Dirty Laundry in Manila: Comparing Resource Consumption Practices for Individual and Shared Laundering

© 2017 by Yale University Changing lifestyles in developing and emerging economies entail a shift in technology use, everyday practices, and resource consumption. It is important to understand the sustainability consequences of these changes and the potential for policy to guide practices toward more sustainable lifestyles. In this study, we investigate laundry practices in the City of Manila, the Philippines, and compare the resources consumed in three different modes of laundering. We examine (1) traditional washing by hand, (2) washing by machine at home, and (3) using a laundry service. In addition to comparing the consumption of water, energy, and detergents, we also examine the social aspects of laundering using the lens of social practice theory. We use empirical data gathered in interviews with laundry service operators and people laundering at home to undertake qualitative and quantitative analyses of laundry practices and resource consumption. We find that hand washing uses the least water and energy, but large quantities of detergents. Machine washing and laundry services are comparable for water consumption, but energy use is much higher for services as they use dryers. Social changes, such as an increase in work available for women and the nature of future housing, are likely to influence the dominance of either shared or individual laundering methods. These findings illustrate the social complexity of transitions to product-service systems and the interdependencies between their social and environmental impacts

Dynamics of Entanglement Transfer Through Multipartite Dissipative Systems

We study the dynamics of entanglement transfer in a system composed of two initially correlated three-level atoms, each located in a cavity interacting with its own reservoir. Instead of tracing out reservoir modes to describe the dynamics using the master equation approach, we consider explicitly the dynamics of the reservoirs. In this situation, we show that the entanglement is completely transferred from atoms to reservoirs. Although the cavities mediate this entanglement transfer, we show that under certain conditions, no entanglement is found in cavities throughout the dynamics. Considering the entanglement dynamics of interacting and non-interacting bipartite subsystems, we found time windows where the entanglement can only flow through interacting subsystems, depending on the system parameters.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figures, publishe in Physical Review

Salmonella enterica: a review or the trilogy agent, host and environment and its importance in Chile

Indexación: Web of Science; Scopus; Scielo.Salmonella enterica es uno de los principales patógenos transmitidos por los alimentos en el mundo, siendo la primera causa de brotes de intoxicación alimentaria en Chile. A pesar de todos los esfuerzos de control y prevención desplegados, la incidencia en las personas se ha mantenido alta, por lo que diversos factores podrían estar influenciando el comportamiento epidemiológico de esta infección. El objetivo de esta revisión es describir factores referidos tanto al agente biológico, al hospedero humano y al medio ambiente, que podrían tener mayor trascendencia en Chile. De esta forma, se infieren ámbitos prioritarios para la investigación de S. enterica, que permitan entender su dispersión en la naturaleza y su éxito como patógeno de un amplio rango de hospederos. A futuro, el mayor conocimiento de estos determinantes facilitará la implementación de estrategias de bioseguridad y vigilancia para la prevención de la enfermedad en las personas y en los animales.Salmonella enterica is a major foodborne pathogen worldwide, being the main cause of outbreaks by food consumption in Chile. Despite all efforts deployed for control and prevention, the high incidence in people still persists, with several factors that could be influencing the epidemiological behavior of this infection. The objective of this review is to identify these factors belonging to the biological agent, the human host and the environment, which probably have a greater importance in Chile. Thus, priority areas for research of S. enterica are inferred, which hopefully will help to understand its spread in nature and its success as a wide host range pathogen. In the future, increased understanding of these determinants will facilitate the implementation of biosecurity and surveillance strategies for the prevention of disease in people and animals.http://ref.scielo.org/kz75k

Entanglement of formation for a class of (2⊗d)(2\otimes d)-dimensional systems

Currently the entanglement of formation can be calculated analytically for mixed states in a $(2\otimes2)$-dimensional Hilbert space. For states in higher dimensional Hilbert space a closed formula for quantifying entanglement does not exist. In this regard only entanglement bounds has been found for estimating it. In this work, we find an analytical expression for evaluating the entanglement of formation for bipartite ($2\otimes d$)-dimensional mixed states.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Submitted for publicatio

Abrupt Changes in the Dynamics of Quantum Disentanglement

Entanglement evolution in high dimensional bipartite systems under dissipation is studied. Discontinuities for the time derivative of the lower bound of entanglement of formation is found depending on the initial conditions for entangled states. This abrupt changes along the evolution appears as precursors of entanglement sudden death.Comment: 4 pages and 6 figures, submitted for publicatio

Entanglement properties in the Inhomogeneous Tavis-Cummings model

In this work we study the properties of the atomic entanglement in the eigenstates spectrum of the inhomogeneous Tavis-Cummings Model. The inhomogeneity is present in the coupling among the atoms with quantum electromagnetic field. We calculate analytical expressions for the concurrence and we found that this exhibits a strong dependence on the inhomogeneity.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Global projection of lead-zinc supply from known resources

© 2018 by the authors. Lead and zinc are used extensively in the construction and automotive industries, and require sustainable supply. In order to understand the future availability of lead and zinc, we have projected global supplies on a country-by-country basis from a detailed global assessment of mineral resources for 2013. The model GeRS-DeMo was used to create projections of lead and zinc production from ores, as well as recycling for lead. Our modelling suggests that lead and zinc production from known resources is set to peak within 15 years (lead 2025, zinc 2031). For lead, the total supply declines relatively slowly post peak due to recycling. If additional resources are found, these peaks would shift further into the future. These results suggest that lead and zinc consumers will need to plan for the future, potentially by: seeking alternative supplies (e.g., mine tailings, smelter/refinery slags); obtaining additional value from critical metals contained in lead-zinc ore deposits to counter lower grade ores; identifying potential substitutes; redesigning their products; or by contributing to the development of recycling industries

Analog simulator of integro-differential equations with classical memristors

An analog computer makes use of continuously changeable quantities of a system, such as its electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic properties, to solve a given problem. While these devices are usually computationally more powerful than their digital counterparts, they suffer from analog noise which does not allow for error control. We will focus on analog computers based on active electrical networks comprised of resistors, capacitors, and operational amplifiers which are capable of simulating any linear ordinary differential equation. However, the class of nonlinear dynamics they can solve is limited. In this work, by adding memristors to the electrical network, we show that the analog computer can simulate a large variety of linear and nonlinear integro-differential equations by carefully choosing the conductance and the dynamics of the memristor state variable. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that circuits based on memristors are proposed for simulations. We study the performance of these analog computers by simulating integro-differential models related to fluid dynamics, nonlinear Volterra equations for population growth, and quantum models describing non-Markovian memory effects, among others. Finally, we perform stability tests by considering imperfect analog components, obtaining robust solutions with up to $13\%$ relative error for relevant timescales