Incorporating the water footprint and virtual water into policy: reflections from the Mancha Occidental Region, Spain

Water resource management is often a controversial issue in semiarid regions. Most water resources experts admit that water conflicts are not caused by the physical water scarcity but they are mainly due to inadequate water management. The virtual water concept (the volume of water used in the production of a commodity, good or service) together with the water footprint (indicator of water consumption that looks at both direct and indirect water use of a consumer or producer), links a large range of sectors and issues, thus providing a potentially appropriate framework to support more optimal water management practices by informing production and trade decisions. This paper provides an analysis of these two concepts within the context of the Mancha Occidental region, Spain, exploring the hydrological and economic aspects of agricultural production. In doing so, this work not only distinguishes between green and blue water but also between surface and groundwater. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of the results, as well as their potential limitations from the policy standpoint

First-Principles Study of Substitutional Metal Impurities in Graphene: Structural, Electronic and Magnetic Properties

We present a theoretical study using density functional calculations of the structural, electronic and magnetic properties of 3d transition metal, noble metal and Zn atoms interacting with carbon monovacancies in graphene. We pay special attention to the electronic and magnetic properties of these substitutional impurities and found that they can be fully understood using a simple model based on the hybridization between the states of the metal atom, particularly the d shell, and the defect levels associated with an unreconstructed D3h carbon vacancy. We identify three different regimes associated with the occupation of different carbon-metal hybridized electronic levels: (i) bonding states are completely filled for Sc and Ti, and these impurities are non-magnetic; (ii) the non-bonding d shell is partially occupied for V, Cr and Mn and, correspondingly, these impurties present large and localized spin moments; (iii) antibonding states with increasing carbon character are progressively filled for Co, Ni, the noble metals and Zn. The spin moments of these impurities oscillate between 0 and 1 Bohr magnetons and are increasingly delocalized. The substitutional Zn suffers a Jahn-Teller-like distortion from the C3v symmetry and, as a consequence, has a zero spin moment. Fe occupies a distinct position at the border between regimes (ii) and (iii) and shows a more complex behavior: while is non-magnetic at the level of GGA calculations, its spin moment can be switched on using GGA+U calculations with moderate values of the U parameter.Comment: 13 figures, 4 tables. Submitted to Phys. Rev. B on September 26th, 200

How to capitalise on mobility, proximity and motion analytics to support formal and informal education?

© 2017, CEUR-WS. All rights reserved. Learning Analytics and similar data-intensive approaches aimed at understanding and/or supporting learning have mostly focused on the analysis of students' data automatically captured by personal computers or, more recently, mobile devices. Thus, most student behavioural data are limited to the interactions between students and particular learning applications. However, learning can also occur beyond these interface interactions, for instance while students interact face-to-face with other students or their teachers. Alternatively, some learning tasks may require students to interact with non-digital physical tools, to use the physical space, or to learn in different ways that cannot be mediated by traditional user interfaces (e.g. motor and/or audio learning). The key questions here are: why are we neglecting these kinds of learning activities? How can we provide automated support or feedback to students during these activities? Can we find useful patterns of activity in these physical settings as we have been doing with computer-mediated settings? This position paper is aimed at motivating discussion through a series of questions that can justify the importance of designing technological innovations for physical learning settings where mobility, proximity and motion are tracked, just as digital interactions have been so far

Crescimento e acúmulo de nutrientes em plantas de Shorgum bicolor L Moench sob irrigação com águas de diferentes concentrações salinas.

: Em muitas áreas irrigadas do mundo, o suprimento de água de boa qualidade pode não ser suficiente para a manutenção da agricultura irrigada, ou seu custo ser elevado, buscando-se alternativas com o uso de água do lençol freático ou mesmo de drenagem. Todavia, geralmente, essas águas não são de boa qualidade e uma das alternativas para viabilizar seu uso é misturá-las com água de baixa concentração de sais. Assim, o objetivo desse trabalho foi avaliar o desenvolvimento inicial e o acúmulo de sais pelo Shorgum bicolor L Moench, irrigado com água de diferentes concentrações salinas originadas da mistura de águas de qualidade diferentes. O experimento foi realizado em condições de casa de vegetação e os tratamentos foram constituídos da aplicação continuada de água de cacimba, do Rio São Francisco e de diferentes misturas entre elas. As unidades experimentais foram constituídas de sacolas plásticas com capacidade para 1,5 dm-3 de solo e o sorgo utilizado como planta indicadora. Os tratamentos foram dispostos em delineamento experimental inteiramente casualizado, com quatro repetições. O aumento da CEa e da RAS da água de irrigação influenciou no crescimento das plantas, reduzindo a produção de matéria fresca e seca da parte aérea, assim como na altura das plantas e número de folhas. O Na+ foi o elemento mais absorvido pela planta, tendo seu teor e acúmulo na matéria aumentado de forma linear e quadrática, respectivamente, em função da concentração salina da água de rrigação. Palavras-chave: RAS, CE, irrigação, sorg

The NUHM2 after LHC Run 1

We make a frequentist analysis of the parameter space of the NUHM2, in which the soft supersymmetry (SUSY)-breaking contributions to the masses of the two Higgs multiplets, $m^2_{H_{u,d}}$, vary independently from the universal soft SUSY-breaking contributions $m^2_0$ to the masses of squarks and sleptons. Our analysis uses the MultiNest sampling algorithm with over $4 \times 10^8$ points to sample the NUHM2 parameter space. It includes the ATLAS and CMS Higgs mass measurements as well as their searches for supersymmetric jets + MET signals using the full LHC Run~1 data, the measurements of $B_s \to \mu^+ \mu^-$ by LHCb and CMS together with other B-physics observables, electroweak precision observables and the XENON100 and LUX searches for spin-independent dark matter scattering. We find that the preferred regions of the NUHM2 parameter space have negative SUSY-breaking scalar masses squared for squarks and sleptons, $m_0^2 < 0$, as well as $m^2_{H_u} < m^2_{H_d} < 0$. The tension present in the CMSSM and NUHM1 between the supersymmetric interpretation of $g_\mu - 2$ and the absence to date of SUSY at the LHC is not significantly alleviated in the NUHM2. We find that the minimum $\chi^2 = 32.5$ with 21 degrees of freedom (dof) in the NUHM2, to be compared with $\chi^2/{\rm dof} = 35.0/23$ in the CMSSM, and $\chi^2/{\rm dof} = 32.7/22$ in the NUHM1. We find that the one-dimensional likelihood functions for sparticle masses and other observables are similar to those found previously in the CMSSM and NUHM1.Comment: 20 pages latex, 13 figure

The Mediterranean diet protects against waist circumference enlargement in 12Ala carriers for the PPARgamma gene: 2 years' follow-up of 774 subjects at high cardiovascular risk.

The PPARgamma gene regulates insulin sensitivity and adipogenesis. The Pro12Ala polymorphism of this gene has been related to fat accumulation. Our aim was to analyse the effects of a 2-year nutritional intervention with Mediterranean-style diets on adiposity in high-cardiovascular risk patients depending on the Pro12Ala polymorphism of the PPARgamma gene. The population consisted of a substudy (774 high-risk subjects aged 55-80 years) of the Prevención con Dieta Mediterránea (PREDIMED) randomised trial aimed at assessing the effect of the Mediterranean diet for CVD prevention. There were three nutritional intervention groups: two of them of a Mediterranean-style diet and the third was a control group advised to follow a conventional low-fat diet. All the participants were genotyped by PCR-restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). The results showed that carriers of the 12Ala allele allocated to the control group had a statistically significant higher change in waist circumference (adjusted difference coefficient = 2.37 cm; P = 0.014) compared with wild-type subjects after 2 years of nutritional intervention. This adverse effect was not observed among 12Ala carriers allocated to both Mediterranean diet groups. In diabetic patients a statistically significant interaction between Mediterranean diet and the 12Ala allele regarding waist circumference change was observed ( - 5.85 cm; P = 0.003). In conclusion, the Mediterranean diet seems to be able to reduce waist circumference in a high-cardiovascular risk population, reversing the negative effect that the 12Ala allele carriers of the PPARgamma gene appeared to have. The beneficial effect of this dietary pattern seems to be higher among type 2 diabetic subjects

A tough woman around tender men: Dilma Rousseff, gendered double bind, and misogynistic backlash

Dilma Rousseff\u27s presidency ended in controversial form. The first woman elected to the position in Brazil, Rousseff\u27s 2016 impeachment was seen as a coup by her supporters and as a necessary step for democracy by her detractors. With the Brazilian economy facing its worst recession in history and the Car Wash corruption scandal ravaging the political class, critics continually raised questions about Rousseff\u27s leadership style and abilities. This article analyzes how this criticism in part can be attributed to gendered subjective understandings of preferred leadership traits. Using a thematic analysis of interviews with political actors in five different Brazilian states conducted in 2017 and 2018, we demonstrate that gender stereotypes and sexism fueled criticisms about women\u27s political leadership. While Rousseff\u27s presidency was riddled with problems, the president\u27s leadership style and abilities were scrutinized in distinct gendered ways, indicating a gendered double bind and a backlash against women in politics

Supersymmetric Dark Matter after LHC Run 1

Different mechanisms operate in various regions of the MSSM parameter space to bring the relic density of the lightest neutralino, neutralino_1, assumed here to be the LSP and thus the Dark Matter (DM) particle, into the range allowed by astrophysics and cosmology. These mechanisms include coannihilation with some nearly-degenerate next-to-lightest supersymmetric particle (NLSP) such as the lighter stau (stau_1), stop (stop_1) or chargino (chargino_1), resonant annihilation via direct-channel heavy Higgs bosons H/A, the light Higgs boson h or the Z boson, and enhanced annihilation via a larger Higgsino component of the LSP in the focus-point region. These mechanisms typically select lower-dimensional subspaces in MSSM scenarios such as the CMSSM, NUHM1, NUHM2 and pMSSM10. We analyze how future LHC and direct DM searches can complement each other in the exploration of the different DM mechanisms within these scenarios. We find that the stau_1 coannihilation regions of the CMSSM, NUHM1, NUHM2 can largely be explored at the LHC via searches for missing E_T events and long-lived charged particles, whereas their H/A funnel, focus-point and chargino_1 coannihilation regions can largely be explored by the LZ and Darwin DM direct detection experiments. We find that the dominant DM mechanism in our pMSSM10 analysis is chargino_1 coannihilation: {parts of its parameter space can be explored by the LHC, and a larger portion by future direct DM searches.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figure