Effect of cooking on arsenic concentration in rice

This study assessed the effect of rinsing and boiling on total content of As (tAs) and of its inorganic and organic forms in different types of rice (polished and brown) from Spain and Ecuador. Rice was subjected to five different treatments. The results showed that the treatment consisting of three grain rinsing cycles followed by boiling in excess water showed a significant decrease in tAs content compared with raw rice. Regarding As species, it is worth noting that the different treatments significantly reduced the content of the most toxic forms of As. The estimated lifetime health risks indicate that pre-rinsing alone can reduce the risk by 50%, while combining it with discarding excess water can reduce the risk by 83%; therefore, the latter would be the preferable method.Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas-ESPE through Project 2015- PIC-017, Xunta de Galicia-Consellería de Educación, Universidades e Formación Profesional, Plan Galego IDT, Consolidation of competitive research groups (ref. ED31C2018/12), and Cross-Research in Environmental Technologies (CRETUS, AGRUP2015/02, ref. 2018-PG100). XLOP is grateful for the financial support from the Proyecto PROMETEO (SENESCYT Ecuador).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Asymptotic normalization of mirror states and the effect of couplings

Assuming that the ratio between asymptotic normalization coefficients of mirror states is model independent, charge symmetry can be used to indirectly extract astrophysically relevant proton capture reactions on proton-rich nuclei based on information on stable isotopes. The assumption has been tested for light nuclei within the microscopic cluster model. In this work we explore the Hamiltonian independence of the ratio between asymptotic normalization coefficients of mirror states when deformation and core excitation is introduced in the system. For this purpose we consider a phenomenological rotor + N model where the valence nucleon is subject to a deformed mean field and the core is allowed to excite. We apply the model to 8Li/8B, 13C/13N, 17O/17F, 23Ne/23Al, and 27Mg/27P. Our results show that for most studied cases, the ratio between asymptotic normalization coefficients of mirror states is independent of the strength and multipolarity of the couplings induced. The exception is for cases in which there is an s-wave coupled to the ground state of the core, the proton system is loosely bound, and the states have large admixture with other configurations. We discuss the implications of our results for novae.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PR

Energy dependence of non-local potentials

Recently a variety of studies have shown the importance of including non-locality in the description of reactions. The goal of this work is to revisit the phenomenological approach to determining non-local optical potentials from elastic scattering. We perform a $\chi^2$ analysis of neutron elastic scattering data off $^{40}$Ca, $^{90}$Zr and $^{208}$Pb at energies $E \approx 5-40$ MeV, assuming a Perey and Buck or Tian, Pang, and Ma non-local form for the optical potential. We introduce energy and asymmetry dependencies in the imaginary part of the potential and refit the data to obtain a global parameterization. Independently of the starting point in the minimization procedure, an energy dependence in the imaginary depth is required for a good description of the data across the included energy range. We present two parameterizations, both of which represent an improvement over the original potentials for the fitted nuclei as well as for other nuclei not included in our fit. Our results show that, even when including the standard Gaussian non-locality in optical potentials, a significant energy dependence is required to describe elastic-scattering data.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, accepted by Phys. Rev. C Rapid Communicatio