Astrophysics from data analysis of spherical gravitational wave detectors

The direct detection of gravitational waves will provide valuable astrophysical information about many celestial objects. Also, it will be an important test to general relativity and other theories of gravitation. The gravitational wave detector SCHENBERG has recently undergone its first test run. It is expected to have its first scientific run soon. In this work the data analysis system of this spherical, resonant mass detector is tested through the simulation of the detection of gravitational waves generated during the inspiralling phase of a binary system. It is shown from the simulated data that it is not necessary to have all six transducers operational in order to determine the source's direction and the wave's amplitudes.Comment: 8 pages and 3 figure

Produtividade e composição bromatológica de híbridos de sorgo cultivados em sistema agrossilvipastoril no semiárido.

Resumo: O uso de sistema integrados de produção e conservação de forragens são estratégias para aumentar a oferta de forragem no semiárido. O sorgo é uma planta indicada para a produção de silagem em regiões secas por apresentar tolerância ao estresse hídrico e qualidade nutricional. Objetivou-se avaliar a produtividade e qualidade bromatológica de 25 híbridos de sorgo cultivados em sistema agrossilvipastoril no Ceará. Foram determinados os teores de matéria seca, protéina, cinzas, extrato etéreo, fibra em detergente ácido e neutro, lignina, hemicelulose e celulose. Houve diferença entre os híbridos, com destaque para H22 que apresentou a melhor produtividade e a melhor qualidade nutricional. [Productivity and Bromatological composition of sorghum hybrids grown in agrosylvopastoral system in semiarid]. Abstract: The use of forage integrated system production and conservation are important strategies to increase animal food supply in semiarid. Sorghum is indicated to silage production in the dry areas due to its tolerance to water stress and nutritional quality. The aimed of this research was to evaluate the productivity and chemical quality of 25 sorghum hybrids grown in an agrosilvopastoral system in Ceará. It was determinated dry matter, protein, ash, ether extract, neutral and acid detergent fiber, lignin, hemicellulose and cellulose contents. There were differences among the hybrids, where H22 showed the best productivity and nutritional quality

Can lightning be a noise source for a spherical gravitational wave antenna?

The detection of gravitational waves is a very active research field at the moment. In Brazil the gravitational wave detector is called Mario SCHENBERG. Due to its high sensitivity it is necessary to model mathematically all known noise sources so that digital filters can be developed that maximize the signal-to-noise ratio. One of the noise sources that must be considered are the disturbances caused by electromagnetic pulses due to lightning close to the experiment. Such disturbances may influence the vibrations of the antenna's normal modes and mask possible gravitational wave signals. In this work we model the interaction between lightning and SCHENBERG antenna and calculate the intensity of the noise due to a close lightning stroke in the detected signal. We find that the noise generated does not disturb the experiment significantly.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Measurement of interaction energy near a Feshbach resonance in a 6Li Fermi gas

We investigate the strongly interacting regime in an optically trapped $^6$Li Fermi mixture near a Feshbach resonance. The resonance is found at $800(40)$G in good agreement with theory. Anisotropic expansion of the gas is interpreted by collisional hydrodynamics. We observe an unexpected and large shift ($80$G) between the resonance peak and both the maximum of atom loss and the change of sign of the interaction energy.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Geographical variation in the risk of H7N9 human infections in China: Implications for risk-based surveillance

The influenza A (H7N9) subtype remains a public health problem in China affecting individuals in contact with live poultry, particularly at live bird markets. Despite enhanced surveillance and biosecurity at LBMs H7N9 viruses are now more widespread in China. This study aims to quantify the temporal relationship between poultry surveillance results and the onset of human H7N9 infections during 2013–2017 and to estimate risk factors associated with geographical risk of H7N9 human infections in counties in Southeast China. Our results suggest that poultry surveillance data can potentially be used as early warning indicators for human H7N9 notifications. Furthermore, we found that human H7N9 incidence at county-level was significantly associated with the presence of wholesale LBMs, the density of retail LBMs, the presence of poultry virological positives, poultry movements from high-risk areas, as well as chicken population density and human population density. The results of this study can influence the current AI H7N9 control program by supporting the integration of poultry surveillance data with human H7N9 notifications as an early warning of the timing and areas at risk for human infection. The findings also highlight areas in China where monitoring of poultry movement and poultry infections could be prioritized

Interstellar Polarization Survey II: General Interstellar Medium

Magnetic fields permeate the entire Galaxy and are essential to, for example, the regulation of several stages of the star formation process and cosmic ray transportation. Unraveling its properties, such as intensity and topology, is an observational challenge that requires combining different and complementary techniques. The polarization of starlight due to the absorption by field-aligned non-spherical dust grains provides a unique source of information about the interstellar magnetic field in the optical band. This work introduces a first analysis of a new catalog of optical observations of linearly polarized starlight in the diffuse interstellar medium (ISM), the Interstellar Polarization Survey, General ISM (IPS-GI). We used data from the IPS-GI, focusing on 38 fields sampling lines of sight in the diffuse medium. The fields are about 0.3$^{\circ}$ by 0.3$^{\circ}$ in size and each of them contains $\sim1000$ stars on average. The IPS-GI catalog has polarimetric measurements of over 40000 stars, over 18000 of which have ${P}/\sigma_{P} > 5$. We added distances and other parameters from auxiliary catalogs to over 36000 of these stars. We analyzed parameter distributions and correlations between parameters of a high-quality subsample of 10516 stars (i.e. $\sim275$ stars per field). As expected, the degree of polarization tends to increase with the extinction, producing higher values of polarization at greater distances or at lower absolute Galactic latitudes. Furthermore, we find evidence for a large-scale ordered Galactic magnetic field.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in A

Qualidade sensorial da carne de cordeiros Morada Nova com ou sem suplementação, abatidos em diferentes idades.

Resumo: Objetivou-se caracterizar a carne de cordeiros Morada Nova abatidos em diferentes idades e submetidos ou não a suplementação. Foram utilizados 32 cordeiros, machos, não castrados, abatidos aos 60, 78, 106 e 134 dias, com grupo de 8 cordeiros em cada abate, num esquema fatorial 4x2. Avaliaram-se os parâmetros de dureza, suculência, sabor, cor, aroma e aceitação global, para tanto foi utilizado um painel treinado com 13 pessoas. A suplementação não modificou as características sensoriais, enquanto a idade ao abate não altera dureza, suculência e aceitação global. O sabor é intensificado com o aumento da idade de abate e a cor diminui com o aumento da idade, mas só foi diferente mesmo aos 60 e 134 dias, os outros são iguais. O aroma aos 60 dias é menos intenso que o restante. [Sensory quality of meat from lambs Morada Nova with or without supplementation, slaughtered in different ages]. Abstract: bjective of characterizing the meat from lambs Morada Nova slaughtered in different ages and submitted or no supplementation. We used 32 uncastrated males, lambs slaughtered at 60, 78, 106 and 134 days, with a group of 8 lambs in each slaughter, a factorial 4 x 2. We evaluated the parameters of hardness, juiciness, taste, colour, aroma and global acceptance, for both used a trained panel with 13 people. No supplementation modified sensory characteristics, while the age at slaughter does not change hardness, juiciness and global acceptance. The flavor is intensified with increasing age of slaughter and the color decreases with increasing age, but was only really different to 60 and 134 days, others are equal. The aroma to 60 days is less intense than the rest

Evidence of exactness of the mean field theory in the nonextensive regime of long-range spin models

The q-state Potts model with long-range interactions that decay as 1/r^alpha subjected to an uniform magnetic field on d-dimensional lattices is analized for different values of q in the nonextensive regime (alpha between 0 and d). We also consider the two dimensional antiferromagnetic Ising model with the same type of interactions. The mean field solution and Monte Carlo calculations for the equations of state for these models are compared. We show that, using a derived scaling which properly describes the nonextensive thermodynamic behaviour, both types of calculations show an excellent agreement in all the cases here considered, except for alpha=d. These results allow us to extend to nonextensive magnetic models a previous conjecture which states that the mean field theory is exact for the Ising one.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Universal Critical Behavior of Aperiodic Ferromagnetic Models

We investigate the effects of geometric fluctuations, associated with aperiodic exchange interactions, on the critical behavior of $q$-state ferromagnetic Potts models on generalized diamond hierarchical lattices. For layered exchange interactions according to some two-letter substitutional sequences, and irrelevant geometric fluctuations, the exact recursion relations in parameter space display a non-trivial diagonal fixed point that governs the universal critical behavior. For relevant fluctuations, this fixed point becomes fully unstable, and we show the apperance of a two-cycle which is associated with a novel critical behavior. We use scaling arguments to calculate the critical exponent $\alpha$ of the specific heat, which turns out to be different from the value for the uniform case. We check the scaling predictions by a direct numerical analysis of the singularity of the thermodynamic free-energy. The agreement between scaling and direct calculations is excellent for stronger singularities (large values of $q$). The critical exponents do not depend on the strengths of the exchange interactions.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure (included), RevTeX, submitted to Phys. Rev. E as a Rapid Communicatio