8,182 research outputs found
Interest of site-specific pollution control policies
Owing to increasing environmental concerns the current trend is to bend technical production systems in order to adapt them to the specific characteristics of the milieu and diversify them. Inherent to such dynamics is the issue of how to design the accompanying environmental policies. Theoretically, spatially targeted environmental policies are considered optimal, since economic agents tune their efforts according to the sensitivity of the milieu where they operate. But, according to empirical analyses, this advantage is undermined by the high cost of implementation, monitoring and enforcement. This paper outlines the conditions required for site-specific policies to be effective at least cost. Our starting point is the nitrate pollution of water from agriculture, which varies according to climate, soil type and agricultural production system. Farm management practices enabling to reduce pollution depend on this variability. An interdisciplinary study of the efficiency of differentiating the way this pollution is regulated was carried out on two sites in France. It focussed on assessing the importance of spatial variability in physical parameters and in private and social costs.NONPOINT POLLUTION; SITE SPECIFIC TECHNOLOGY; SITE SPECIFIC ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY; ABATEMENT COST; TRANSACTION COST
Bimodality as a signal of Liquid-Gas phase transition in nuclei?
We use the HIPSE (Heavy-Ion Phase-Space Exploration) Model to discuss the
origin of the bimodality in charge asymmetry observed in nuclear reactions
around the Fermi energy. We show that it may be related to the important
angular momentum (spin) transferred into the quasi-projectile before secondary
decay. As the spin overcomes the critical value, a sudden opening of decay
channels is induced and leads to a bimodal distribution for the charge
asymmetry. In the model, it is not assigned to a liquid-gas phase transition
but to specific instabilities in nuclei with high spin. Therefore, we propose
to use these reactions to study instabilities in rotating nuclear droplets.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures Accepted to PR
High Dimensional Classification with combined Adaptive Sparse PLS and Logistic Regression
Motivation: The high dimensionality of genomic data calls for the development
of specific classification methodologies, especially to prevent over-optimistic
predictions. This challenge can be tackled by compression and variable
selection, which combined constitute a powerful framework for classification,
as well as data visualization and interpretation. However, current proposed
combinations lead to instable and non convergent methods due to inappropriate
computational frameworks. We hereby propose a stable and convergent approach
for classification in high dimensional based on sparse Partial Least Squares
(sparse PLS). Results: We start by proposing a new solution for the sparse PLS
problem that is based on proximal operators for the case of univariate
responses. Then we develop an adaptive version of the sparse PLS for
classification, which combines iterative optimization of logistic regression
and sparse PLS to ensure convergence and stability. Our results are confirmed
on synthetic and experimental data. In particular we show how crucial
convergence and stability can be when cross-validation is involved for
calibration purposes. Using gene expression data we explore the prediction of
breast cancer relapse. We also propose a multicategorial version of our method
on the prediction of cell-types based on single-cell expression data.
Availability: Our approach is implemented in the plsgenomics R-package.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, 4 tables + Supplementary Materials 8 pages, 3
figures, 10 table
Chiral two-dimensional electron gas in a periodic magnetic field
We study the energy spectrum and electronic properties of two-dimensional
electron gas in a periodic magnetic field of zero average with a symmetry of
triangular lattice. We demonstrate how the structure of electron energy bands
can be changed with the variation of the field strength, so that we can start
from nearly free electron gas and then transform it continuously to a system of
essentially localized chiral electron states. We find that the electrons near
some minima of the effective potential are responsible for occurrence of
dissipationless persistent currents creating a lattice of current contours. The
topological properties of the electron energy bands are also varied with the
intensity of periodic field. We calculated the topological Chern numbers of
several lower energy bands as a function of the field. The corresponding Hall
conductivity is nonzero and, when the Fermi level lies in the gap, it is
quantized.Comment: 10 pages;9 figures;42 reference
Orbital-quenching-induced magnetism in Ba_2NaOsO_6
The double perovskite \bnoo with heptavalent Os () is observed to remain
in the ideal cubic structure ({\it i.e.} without orbital ordering) despite
single occupation of the orbitals, even in the ferromagnetically
ordered phase below 6.8 K. Analysis based on the {\it ab initio} dispersion
expressed in terms of an Os -based Wannier function picture, spin-orbit
coupling, Hund's coupling, and strong Coulomb repulsion shows that the magnetic
OsO cluster is near a moment-less condition due to spin and orbital
compensation. Quenching (hybridization) then drives the emergence of the small
moment. This compensation, unprecedented in transition metals, arises in a
unified picture that accounts for the observed Mott insulating behavior.Comment: in press at Europhysics Letter
Public Participation in Water Planning in the Ebro River Basin (Spain) and Tucson Basin (U.S., Arizona) : Impact on Water Policy and Adaptive Capacity Building
The benefits of public participation in water management are recognized by governments, scholars, and stakeholders. These benefits, however, do not result from all engagement endeavors. This leads to the question: What are the determinants for effective public participation? Given a list of criteria for achieving the transformational capacity of participation, we analyze the benefits (including the influence on public policies) gained through public participation and the determinant factors for obtaining these benefits in the Ebro River Basin in Spain and in the Tucson Basin in Arizona (U.S.). Furthermore, and considering that droughts and floods are major water management challenges in both case studies, we focus on the potential of participation to build adaptive capacity. Our analysis of these case studies concludes that influence on public policies is determined more by the context of the participatory process, i.e., legal framework, political leadership, and social awareness, whereas influence on adaptive capacity building depends more on the characteristics of the participatory process, particularly the existence of active on-site consultation and deliberation
Effects of live-bait shrimp trawling on seagrass beds and fish bycatch in Tampa Bay, Florida
The use of live shrimp for bait in
recreational fishing has resulted in
a controversial fishery for shrimp in
Florida. In this fishery, night collections
are conducted over seagrass
beds with roller beam trawls to capture
live shrimp, primarily pink
shrimp, Penaeus duorarum. These
shrimp are culled from the catch on
sorting tables and placed in onboard
aerated “live” wells. Beds of
turtlegrass, Thalassia testudinum,
a species that has highest growth
rates and biomass during summer
and lowest during the winter (Fonseca
et al., 1996) are predominant
areas for live-bait shrimp trawling
(Tabb and Kenny, 1969).
Our study objectives were 1) to
determine effects of a roller beam
trawl on turtlegrass biomass and
morphometrics during intensive
(up to 18 trawls over a turtlegrass
bed), short-term (3-hour duration)
use and 2) to examine the mortality
of bycatch finfish following capture
by a trawl
Out of equilibrium transport through an Anderson impurity: Probing scaling laws within the equation of motion approach
We study non-equilibrium electron transport through a quantum impurity
coupled to metallic leads using the equation of motion technique at finite
temperature T. Assuming that the interactions are taking place solely in the
impurity and focusing in the infinite Hubbard limit, we compute the out of
equilibrium density of states and the differential conductance G_2(T,V) to test
several scaling laws. We find that G_2(T,V)/G_2(T,0) is a universal function of
both eV/T_K and T/T_K, being T_K the Kondo temperature. The effect of an in
plane magnetic field on the splitting of the zero bias anomaly in the
differential conductance is also analyzed. For a Zeeman splitting \Delta, the
computed differential conductance peak splitting depends only on \Delta/T_K,
and for large fields approaches the value of 2\Delta . Besides the traditional
two leads setup, we also consider other configurations that mimics recent
experiments, namely, an impurity embedded in a mesoscopic wire and the presence
of a third weakly coupled lead. In these cases, a double peak structure of the
Kondo resonance is clearly obtained in the differential conductance while the
amplitude of the highest peak is shown to decrease as \ln(eV/T_K). Several
features of these results are in qualitative agreement with recent experimental
observations reported on quantum dots.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure
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