Inverse type II seesaw mechanism and its signature at the LHC and ILC

The advent of the LHC, and the proposal of building future colliders as the ILC, both programmed to explore new physics at the TeV scale, justifies the recent interest in studying all kind of seesaw mechanisms whose signature lies on such energy scale. The natural candidate for this kind of seesaw mechanism is the inverse one. The conventional inverse seesaw mechanism is implemented in an arrangement involving six new heavy neutrinos in addition to the three standard ones. In this paper we develop the inverse seesaw mechanism based on Higgs triplet model and probe its signature at the LHC and ILC. We argue that the conjoint analysis of the LHC together with the ILC may confirm the mechanism and, perhaps, infer the hierarchy of the neutrino masses.Comment: 24 pages, 22 figure

Contribuição da superfície dos pavimentos para a produção de ruído

O ruído rodoviário constitui actualmente um problema grave de qualidade ambiental, que resulta essencialmente dos mecanismos de contacto entre o pneu e a superfície do pavimento. Por conseguinte, a avaliação em termos acústicos das superfícies da rede rodoviária é importante. Assim, neste artigo estuda-se a contribuição de um conjunto de 7 superfícies de pavimentos em serviço para a produção de ruído rodoviário: 1 em betão betuminoso denso; 1 em betão betuminoso rugoso, 2 em microbetão betuminoso rugoso; 1 em betuminoso rugoso com betume modificado com borracha e 2 misturas abertas com betume modificado com borracha. A metodologia de ensaio baseou-se no Método Estatístico de Passagem. Para o estudo foram seleccionados 2 veículos ligeiros e um pesado de 2 eixos, os quais fizeram um total de 188 passagens a 3 níveis de velocidade. A cada passagem registouse o nível de ruído máximo, a velocidade efectiva dos veículos, a velocidade do vento e a temperatura do ar e da superfície do pavimento. Desta avaliação resulta que, relativamente ao betão betuminoso denso, as superfícies mais silenciosas são as de microbetão betuminoso rugoso e de mistura aberta com betume modificado com borracha, apresentando reduções entre os 4 e os 8 dB(A).Auto-estradas do Norte, S.A (AENOR)Estradas de Portugal (E.P.) Direcção de Braga

Contribution of asphalt rubber mixtures to noise abatement – time effect

Wearing course layers with a rubberized asphalt binder have been lately recommended as a measure to mitigate noise. Their acoustical performance in an early age seems to be superior to that shown by conventional layers. Nevertheless, there is no deep knowledge in relation to their behavior throughout their lifetime. The research carried out aims at observing and studying this type of mixes. For this purpose, several road sections with gap-graded mixtures, two of which with rubberized asphalt, were selected. On each road section the tyreroad noise generated by two light vehicles was measured by means of pass-by tests. After three years, those tests were repeated under the same conditions. The results focused on the comparison of the noise level versus speed among layers at the same testing time and on the same layers with different ages. The results obtained three years ago showed that gap-graded asphalt rubber mixtures have a similar performance than that of other type of gap-graded thin mixtures. The same performance was observed in the recent tests. On average, an increase of 4.0 to 4.5 dB(A) was determined for the two surfaces with rubberized asphalt, which had the same increase on noise as the control surface.(undefined

Serious Games in Cultural Heritage

Although the widespread use of gaming for leisure purposes has been well documented, the use of games to support cultural heritage purposes, such as historical teaching and learning, or for enhancing museum visits, has been less well considered. The state-of-the-art in serious game technology is identical to that of the state-of-the-art in entertainment games technology. As a result the field of serious heritage games concerns itself with recent advances in computer games, real-time computer graphics, virtual and augmented reality and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, the main strengths of serious gaming applications may be generalised as being in the areas of communication, visual expression of information, collaboration mechanisms, interactivity and entertainment. In this report, we will focus on the state-of-the-art with respect to the theories, methods and technologies used in serious heritage games. We provide an overview of existing literature of relevance to the domain, discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the described methods and point out unsolved problems and challenges. In addition, several case studies illustrating the application of methods and technologies used in cultural heritage are presented

Disorder effects at low temperatures in La_{0.7-x}Y_{x}Ca_{0.3}MnO_{3} manganites

With the aim of probing the effect of magnetic disorder in the low-temperature excitations of manganites, specific-heat measurements were performed in zero field, and in magnetic fields up to 9 T in polycrystalline samples of La_{0.7-x}Y_{x}Ca_{0.3}MnO_{3}, with Y concentrations x=0, 0.10, and 0.15. Yttrium doping yielded the appearance of a cluster-glass state, giving rise to unusual low-temperature behavior of the specific-heat. The main feature observed in the results is a strong enhancement of the specific-heat linear term, which is interpreted as a direct consequence of magnetic disorder. The analysis was further corroborated by resistivity measurements in the same compounds.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure