Effect of sewage sludge on the incidence of corn stalk rot caused by Fusarium.

During the last decades, sewage started to be treated in order to reduce the pollution of rivers, resulting in the production of a sludge rich in organic matter and nutrients, called sewage sludge. Among the alternatives for final discarding, the agricultural use is one of the most convenient, because it combines disposal and recycling. However, using sewage sludge as a fertilizer causes alterations in the physical, chemical and biological properties of the soils. The soilborne plant pathogens are highly influenced by the way the soil is managed; thus, sewage sludge may interfere with the occurrence of diseases caused by these microorganisms. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of sewage sludge on corn stalk rot, caused by Fusarium spp

Tunable Double Negative Band Structure from Non-Magnetic Coated Rods

A system of periodic poly-disperse coated nano-rods is considered. Both the coated nano-rods and host material are non-magnetic. The exterior nano-coating has a frequency dependent dielectric constant and the rod has a high dielectric constant. A negative effective magnetic permeability is generated near the Mie resonances of the rods while the coating generates a negative permittivity through a field resonance controlled by the plasma frequency of the coating and the geometry of the crystal. The explicit band structure for the system is calculated in the sub-wavelength limit. Tunable pass bands exhibiting negative group velocity are generated and correspond to simultaneously negative effective dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability. These can be explicitly controlled by adjusting the distance between rods, the coating thickness, and rod diameters

WAVE PROPAGATION ON A FLUME: PHYSICAL MODELLING

The knowledge of wave transformation and breaking characteristics near coastline is essential for the nearshore hydrodynamics and the design of coastal structures. This paper describes a wide range of wave flume tests performed at the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC), located in Lisbon (Portugal), which main objective was to study wave shoaling and breaking over a set of different gentle slopes for several incident waves and thus to contribute for a better understand of the hydrodynamics of wave transformation.The experimental conditions, the measurement equipment, the incident wave characteristics, the type of measurements performed (free surface elevation and particle velocity) and the data obtained are described. Time and spectral analysis based upon the measured data are also performed and presented. For a regular wave with a period of 1.5s and a height of 0.1m are presented and discussed the following results: free surface elevation at selected sections along the flume; the spectral analysis; the significant wave height and average period along the flume; the particle velocity components at different locations along the flume; the average, maximum and minimum values of the longitudinal component of the velocity along the flume; the two dimensional distribution of the three components of the velocity; and longitudinal velocity component vertical profiles

Transferibilidade de locos SSR de Astrocaryum aculeatum Mart. para Astrocaryum vulgare Mart.

Este trabalho foi realizado com o objetivo de testar a transferibilidade de locos SSR de Astrocaryum aculeatum para a espécie Astrocaryum vulgare. Para isso, foram aplicados doze locos desenvolvidos para A. aculeatum em seis amostras de DNA obtidas de matrizes de A. vulgare de diferentes procedências. As reações de amplificação foram conduzidas de acordo com o protocolo desenvolvido por Ramos (2012), com pequenas adaptações. Os produtos amplificados foram aplicados em gel de agarose ultra pura a 1,5%, corado com brometo de etídio e submetido à eletroforese horizontal por 1:30 horas. Os perfis dos géis foram fotodocumentados e as imagens armazenadas digitalmente. A transferibilidade dos locos foi avaliada com base na amplificação de produtos e na sua nitidez. Dos doze locos testados, seis apresentaram amplificação satisfatória (visualização do produto), perfazendo uma taxa de transferibilidade de 50%, sugerindo que as espécies possuam alto grau de parentesco. Em todos os locos amplificados não foi detectada a presença de produtos secundários, sendo, portanto, úteis para acessar o genoma de A. vulgare

Seleção de primers ISSR para análises genéticas em Tucumã-do-Pará (Astrocaryum vulgare Mart.).

Dentre as espécies oleaginosas existentes na Amazônia o tucumã (Astrocaryum vulgare Mart.) se destaca com grande potencialidade nas indústrias alimentícia, medicinal e como matéria prima ao mercado de biodiesel. Marcadores ISSR são utilizados em estudos de diversidade e variabilidade genética por não necessitarem de informação prévia da seqüência de DNA. Este trabalho teve como objetivo selecionar primers ISSR para análises genéticas em tucumã-do-pará. Foram aplicados 100 primers ISSR do Set 9 da UBC em cinco amostras de DNA de tucumã representantes de genótipos conservados no BAG da Embrapa Amazônia Oriental em Belém-PA. As PCR?s foram feitas em temperatura de anelamento padrão (Ta=47ºC). A análise foi feita visualmente considerando a amplificação ou não amplificação de produtos. Dos 100 primers 54 não amplificaram bandas. Dos 46 que revelaram produtos, 17 produziram bandas claras e inespecíficas, enquanto 29 primers revelaram bandas específicas. Com o presente estudo foi possível selecionar preliminarmente 26 primers capazes de amplificar regiões de A. vulgare, e sugere-se inicialmente, os primers ISSR UBC 890 e UBC 891 que melhor amplificaram, para estudos de divergência genética do tucumã-do-pará

Transferibilidade de locos SSR de Astrocaryum aculeatum Mart. para Astrocaryum murumuru Mart.

Este trabalho foi realizado com o objetivo de testar a transferibilidade de locos SSR de Astrocaryum aculeatum para a espécie Astrocaryum murumuru. Para isso, foram aplicados dez locos desenvolvidos para A. aculeatum em cinco amostras de DNA obtidas de matrizes de A. murumuru de diferentes procedências. As reações de amplificação foram conduzidas de acordo com o protocolo desenvolvido por Ramos et al. (2012), com pequenas adaptações para testar diferentes temperaturas de anelamento, com a finalidade de determinar a temperatura ótima de amplificação em A. murumuru. Os produtos amplificados foram aplicados em gel de agarose a 1,5%, corado com brometo de etídio e submetidos à eletroforese horizontal por 1h 30 min. Os perfis dos géis foram fotodocumentados e as imagens armazenadas digitalmente. A transferibilidade dos locos foi avaliada com base na amplificação de produtos e na sua nitidez. Todos os locos testados apresentaram amplificação satisfatória (visualização do produto), perfazendo uma taxa de transferibilidade de 100%, sugerindo que as espécies possuam alto grau de parentesco e sendo, portanto, úteis para acessar o genoma de A. murumuru

Post-Sphaleron Baryogenesis and an Upper Limit on the Neutron-Antineutron Oscillation Time

A recently proposed scenario for baryogenesis, called post--sphaleron baryogenesis (PSB) is discussed within a class of quark--lepton unified framework based on the gauge symmetry SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R x SU(4)_c realized in the multi--TeV scale. The baryon asymmetry of the universe in this model is produced below the electroweak phase transition temperature after the sphalerons have decoupled from the Hubble expansion. These models embed naturally the seesaw mechanism for neutrino masses, and predict color-sextet scalar particles in the TeV range which may be accessible to the LHC experiments. A necessary consequence of this scenario is the baryon number violating \Delta B=2 process of neutron--antineutron (n-\bar{n}) oscillations. In this paper we show that the constraints of PSB, when combined with the neutrino oscillation data and restrictions from flavor changing neutral currents mediated by the colored scalars imply an upper limit on the n-\bar{n} oscillation time of 5 x 10^{10} sec. regardless of the quark--lepton unification scale. If this scale is relatively low, in the (200-250) TeV range, \tau_{n-\bar{n}} is predicted to be less than 10^{10} sec., which is accessible to the next generation of proposed experiments.Comment: 22 pages, 3 tables, 10 figures; clarification added on the baryogenesis calculation; version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Asymptotic statistics of the n-sided planar Poisson-Voronoi cell. I. Exact results

We achieve a detailed understanding of the $n$-sided planar Poisson-Voronoi cell in the limit of large $n$. Let ${p}\_n$ be the probability for a cell to have $n$ sides. We construct the asymptotic expansion of $\log {p}\_n$ up to terms that vanish as $n\to\infty$. We obtain the statistics of the lengths of the perimeter segments and of the angles between adjoining segments: to leading order as $n\to\infty$, and after appropriate scaling, these become independent random variables whose laws we determine; and to next order in $1/n$ they have nontrivial long range correlations whose expressions we provide. The $n$-sided cell tends towards a circle of radius (n/4\pi\lambda)^{\half}, where $\lambda$ is the cell density; hence Lewis' law for the average area $A\_n$ of the $n$-sided cell behaves as $A\_n \simeq cn/\lambda$ with $c=1/4$. For $n\to\infty$ the cell perimeter, expressed as a function $R(\phi)$ of the polar angle $\phi$, satisfies $d^2 R/d\phi^2 = F(\phi)$, where $F$ is known Gaussian noise; we deduce from it the probability law for the perimeter's long wavelength deviations from circularity. Many other quantities related to the asymptotic cell shape become accessible to calculation.Comment: 54 pages, 3 figure

Dimensional crossover of a boson gas in multilayers

We obtain the thermodynamic properties for a non-interacting Bose gas constrained on multilayers modeled by a periodic Kronig-Penney delta potential in one direction and allowed to be free in the other two directions. We report Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) critical temperatures, chemical potential, internal energy, specific heat, and entropy for different values of a dimensionless impenetrability $P\geqslant 0$ between layers. The BEC critical temperature $T_{c}$ coincides with the ideal gas BEC critical temperature $T_{0}$ when $P=0$ and rapidly goes to zero as $P$ increases to infinity for any finite interlayer separation. The specific heat $C_{V}$ \textit{vs} $T$ for finite $P$ and plane separation $a$ exhibits one minimum and one or two maxima in addition to the BEC, for temperatures larger than $T_{c}$ which highlights the effects due to particle confinement. Then we discuss a distinctive dimensional crossover of the system through the specific heat behavior driven by the magnitude of $P$. For $T<T_{c}$ the crossover is revealed by the change in the slope of $\log C_{V}(T)$ and when $T>T_{c}$, it is evidenced by a broad minimum in $C_{V}(T)$.Comment: Ten pages, nine figure