33,470 research outputs found
Wetland restoration and nitrate reduction: the example of the periurban wetland of Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country, North Spain)
Changes in land use and agricultural intensification caused wetlands on the quaternary aquifer of Vitoria-Gasteiz (Basque Country) to disappear some years ago and nitrate concentration in groundwaters increased very quickly. The Basque Government recently declared the East Sector of this aquifer a Vulnerable Zone according to the 91/676/CEE European Directive. Recently, the wetlands have been restored through the closure of the main drainage ditches, the consequent elevation of the water table and the abondonment of agricultural practices near the wetlands. This is the case of the Zurbano wetland. Restoration has allowed the recovery of its biogeochemical function, which has reduced nitrate concentrations in waters. Nitrate concentrations which exceed 50 mg l–1 in groundwaters entering into the wetland are less than 10 mg l–1 at the outlet. Conditions in the wetland are conducive to the loss of nitrates: organic matter rich wetted soils, clay presence allowing a local semiconfined flow and very low hydraulic gradient. Water quality monitoring at several points around the wetland showed the processes involved in nitrate loss, although some aspects still remain unresolved. However, during storm events, the wetland effectively reduces the nitrate concentration entering the Alegria River, the most important river on the quaternary aquifer
Color transparency and short-range correlations in exclusive pion photo- and electroproduction from nuclei
A relativistic and quantum mechanical framework to compute nuclear
transparencies for pion photo- and electroproduction reactions is presented.
Final-state interactions for the ejected pions and nucleons are implemented in
a relativistic eikonal approach. At sufficiently large ejectile energies, a
relativistic Glauber model can be adopted. At lower energies, the framework
possesses the flexibility to use relativistic optical potentials. The proposed
model can account for the color-transparency (CT) phenomenon and short-range
correlations (SRC) in the nucleus. Results are presented for kinematics
corresponding to completed and planned experiments at Jefferson Lab. The
influence of CT and SRC on the nuclear transparency is studied. Both the SRC
and CT mechanisms increase the nuclear transparency. The two mechanisms can be
clearly separated, though, as they exhibit a completely different dependence on
the hard scale parameter. The nucleon and pion transparencies as computed in
the relativistic Glauber approach are compared with optical-potential and
semi-classical calculations. The similarities in the trends and magnitudes of
the nuclear transparencies indicate that they are not subject to strong model
dependencies.Comment: 33 pages, 14 figure
A QCD sum rule calculation of the decay width
To understand the nature of the , recently observed in the mass
spectrum of the system by the D0 Collaboration, we have
investigated, in a previous work, a scalar tetraquark (diquak-antidiquark)
structure for it, within the two-point QCD sum rules method. The result found
for its mass agrees well with the experimental value. Encouraged by this
finding we now extend our calculations to obtain the decay width of
to using the three-point QCD sum rule. We obtain a value of
(20.4\pm8.7)\MeV, which, on comparing with the experimental value of
21.9\pm6.4 (\mbox{sta})^{+5.0}_{-2.5}(\mbox{syst}) \MeV/c^2, reinforces the
scalar four quark nature of .Comment: Minor modifications made. Some new discussions and references adde
Directed Random Markets: Connectivity determines Money
Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution arises as the statistical equilibrium
probability distribution of money among the agents of a closed economic system
where random and undirected exchanges are allowed. When considering a model
with uniform savings in the exchanges, the final distribution is close to the
gamma family. In this work, we implement these exchange rules on networks and
we find that these stationary probability distributions are robust and they are
not affected by the topology of the underlying network. We introduce a new
family of interactions: random but directed ones. In this case, it is found the
topology to be determinant and the mean money per economic agent is related to
the degree of the node representing the agent in the network. The relation
between the mean money per economic agent and its degree is shown to be linear.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure
Electronic heat current rectification in hybrid superconducting devices
In this work, we review and expand recent theoretical proposals for the
realization of electronic thermal diodes based on tunnel-junctions of normal
metal and superconducting thin films. Starting from the basic rectifying
properties of a single hybrid tunnel junction, we will show how the
rectification efficiency can be largely increased by combining multiple
junctions in an asymmetric chain of tunnel-coupled islands. We propose three
different designs, analyzing their performance and their potential advantages.
Besides being relevant from a fundamental physics point of view, this kind of
devices might find important technological application as fundamental building
blocks in solid-state thermal nanocircuits and in general-purpose cryogenic
electronic applications requiring energy management.Comment: 9 pages, 5 color figure
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