Forward-backward rapidity correlations in relativistic heavy ion collisions : torqued fireball

Statistical fluctuations in the transverse distribution of sources in relativistic heavy ion collisions and an asymmetric emission profile associated with the wounded nucleons lead to rapidity dependence of the reaction plane. The size of this effect is estimated for the gold-gold collisions at the highest RHIC energy ($\sqrt{s_{NN}}=200 \mathrm{GeV}$) in the Glauber model using GLISSANDO. The hydrodynamical evolution of the resulting torqued fireball is carried out in 3+1 dimensions considering a perfect fluid. Hadronization is simulated using THERMINATOR including non-flow contribution coming from resonance decays. Some experimental measures that can be used to detect the torque effect are proposed.Comment: 6 pages, 13 figures, prepared for the Strangeness in Quark Matter 2011 conference proceedings. Grant reference adde

Mapping intangibilities in creative tourism territories through tangible objects: a methodological approach for developing creative tourism offers

What can people express about their places through the objects that they valorise and link to their territory? Can objects create narratives about a place's identity and collect significant cultural information that locate people in their places? Can such cultural mapping be a useful tool in the design of creative tourist offers? The Project CREATOUR held a series of Idea Laboratories with several entities that provide creative tourism experiences, approaching cultural mapping through objects as a tool for regional actors to discover what is 'so special' about their places, a way to link tourism offers with the community where they take place. These exercise lead participants to remark on the importance and idiosyncrasy of their regions and evidenced the importance of cultural mapping to a more sustainable offer and the overall marketing of destinations. Mapping intangibilities through tangible objects helped to capture what gives meaning to particular places.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia CREATOUR - 16437 COMPETE2020, POR Lisboainfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Specifying the Behavior of UML Collaborations Using Object-Z

UML is a standard modelling language that is able to specify a wide range of object-oriented concepts. Among them, we have collaborations, that serve to realise use cases, a powerful abstraction concept. The behaviour part of a collaboration is rendered using collaboration diagrams. However, the lack of formalisation compromises the precision of the specification. By using formal description techniques, such as Object-Z, we can reason about the requirements and identify ambiguities and inconsistencies earlier in the development process. In general, we can say that formalisation helps obtaining a more reliable system. Our aim is to formalise collaborations Object-Z class schemas. This is accomplished by proposing an integrated formal process

Biocover performance of landfill methane oxidation: Experimental results

Abstract: An experimental passive methane oxidation biocover (PMOB) was constructed within the existing final cover of the St-Nicéphore landfill. Its substrate consisted of a 0.80-m-thick mixture of sand and compost. The goal of this experiment was to evaluate the performance of the PMOB in reducing CH 4 CH4 emissions when submitted to an increasing methane load. The CH 4 CH4 load applied started with 9.3 g CH 4  m −2  d −1 9.3 g CH4 m−2 d−1 . When the site had to be closed for the winter, the CH 4 CH4 input was 820 g CH 4  m −2  d −1 820 g CH4 m−2 d−1 . Throughout the study, practically all the CH 4 CH4 input was oxidized; absolute removal rates were linearly correlated to methane loading; and the oxidation zone was established between 0.6–0.8 m. These results seem to indicate that the upper limit potential of this PMOB to oxidize CH 4 CH4 was not necessarily reached during the study period. Surface CH 4 CH4 concentration scans showed no signs of leaks. The substrate offered excellent conditions for the growth of methanotrophs, whose count averaged 3.91×10 8  CFU g dw −1 3.91×108 CFU g dw−1 soil

Causal model to describe the variation of faecal coliform concentrations in a pilot-scale test consisting of ponds aligned in series

Abstract: In this study, the application of path analysis was tested to validate a causal model developed to verify the influence on several factors of the variation of faecal coliform concentration in pilot-scale ponds that treat domestic wastewater under distinct physical and operational characteristics. The ponds, aligned in series, are located in the city of Campina Grande, Northeastern Brazil. The model proved to be efficient for describing the variation in both secondary facultative and maturation ponds. The coefficient of determination (R2) varied between 0.66 and 0.84 for the facultative ponds and between 0.54 and 0.95 for the maturation ponds. Effluent faecal coliform concentration was negatively affected by solar radiation in shallow ponds and positively affected by influent faecal coliform concentration in deep ponds. Typically the effects related to phytoplankton photosynthetic activity were well characterized in all shallow maturation ponds. Faecal coliform concentration was negatively affected by pH in almost all the cases. This model is not suitable for anaerobic ponds.La méthodologie du Path analysis a été employé afin de tester un modèle causal qui a été développé pour vérifier l’influence de plusieurs facteurs sur la variation de la concentration en coliformes fécaux dans des étangs de traitement des eaux usées pilotes. Ces dernières sont opérées selon des caractéristiques physiques et fonctionnelles distinctes. Les étangs, alignés en série, se trouvent dans la ville de Campina Grande, dans le Nordeste brésilien. Le modèle s’est révélé efficace pour décrire la variation de la concentration de coliformes fécaux dans les étangs secondaires facultatifs, de même que dans les étangs de maturation. Le coefficient de détermination (R2) a varié de 0,66 à 0,84 dans étangs facultatifs et de 0,54 à 0,95 dans les étangs de maturation. La concentration en coliformes fécaux de l’effluent a été négativement affectée par les radiations solaires dans les étangs peu profonds et positivement affectée par la concentration en coliformes fécaux de l’influent dans les étangs profonds. Habituellement, les effets associés à l’activité de photosynthèse du phytoplancton étaient bien caractérisés dans les étangs de maturation peu profonds. La concentration en coliformes fécaux a été négativement affectée par le pH dans presque tous les cas. Ce modèle ne s’applique aux étangs anaérobies

Exploration of User Groups in VEXUS

We introduce VEXUS, an interactive visualization framework for exploring user data to fulfill tasks such as finding a set of experts, forming discussion groups and analyzing collective behaviors. User data is characterized by a combination of demographics like age and occupation, and actions such as rating a movie, writing a paper, following a medical treatment or buying groceries. The ubiquity of user data requires tools that help explorers, be they specialists or novice users, acquire new insights. VEXUS lets explorers interact with user data via visual primitives and builds an exploration profile to recommend the next exploration steps. VEXUS combines state-of-the-art visualization techniques with appropriate indexing of user data to provide fast and relevant exploration

Optimized in-vehicle multi person human body pose detection

The number of Shared Autonomous Vehicles (SAV) will increase in the coming years. The absence of human driver will create a new paradigm for in-car safety. This paper addresses this problem by presenting an approach to estimate the human body pose inside a vehicle. We propose to use a customized version of the OpenPose framework, to perform the task of human body pose detection for the front passengers inside a vehicle. The OpenPose method was been evaluated with three different backbones: VGG19, MobileNetV1 and MobileNetV2, using different hyperparameters and ablation scenarios. Moreover, synthetic images were used, which simulate a depth sensor perspective from the center of the front seats. The dataset is comprised by images with 1 and 2 passengers, from 18 different subjects inside of 7 different vehicles, thus making a total of 45360 different images. The OpenPose method with the MobileNetV2 backbone showed the most efficient results between precision and performance, achieving a mean Average Precision (mAP) of 90%, Area Under ROC Curve (AUC) of 73%, and 0.0189 seconds per image (s/img).- (undefined

Quantifying microbial methane oxidation efficiencies in two experimental landfill biocovers using stable isotopes

Abstract: Stable isotope analyses were performed on gas samples collected within two instrumented biocovers, with the goal of evaluating CH4 oxidation efficiencies (f0). In each of the biocovers, gas probes were installed at four locations and at several depths. One of the biocovers was fed with biogas directly from the waste mass, whereas the other was fed through a gas distribution system that allowed monitoring of biogas fluxes. While the f0 values obtained at a depth of 0.1 m were low (between 0.0 and 25.2%) for profiles with poor aeration, they were high for profiles with better aeration, reaching 89.7%. Several interrelated factors affecting aeration seem to be influencing f0, including the degree of water saturation, the magnitude of the biogas flux, and the temperature within the substrate. Low f0 values do not mean necessarily that little CH4 was oxidized. In fact, in certain cases where the CH4 loading was high, the absolute amount of CH4 oxidized was quite high and comparable to the rate of CH4 oxidation for cases with low CH4 loading and high f0. For the experimental biocover for which the CH4 loading was known, the oxidation efficiency obtained using stable isotopes (f0 = 55.67% for samples taken inside flux chambers) was compared to the value obtained by mass balance (f0 = 70.0%). Several factors can explain this discrepancy, including: the high sensitivity of f0 to slight changes in the isotopic fractionation factor for bacterial oxidation, αox, uncertainties related to mass flow meter readings and to the static chamber method