Cryomorphological topographies in the study of ice caves

Producción CientíficaThe current interest in ice caves requires that their varied manifestations be known as accurately as possible in view of their responses to a global change and also to their great potential as paleoenvironmental witnesses. This phenomenon has been known about for a long time but is still scarcely studied from the point of view of its cryological values and the evolution and distribution of many of their morphologies. For this, the development of cryomorphological topographies from traditional techniques to geodetic surveys with different tools, including terrestrial laser scanning, is one of the most current ways to characterize and quantify this type of cryospheric phenomena. It represents a new kind of periglacial cartography whose use is feasible in spite of the difficulties these environments present.Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (project CGL2015-68144-R

Effect of ultrasonication on microbial quality, colour and ascorbic acid of passion-fruit juice during storage

Passion fruit juice (PFJ) has a delicate flavour very susceptible to thermal degradation. This study pursued to test the effect of sonication as non-thermal preservation method on some quality parameters of PFJ. The effect of ultrasound (20 kHz, 263 W, 89.25 µm) on the indigenous microflora, colour and ascorbic acid content of PFJ was studied. Firstly, the kinetic of microbial inactivation was determined for aerobic mesophilic counts and yeasts counts. Data was fitted to Weibull model, and a treatment time of 8 min was selected for stability studies. To this, untreated and sonicated juice was stored at 4 and 10 ºC up to 10 days and microbial quality, instrumental colour, pH and ascorbic acid content were evaluated. In general, ultrasound kept juice microbiologically stable for up to 10 days at 4 ºC without markedly affecting other parameters evaluated. Ultrasound seems suitable to stabilize microbiologically PFJ.Ciencias de la Alimentació

Equivariant K-theory of compact Lie group actions with maximal rank isotropy

Let G denote a compact connected Lie group with torsion-free fundamental group acting on a compact space X such that all the isotropy subgroups are connected subgroups of maximal rank. Let $T\subset G$ be a maximal torus with Weyl group W. If the fixed-point set $X^T$ has the homotopy type of a finite W-CW complex, we prove that the rationalized complex equivariant K-theory of X is a free module over the representation ring of G. Given additional conditions on the W-action on the fixed-point set $X^T$ we show that the equivariant K-theory of X is free over R(G). We use this to provide computations for a number of examples, including the ordered n-tuples of commuting elements in G with the conjugation action.Comment: Accepted for publication by the Journal of Topolog

Growing a local organic movement: The Mexican Network of Organic Markets

Over the past several years, in response to the rapid growth in global demand for organic goods, the amount of organic production in Mexico has increased dramatically. Indeed, while Mexican agriculture as a whole has suffered severe crises, the organic sector has boomed, and today more than 83 000 producers farm organically on over 300 000 hectares of land. Of these producers, 98 percent are small scale, farming an average of three hectares, and over 50 percent are indigenous people. Unfortunately, as is the case in many developing countries, the vast majority of organic production remains focused on export crops – particularly coffee, but also cocoa, coconut, and other fruit and vegetables – with 85 percent of organic goods being sent to foreign markets. From an environmental point of view, exportoriented production is extremely damaging because of the amounts of fossil fuels required for transportation. In addition, packaging for export consumes precious resources and creates mountains of waste. Moreover, an export-oriented focus constrains the degree to which domestic markets are developed, and it leaves Mexican producers highly vulnerable to international market fluctuations

Exponential convergence to equilibrium in cellular automata asymptotically emulating identity

We consider the problem of finding the density of 1's in a configuration obtained by $n$ iterations of a given cellular automaton (CA) rule, starting from disordered initial condition. While this problems is intractable in full generality for a general CA rule, we argue that for some sufficiently simple classes of rules it is possible to express the density in terms of elementary functions. Rules asymptotically emulating identity are one example of such a class, and density formulae have been previously obtained for several of them. We show how to obtain formulae for density for two further rules in this class, 160 and 168, and postulate likely expression for density for eight other rules. Our results are valid for arbitrary initial density. Finally, we conjecture that the density of 1's for CA rules asymptotically emulating identity always approaches the equilibrium point exponentially fast.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

The packing number of the double vertex graph of the path graph

Neil Sloane showed that the problem of determine the maximum size of a binary code of constant weight 2 that can correct a single adjacent transposition is equivalent to finding the packing number of a certain graph. In this paper we solve this open problem by finding the packing number of the double vertex graph (2-token graph) of a path graph. This double vertex graph is isomorphic to the Sloane's graph. Our solution implies a conjecture of Rob Pratt about the ordinary generating function of sequence A085680.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures. V2: 22 pages, more figures added. V3. minor corrections based on referee's comments. One figure corrected. The title "On an error correcting code problem" has been change