapoval, S. B. Sobottka, K. D. Geiger, G. Schackert and R. Salzer, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Biomembranes, 2006, 1758, 883-891.2 E. Gazi, J. Dwyer, P. Gardner, A. Ghanbari-Siahkali, A. P. Wade, J. Miyan, N. P. Lockyer, J. C. Vickerman, N. W. Clarke, J. H. Shanks, L. J. Scott, C. A. Hart and M. Brown, Journal of Pathology, 2003, 201, 99-108.3 P. S. Bromberg, K. M. Gough, M. Ogg, M. R. Del Bigio and R. Julian (1999) in Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, Vol. 3775, pp. 118-126

Runoff at the micro-plot and slope scale following wildfire, central Portugal

Through their effects on soil properties and vegetation/litter cover, wildfires can strongly enhance overland flow generation and accelerate soil erosion [1] and, thereby, negatively affect land-use sustainability as well as downstream aquatic and flood zones. Wildfires are a common phenomenon in present-day Portugal, devastating in an average year some 100.000 ha of forest and woodlands and in an exceptional year like 2003 over 400.000 ha. There therefore exists a clear need in Portugal for a tool that can provide guidance to post-fire land management by predicting soil erosion risk, on the one hand, and, on the other, the mitigation effectiveness of soil conservation measures. Such a tool has recently been developed for the Western U.S.A. [3: ERMiT] but its suitability for Portuguese forests will need to be corroborated by field observations. Testing the suitability of existing erosion models in recently burned forest areas in Portugal is, in a nutshell, the aim of the EROSFIRE projects. In the first EROSFIRE project the emphasis was on the prediction of erosion at the scale of individual hill slopes. In the ongoing EROSFIRE-II project the spatial scope is extended to include the catchment scale, so that also the connectivity between hill slopes as well as channel and road processes are being addressed. Besides ERMiT, the principal models under evaluation for slope-scale erosion prediction are: (i) the variant of USLE [4] applied by the Portuguese Water Institute after the wildfires of 2003; (ii) the Morgan–Morgan–Finney model (MMF) [5]; (iii) MEFIDIS [6]. From these models, MEFIDIS and perhaps MMF will, after successful calibration at the slope scale, also be applied for predicting catchment-scale sediment yields of extreme events

System for Identifying Pests and Diseases in Soybean Crop through Natural Language Processing

The presence of technologies in the agronomic field has the purpose of proposing the best solutions to the challenges found in agriculture, especially to the problems that affect cultivars. One of the obstacles found is to apply the use of your own language in applications that interact with the user in Brazilian Agribusiness. Therefore, this work uses Natural Language Processing techniques for the development of an automatic and effective computer system to interact with the user and assist in the identification of pests and diseases in soybean crop, stored in a non-relational database repository to provide accurate diagnostics to simplify the work of the farmer and the agricultural stakeholders who deal with a lot of information. In order to build dialogues and provide rich consultations, from agriculture manuals, a data structure with 108 pests and diseases with their information on the soybean cultivar and through the spaCy tool, it was possible to pre-process the texts, recognize the entities and support the requirements for the development of the conversacional system

Exploring the relationship between older parents and their middle-aged children: a scoping review

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Runoff and erosion at the micro-plot and slope scale in a small burnt catchment, central Portugal

Wildfires can have important impacts on hydrological processes and soil erosion in forest catchments, due to the destruction of vegetation cover and changes to soil properties. However, the processes involved are non-linear and not fully understood. This has severely limited the understanding on the impacts of wildfires, especially in the up-scaling from hillslopes to catchments; in consequence, current models are poorly adapted for burnt forest conditions. The objective of this presentation is to give an overview of the hydrological response and sediment yield from the micro-plot to slope scale, in the first year following a wildfire (2008/2009) that burnt an entire catchment nearby the Colmeal village, central Portugal. The overview will focus on three slopes inside the catchment, with samples including: • Runoff at micro-plot scale (12 bounded plots) and slope scale (12 open plots); • Sediments and Organic Matter loss at micro-plot scale (12 bounded plots) and slope scale (12 open plots plus 3 Sediment fences); • Rainfall and Soil moisture data; • Soil Water Repellency and Ground Cover data. The analysis of the first year following the wildfire clearly shows the complexity of runoff generation and the associated sediment transport in recently burnt areas, with pronounced differences between hillslopes and across spatial scales as well as with marked variations through time. This work was performed in the framework of the EROSFIRE-II project (PTDC/AGR-CFL/70968/2006) which has as overall aim to predict soil erosion risk in recently burnt forest areas, including common post-fire forest management practices; the project focuses on the simultaneous measurement of runoff and soil erosion at multiple spatial scales.The results to be presented in this session are expected to show how sediment is generated, transported and exported in the Colmeal watershed; and contribute to understand and simulate erosion processes in burnt catchments, including for model development and evaluation

Fungal contamination in one hotel room: Does carpet coating in the floor enhance fungal contamination?

Study developed in order to know the carpet influence when used in the floor of a hotel room. Twelve air samples of 250L (six in a room with carpet and six more in a room with wood floor) were collected through an impaction method with a flow rate of 140 L/min onto malt extract agar (MEA) supplemented with chloramphenicol (0.05%), using the Millipore air Tester (Millipore), during cleaning activities. Outdoor sample was also performed to be used as a reference. Surface samples from floor and desks, taken at the same time, were collected by the swabbing method. to 7 days. Besides fungal contamination, we also assessed particulate matter contamination in both rooms during the same cleaning tasks. In the analyzed sur- faces, isolates belonging to Aspergillus fumigatus complex were the only fungi found in the carpeted room, whereas in the other room we found Penicllium sp. (63.6%) and Aspergillus sp. (13.6%) as the most frequent genera. In the case of particles the room with carpet obtained significant higher values for both metrics (PMC and PNC), showing that carpet may has influence on particles’ contamination of the room

Revegetação de solos degradados.

Quebra de dormência das sementes; Inoculação das sementes; Obtenção do inoculante; Inoculação com fungos micorrízicos; Produção de mudas; Plantio no campo; Experiências de campo.bitstream/CNPAB-2010/27134/1/cot009.pd