Ultra High Energy Tau Neutrinos and Fluorescence Detectors: A Phenomenological Approach

We investigate the possibility of detecting ultra-high energy cosmic tau-neutrinos by means of a process involving a double extensive air shower, the so-called Double-Bang Phenomenon. In this process a primary tau-neutrino interacts with an atmospheric quark creating a hadronic extensive air shower that contains a tau which subsequently decays creating a second extensive air shower. The number of these events strongly depends on the cross section and on the flux of ultra-high energy tau-neutrinos arriving at the Earth's atmosphere. We estimate the potential of optical detectors to observe Double-Bang events induced by tau-neutrinos with energies of about 1 EeV whose detection may confirm the maximal mixing observed in the atmospheric neutrinos also for ultra-high energy neutrinos, and give information on the neutrino flux and cross-section. For neutrino-nucleon Standard Model extrapolated cross-section and thick source model of flux (MPR), we estimate an event rate of 0.48/yr for an observatory with two fluorescence detectors with 90% efficiency in the neutrino energy range 0.5 < E_nu < 5 EeV.Comment: 17 pages, 6 eps figures, revtex 4, new calculation for the interaction probability end efficienc

Impactos ambientais do manejo agroecológico da caatinga no Rio Grande do Norte.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar os impactos ambientais do manejo agroecológico da caatinga, em unidades de produção familiar no Rio Grande do Norte, pelo método Ambitec de produção animal - dimensão ambiental, desenvolvido pela Embrapa Meio Ambiente. Foram avaliadas sete unidades de produção familiar, em quatro projetos de assentamentos de reforma agrária do Município de Apodi, RN. Os dados para o levantamento foram obtidos por meio de questionários aplicados aos representantes das unidades produtivas familiares, que atribuíram, a cada variável estudada, um valor que representou a alteração proporcionada pela implementação da tecnologia. Após a inserção dos coeficientes de alteração de cada variável dos indicadores por unidade de produção, o coeficiente de impacto foi automaticamente calculado por meio da planilha Ambitec. O manejo agroecológico da caatinga resultou num impacto ambiental positivo, e suas maiores contribuições foram relacionadas aos efeitos positivos dos seguintes indicadores: capacidade produtiva do solo, uso de insumos materiais, qualidade do produto e diminuição da emissão de poluentes à atmosfera. Dois indicadores geraram efeitos negativos: o uso de energia e o uso de recursos naturais. Pela superioridade dos benefícios gerados, o manejo agroecológico da caatinga é uma inovação tecnológica geradora de impactos ambientais positivos

Água de beber: a filtração doméstica e a difusão do filtro de água em São Paulo

This work studies the advent and diffusion of water filter usage in São Paulo State, during the 20th Century. The water filter, a set of two terracotta vessels equipped with a filtering device, was a product of the ceramics industry, one of the first to be developed in São Paulo. This research shows that in São Paulo at the end of 19th and beginning of 20th Centuries, with the growth of cities and rapid urbanisation, a concern about the quality of water increased due to serious public health hazards, mainly epidemics caused by the consumption of unhealthy drinking water. Despite the existence of an incipient market of domestic equipment for water filtration, these were imported and of limited usage. From the 1910's, ceramics companies, owned by Portuguese and Italian immigrants, started installing filtering devices in terracotta vessels, launching the water filter set. It caught on and became the main domestic filtering equipment after the 1930's, when several companies specialized in this kind of product and started catering for the national market, such as Filtros Salus (from São Paulo city), Pozzani (Jundiaí) and Stéfani (Jaboticabal). Studying the advent and diffusion of the water filter entails knowledge about one of the first consumer goods of the Brazilian industry and, at the same time, knowledge about the history of the ways in which the Brazilian population obtained water to drink.Este artigo trata do processo de surgimento e difusão do uso do filtro de água no Estado de São Paulo, ao longo do século XX. O filtro de água, conjunto de dois recipientes de argila equipado com vela filtrante, é um produto da indústria cerâmica, uma das primeiras a se desenvolver em São Paulo. A pesquisa mostra que, em São Paulo, no final do século XIX e início do XX, com o aumento da urbanização e o crescimento das cidades, a preocupação com a qualidade da água que se consumia ganhou importância em virtude de graves problemas de saúde pública principalmente epidemias causadas por águas impróprias para beber. Embora já existisse um incipiente mercado de equipamentos domésticos de filtração da água, eles eram ainda importados e de uso restrito. A partir da década de 1910, empresas cerâmicas, de imigrantes portugueses e italianos, passaram a acoplar velas filtrantes a recipientes de argila, dando origem ao filtro de água. Depois dos anos de 1930, o filtro difundiu-se e tornou-se o principal equipamento de filtração doméstica, quando diversas empresas, como Filtros Salus (São Paulo-SP), Pozzani (Jundiaí-SP) e Stéfani (Jaboticabal-SP), especializaram-se nesse produto e passaram a atender ao mercado nacional. Estudar o surgimento e a difusão do filtro de água significa conhecer um dos primeiros bens de consumo da indústria brasileira e, ao mesmo tempo, a história de como a população obtém água para beber

Volume I. Introduction to DUNE

The preponderance of matter over antimatter in the early universe, the dynamics of the supernovae that produced the heavy elements necessary for life, and whether protons eventually decay—these mysteries at the forefront of particle physics and astrophysics are key to understanding the early evolution of our universe, its current state, and its eventual fate. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is an international world-class experiment dedicated to addressing these questions as it searches for leptonic charge-parity symmetry violation, stands ready to capture supernova neutrino bursts, and seeks to observe nucleon decay as a signature of a grand unified theory underlying the standard model. The DUNE far detector technical design report (TDR) describes the DUNE physics program and the technical designs of the single- and dual-phase DUNE liquid argon TPC far detector modules. This TDR is intended to justify the technical choices for the far detector that flow down from the high-level physics goals through requirements at all levels of the Project. Volume I contains an executive summary that introduces the DUNE science program, the far detector and the strategy for its modular designs, and the organization and management of the Project. The remainder of Volume I provides more detail on the science program that drives the choice of detector technologies and on the technologies themselves. It also introduces the designs for the DUNE near detector and the DUNE computing model, for which DUNE is planning design reports. Volume II of this TDR describes DUNE\u27s physics program in detail. Volume III describes the technical coordination required for the far detector design, construction, installation, and integration, and its organizational structure. Volume IV describes the single-phase far detector technology. A planned Volume V will describe the dual-phase technology

The Psychological Science Accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data

The Psychological Science Accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time, and attempts to address it require a clear understanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space. While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes, vast areas of the tropics remain understudied. In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world's most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity, but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepresented in biodiversity databases. To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications may eliminate pieces of the Amazon's biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological communities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge, it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple organism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region's vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most neglected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lost