37,912 research outputs found
Spatially resolved physical and chemical properties of the planetary nebula NGC 3242
Optical integral-field spectroscopy was used to investigate the planetary
nebula NGC 3242. We analysed the main morphological components of this source,
including its knots, but not the halo. In addition to revealing the properties
ofthe physical and chemical nature of this nebula, we also provided reliable
spatially resolved constraints that can be used for future photoionisation
modelling of the nebula. The latter is ultimately necessary to obtain a fully
self-consistent 3D picture of the physical and chemical properties of the
object. The observations were obtained with the VIMOS instrument attached to
VLT-UT3. Maps and values for specific morphological zones for the detected
emission-lines were obtained and analysed with routines developed by the
authors to derive physical and chemical conditions of the ionised gas in a 2D
fashion. We obtained spatially resolved maps and mean values of the electron
densities, temperatures, and chemical abundances, for specific morphological
structures in NGC 3242. These results show the pixel-to-pixel variations of the
the small- and large-scale structures of the source. These diagnostic maps
provide information free from the biases introduced by traditional single
long-slit observations. In general, our results are consistent with a uniform
abundance distribution for the object, whether we look at abundance maps or
integrated fluxes from specified morphological structures. The results indicate
that special care should be taken with the calibration of the data and that
only data with extremely good signal-to-noise ratio and spectral coverage
should be used to ensure the detection of possible spatial variations.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures accepted for publication in Astronomy &
Astrophysic
Hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) and Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) Nesting and Beach Selection at PrÃncipe Island, West Africa
Hawksbills (Eretmochelys imbricata) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas) are the predominant nesting sea turtle species on the beaches of PrÃncipe Island in the Gulf of Guinea. The extent of nesting has been largely unknown, but such information is essential for management and conservation. Our study is the first island-wide nesting assessment. Results from the survey, conducted from 1 December 2009 to 18 January 2010 (during peak nesting season), show that the potential suitable nesting area (10 km) is scattered around the island’s 50 beaches. Sea turtles nested on 32 of the beaches (hawksbills, 20; green turtles, 28) and used 7.5 km of the suitable nesting habitat (hawksbills, 5.8 km; green turtles, 7.0 km). We estimated that 101 (95% CI = 86–118) clutches were deposited by 17-29 hawksbills and 1088 (95% CI = 999–1245) clutches were deposited by 166-429 green turtles on PrÃncipe from November 2009 to February 2010 (nesting season). Long-term green turtle nest count data collected from 2007/08 to 2015/16 suggest a positive trend. Analyses of clutch densities in relation to beach characteristics suggested that both species preferred areas where human presence is lower, which coincided with the most sheltered areas. These findings should be used to inform coastal planning and minimize impacts on nesting beaches, as PrÃncipe is currently targeted for tourism development. Overall, results highlight that PrÃncipe beaches are very important for the conservation of West African hawksbill and green turtle populations.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Spatial variability of soil properties and soil erodibility in the Alqueva reservoir watershed
The aim of this work is to investigate how the spatial variability of soil properties and soil erodibility (K factor) were affected by the changes in land use allowed by irrigation with water from a reservoir in a semiarid area. To this end, three areas representative of different land uses (agroforestry grassland, lucerne crop and olive orchard) were studied within a 900 ha farm. The interrelationships between variables were analyzed by multivariate techniques and extrapolated using geostatistics. The results confirmed differences between land uses for all properties analyzed, which was explained mainly by the existence of diverse management practices (tillage, fertilization and irrigation), vegetation cover and local soil characteristics. Soil organic matter, clay and nitrogen content decreased significantly, while the K factor increased with intensive cultivation. The HJ-Biplot methodology was used to represent the variation of soil erodibility properties grouped in land uses. Native grassland was the least correlated with the other land uses. The K factor demonstrated high correlation mainly with very fine sand and silt. The maps produced with geostatistics were crucial to understand the current spatial variability in the Alqueva region. Facing the intensification of land-use conversion, a sustainable management is needed to introduce protective measures to control soil erosion
Mean-field analysis of the majority-vote model broken-ergodicity steady state
We study analytically a variant of the one-dimensional majority-vote model in
which the individual retains its opinion in case there is a tie among the
neighbors' opinions. The individuals are fixed in the sites of a ring of size
and can interact with their nearest neighbors only. The interesting feature
of this model is that it exhibits an infinity of spatially heterogeneous
absorbing configurations for whose statistical properties we
probe analytically using a mean-field framework based on the decomposition of
the -site joint probability distribution into the -contiguous-site joint
distributions, the so-called -site approximation. To describe the
broken-ergodicity steady state of the model we solve analytically the
mean-field dynamic equations for arbitrary time in the cases n=3 and 4. The
asymptotic limit reveals the mapping between the statistical
properties of the random initial configurations and those of the final
absorbing configurations. For the pair approximation () we derive that
mapping using a trick that avoids solving the full dynamics. Most remarkably,
we find that the predictions of the 4-site approximation reduce to those of the
3-site in the case of expectations involving three contiguous sites. In
addition, those expectations fit the Monte Carlo data perfectly and so we
conjecture that they are in fact the exact expectations for the one-dimensional
majority-vote model
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