Data for mine soils reclamation at Galicia: naturall capacity and choices for amelioration

[Resumen] Se estudian las principales limitaciones para la recuperación de los suelos de explotaciones mineras de la provincia de La Coruña. A pesar de que hay una gran heterogeneidad, especialmente en aspectos como textura, pedregosidad y/o rocosidad, puede se ñalarse que las mayores dificultades para la revegetación derivan de la pobreza en materia orgánica y de la baja fertilidad actual y potencial, manifestada en la escasez de P, N y de reservas minerales. Los procesos· de toxicidad relativamente escasos, están relacionados con ambientes extremadamente ácidos en los que pueden encontrarse altos niveles de Al en el complejo de cambio y metales pesados en formas solubles. La pedregosidad es un limitante importante en algunas escombreras de dunitas, anfibolitas y esquistos ricos en cuarzo. Parece aconsejable la implantación de especies pioneras, frugales y tolerantes y, si es posible, con intervención de leguminosas. El aporte de residuos o subproductos ricos en materia orgánica tales como: lodos de depuradoras o industrias de la alimentación, compost de residuos sólidos urbanos, subproductos de industrias de la madera... o de materiales que deben ser removidos (lodos fluviales o de estuario, desmontes... ) son favorables siempre y cuando tengan una composición complementaria con la de los escombros o materiales de mina a recuperar.[Abstract] Mine soils at La Coruña (NW Spain) are studied in order to know their main limitations for reclamation. In spite of their heterogeneity (texture, stoniness) the main limitations for revegetation are: low levels of organic matter and low fenility, current (small amounts ofP and N) and potential (small) pool of weatherable (minerals). The relatively rare toxicity processes are related to very acidic environments, where high levels of exchangeable aluminium and heavy metals can occur. Stoniness is limitant in sorne dunites, amphibolites and quartz-schist spoils. It seems to be advisable a revegetation with pioneers, frugal and tolerant species, and, if possible, including leguminous. Treatments with organic amendments: municipal sewage sludge, compost, paper mill wastes, sawdust, or materials manipulated by man (river and estuary sludges, moved earthy materials) is favourable if their composition is complementary with the mine spoil

Volume elements of spacetime and a quartet of scalar fields

Starting with a `bare' 4-dimensional differential manifold as a model of spacetime, we discuss the options one has for defining a volume element which can be used for physical theories. We show that one has to prescribe a scalar density \sigma. Whereas conventionally \sqrt{|\det g_{ij}|} is used for that purpose, with g_{ij} as the components of the metric, we point out other possibilities, namely \sigma as a `dilaton' field or as a derived quantity from either a linear connection or a quartet of scalar fields, as suggested by Guendelman and Kaganovich.Comment: 7 pages RevTEX, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Operation Allelopathy: An Experiment Investigating an Alternative to Synthetic Agrochemicals

Synthetic herbicides represent a serious problem in modern agriculture because they are not biodegradable and can accumulate in the soil and in the groundwater, a situation that allows them to enter the trophic chain and ultimately leads to human exposure. Allelopathic chemicals offer an effective alternative to the synthetic compounds. The aim of this experiment is to highlight the differences between chemical and biological control of diseases in crops and to demonstrate the use of natural fungicides and herbicides as alternatives to synthetic chemicals. The experiment involves an evaluation by students of the potential of plant extracts as an alternative to synthetic agrochemicals to identify new ecological farming techniques that could be applied in agriculture. In an effort to encourage 1800 students in high school (14 to 16 years old) to have an interest in science, technology, and innovation, the third edition of the Summer Science Campus was organized by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology and the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports with support from the foundation Obra Social “la Caixa”

Impact of particles on the Planck HFI detectors: Ground-based measurements and physical interpretation

The Planck High Frequency Instrument (HFI) surveyed the sky continuously from August 2009 to January 2012. Its noise and sensitivity performance were excellent, but the rate of cosmic ray impacts on the HFI detectors was unexpectedly high. Furthermore, collisions of cosmic rays with the focal plane produced transient signals in the data (glitches) with a wide range of characteristics. A study of cosmic ray impacts on the HFI detector modules has been undertaken to categorize and characterize the glitches, to correct the HFI time-ordered data, and understand the residual effects on Planck maps and data products. This paper presents an evaluation of the physical origins of glitches observed by the HFI detectors. In order to better understand the glitches observed by HFI in flight, several ground-based experiments were conducted with flight-spare HFI bolometer modules. The experiments were conducted between 2010 and 2013 with HFI test bolometers in different configurations using varying particles and impact energies. The bolometer modules were exposed to 23 MeV protons from the Orsay IPN TANDEM accelerator, and to $^{241}$Am and $^{244}$Cm $\alpha$-particle and $^{55}$Fe radioactive X-ray sources. The calibration data from the HFI ground-based preflight tests were used to further characterize the glitches and compare glitch rates with statistical expectations under laboratory conditions. Test results provide strong evidence that the dominant family of glitches observed in flight are due to cosmic ray absorption by the silicon die substrate on which the HFI detectors reside. Glitch energy is propagated to the thermistor by ballistic phonons, while there is also a thermal diffusion contribution. The implications of these results for future satellite missions, especially those in the far-infrared to sub-millimetre and millimetre regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figure

class_sz I: Overview

class_sz is a versatile and robust code in C and Python that can compute theoretical predictions for a wide range of observables relevant to cross-survey science in the Stage IV era. The code is public at https://github.com/CLASS-SZ/class_sz along with a series of tutorial notebooks (https://github.com/CLASS-SZ/notebooks). It will be presented in full detail in paper II. Here we give a brief overview of key features and usage.Comment: to appear in Proc. of the mm Universe 2023 conference, Grenoble (France), June 2023, published by F. Mayet et al. (Eds), EPJ Web of conferences, EDP Science

First Detection of Polarization of the Submillimetre Diffuse Galactic Dust Emission by Archeops

We present the first determination of the Galactic polarized emission at 353 GHz by Archeops. The data were taken during the Arctic night of February 7, 2002 after the balloon--borne instrument was launched by CNES from the Swedish Esrange base near Kiruna. In addition to the 143 GHz and 217 GHz frequency bands dedicated to CMB studies, Archeops had one 545 GHz and six 353 GHz bolometers mounted in three polarization sensitive pairs that were used for Galactic foreground studies. We present maps of the I, Q, U Stokes parameters over 17% of the sky and with a 13 arcmin resolution at 353 GHz (850 microns). They show a significant Galactic large scale polarized emission coherent on the longitude ranges [100, 120] and [180, 200] deg. with a degree of polarization at the level of 4-5%, in agreement with expectations from starlight polarization measurements. Some regions in the Galactic plane (Gem OB1, Cassiopeia) show an even stronger degree of polarization in the range 10-20%. Those findings provide strong evidence for a powerful grain alignment mechanism throughout the interstellar medium and a coherent magnetic field coplanar to the Galactic plane. This magnetic field pervades even some dense clouds. Extrapolated to high Galactic latitude, these results indicate that interstellar dust polarized emission is the major foreground for PLANCK-HFI CMB polarization measurement.Comment: Submitted to Astron. & Astrophys., 14 pages, 12 Fig., 2 Table

Nonlinear spectral calculus and super-expanders

Nonlinear spectral gaps with respect to uniformly convex normed spaces are shown to satisfy a spectral calculus inequality that establishes their decay along Cesaro averages. Nonlinear spectral gaps of graphs are also shown to behave sub-multiplicatively under zigzag products. These results yield a combinatorial construction of super-expanders, i.e., a sequence of 3-regular graphs that does not admit a coarse embedding into any uniformly convex normed space.Comment: Typos fixed based on referee comments. Some of the results of this paper were announced in arXiv:0910.2041. The corresponding parts of arXiv:0910.2041 are subsumed by the current pape

A comparative sequence analysis reveals a common GBD/FH3-FH1-FH2-DAD architecture in formins from Dictyostelium, fungi and metazoa

BACKGROUND: Formins are multidomain proteins defined by a conserved FH2 (formin homology 2) domain with actin nucleation activity preceded by a proline-rich FH1 (formin homology 1) domain. Formins act as profilin-modulated processive actin nucleators conserved throughout a wide range of eukaryotes. RESULTS: We present a detailed sequence analysis of the 10 formins (ForA to J) identified in the genome of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. With the exception of ForI and ForC all other formins conform to the domain structure GBD/FH3-FH1-FH2-DAD, where DAD is the Diaphanous autoinhibition domain and GBD/FH3 is the Rho GTPase-binding domain/formin homology 3 domain that we propose to represent a single domain. ForC lacks a FH1 domain, ForI lacks recognizable GBD/FH3 and DAD domains and ForA, E and J have additional unique domains. To establish the relationship between formins of Dictyostelium and other organisms we constructed a phylogenetic tree based on the alignment of FH2 domains. Real-time PCR was used to study the expression pattern of formin genes. Expression of forC, D, I and J increased during transition to multi-cellular stages, while the rest of genes displayed less marked developmental variations. During sexual development, expression of forH and forI displayed a significant increase in fusion competent cells. CONCLUSION: Our analysis allows some preliminary insight into the functionality of Dictyostelium formins: all isoforms might display actin nucleation activity and, with the exception of ForI, might also be susceptible to autoinhibition and to regulation by Rho GTPases. The architecture GBD/FH3-FH1-FH2-DAD appears common to almost all Dictyostelium, fungal and metazoan formins, for which we propose the denomination of conventional formins, and implies a common regulatory mechanism

Planck Intermediate Results. IV. The XMM-Newton validation programme for new Planck galaxy clusters

We present the final results from the XMM-Newton validation follow-up of new Planck galaxy cluster candidates. We observed 15 new candidates, detected with signal-to-noise ratios between 4.0 and 6.1 in the 15.5-month nominal Planck survey. The candidates were selected using ancillary data flags derived from the ROSAT All Sky Survey (RASS) and Digitized Sky Survey all-sky maps, with the aim of pushing into the low SZ flux, high-z regime and testing RASS flags as indicators of candidate reliability. 14 new clusters were detected by XMM, including 2 double systems. Redshifts lie in the range 0.2 to 0.9, with 6 clusters at z>0.5. Estimated M500 range from 2.5 10^14 to 8 10^14 Msun. We discuss our results in the context of the full XMM validation programme, in which 51 new clusters have been detected. This includes 4 double and 2 triple systems, some of which are chance projections on the sky of clusters at different z. We find that association with a RASS-BSC source is a robust indicator of the reliability of a candidate, whereas association with a FSC source does not guarantee that the SZ candidate is a bona fide cluster. Nevertheless, most Planck clusters appear in RASS maps, with a significance greater than 2 sigma being a good indication that the candidate is a real cluster. The full sample gives a Planck sensitivity threshold of Y500 ~ 4 10^-4 arcmin^2, with indication for Malmquist bias in the YX-Y500 relation below this level. The corresponding mass threshold depends on z. Systems with M500 > 5 10^14 Msun at z > 0.5 are easily detectable with Planck. The newly-detected clusters follow the YX-Y500 relation derived from X-ray selected samples. Compared to X-ray selected clusters, the new SZ clusters have a lower X-ray luminosity on average for their mass. There is no indication of departure from standard self-similar evolution in the X-ray versus SZ scaling properties. (abridged)Comment: accepted by A&

Planck 2015 results. XXIII. The thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect--cosmic infrared background correlation

We use Planck data to detect the cross-correlation between the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect and the infrared emission from the galaxies that make up the the cosmic infrared background (CIB). We first perform a stacking analysis towards Planck-confirmed galaxy clusters. We detect infrared emission produced by dusty galaxies inside these clusters and demonstrate that the infrared emission is about 50% more extended than the tSZ effect. Modelling the emission with a Navarro--Frenk--White profile, we find that the radial profile concentration parameter is $c_{500} = 1.00^{+0.18}_{-0.15}$. This indicates that infrared galaxies in the outskirts of clusters have higher infrared flux than cluster-core galaxies. We also study the cross-correlation between tSZ and CIB anisotropies, following three alternative approaches based on power spectrum analyses: (i) using a catalogue of confirmed clusters detected in Planck data; (ii) using an all-sky tSZ map built from Planck frequency maps; and (iii) using cross-spectra between Planck frequency maps. With the three different methods, we detect the tSZ-CIB cross-power spectrum at significance levels of (i) 6 $\sigma$, (ii) 3 $\sigma$, and (iii) 4 $\sigma$. We model the tSZ-CIB cross-correlation signature and compare predictions with the measurements. The amplitude of the cross-correlation relative to the fiducial model is $A_{\rm tSZ-CIB}= 1.2\pm0.3$. This result is consistent with predictions for the tSZ-CIB cross-correlation assuming the best-fit cosmological model from Planck 2015 results along with the tSZ and CIB scaling relations.Comment: 18 pages, 16 figure