Transport of persistent organic pollutants across the human placenta

Environment International 65, 107-115 (2014

Geometric and Extensor Algebras and the Differential Geometry of Arbitrary Manifolds

We give in this paper which is the third in a series of four a theory of covariant derivatives of representatives of multivector and extensor fields on an arbitrary open set U of M, based on the geometric and extensor calculus on an arbitrary smooth manifold M. This is done by introducing the notion of a connection extensor field gamma defining a parallelism structure on U, which represents in a well defined way the action on U of the restriction there of some given connection del defined on M. Also we give a novel and intrinsic presentation (i.e., one that does not depend on a chosen orthonormal moving frame) of the torsion and curvature fields of Cartan's theory. Two kinds of Cartan's connection operator fields are identified, and both appear in the intrinsic Cartan's structure equations satisfied by the Cartan's torsion and curvature extensor fields. We introduce moreover a metrical extensor g in U corresponding to the restriction there of given metric tensor \slg defined on M and also introduce the concept a geometric structure (U,gamma,g) for U and study metric compatibility of covariant derivatives induced by the connection extensor gamma. This permits the presentation of the concept of gauge (deformed) derivatives which satisfy noticeable properties useful in differential geometry and geometrical theories of the gravitational field. Several derivatives operators in metric and geometrical structures, like ordinary and covariant Hodge coderivatives and some duality identities are exhibit.Comment: This paper is an improved version of material contained in math.DG/0501560, math.DG/0501561, math.DG/050200

Effect of higher orbital angular momenta in the baryon spectrum

We have performed a Faddeev calculation of the baryon spectrum for the chiral constituent quark model including higher orbital angular momentum states. We have found that the effect of these states is important, although a description of the baryon spectrum of the same quality as the one given by including only the lowest-order configurations can be obtained. We have studied the effect of the pseudoscalar quark-quark interaction on the relative position of the positive- and negative-parity excitations of the nucleon as well as the effect of varying the strength of the color-magnetic interaction.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev. C (November 2001

Geometric Algebras and Extensors

This is the first paper in a series (of four) designed to show how to use geometric algebras of multivectors and extensors to a novel presentation of some topics of differential geometry which are important for a deeper understanding of geometrical theories of the gravitational field. In this first paper we introduce the key algebraic tools for the development of our program, namely the euclidean geometrical algebra of multivectors Cl(V,G_{E}) and the theory of its deformations leading to metric geometric algebras Cl(V,G) and some special types of extensors. Those tools permit obtaining, the remarkable golden formula relating calculations in Cl(V,G) with easier ones in Cl(V,G_{E}) (e.g., a noticeable relation between the Hodge star operators associated to G and G_{E}). Several useful examples are worked in details fo the purpose of transmitting the "tricks of the trade".Comment: This paper (to appear in Int. J. Geom. Meth. Mod. Phys. 4 (6) 2007) is an improved version of material appearing in math.DG/0501556, math.DG/0501557, math.DG/050155

A proposal of a Renormalization Group transformation

We propose a family of renormalization group transformations characterized by free parameters that may be tuned in order to reduce the truncation effects. As a check we test them in the three dimensional XY model. The Schwinger--Dyson equations are used to study the renormalization group flow.Comment: Contribution to Lattice'94. uuencoded postscript fil

The U(1) phase transition on toroidal and spherical lattices

We have studied the properties of the phase transition in the U(1) compact pure gauge model paying special atention to the influence of the topology of the boundary conditions. From the behavior of the energy cumulants and the observation of an effective \nu -> 1/d on toroidal and spherical lattices, we conclude that the transition is first order.Comment: LATTICE98(gauge

On Packet Scheduling with Adversarial Jamming and Speedup

In Packet Scheduling with Adversarial Jamming packets of arbitrary sizes arrive over time to be transmitted over a channel in which instantaneous jamming errors occur at times chosen by the adversary and not known to the algorithm. The transmission taking place at the time of jamming is corrupt, and the algorithm learns this fact immediately. An online algorithm maximizes the total size of packets it successfully transmits and the goal is to develop an algorithm with the lowest possible asymptotic competitive ratio, where the additive constant may depend on packet sizes. Our main contribution is a universal algorithm that works for any speedup and packet sizes and, unlike previous algorithms for the problem, it does not need to know these properties in advance. We show that this algorithm guarantees 1-competitiveness with speedup 4, making it the first known algorithm to maintain 1-competitiveness with a moderate speedup in the general setting of arbitrary packet sizes. We also prove a lower bound of $\phi+1\approx 2.618$ on the speedup of any 1-competitive deterministic algorithm, showing that our algorithm is close to the optimum. Additionally, we formulate a general framework for analyzing our algorithm locally and use it to show upper bounds on its competitive ratio for speedups in $[1,4)$ and for several special cases, recovering some previously known results, each of which had a dedicated proof. In particular, our algorithm is 3-competitive without speedup, matching both the (worst-case) performance of the algorithm by Jurdzinski et al. and the lower bound by Anta et al.Comment: Appeared in Proc. of the 15th Workshop on Approximation and Online Algorithms (WAOA 2017

Beauville structures in finite p-groups

We study the existence of (unmixed) Beauville structures in finite $p$-groups, where $p$ is a prime. First of all, we extend Catanese's characterisation of abelian Beauville groups to finite $p$-groups satisfying certain conditions which are much weaker than commutativity. This result applies to all known families of $p$-groups with a good behaviour with respect to powers: regular $p$-groups, powerful $p$-groups and more generally potent $p$-groups, and (generalised) $p$-central $p$-groups. In particular, our characterisation holds for all $p$-groups of order at most $p^p$, which allows us to determine the exact number of Beauville groups of order $p^5$, for $p\ge 5$, and of order $p^6$, for $p\ge 7$. On the other hand, we determine which quotients of the Nottingham group over $\mathbb{F}_p$ are Beauville groups, for an odd prime $p$. As a consequence, we give the first explicit infinite family of Beauville $3$-groups, and we show that there are Beauville $3$-groups of order $3^n$ for every $n\ge 5$