Kinetics of fluorene biodegradation by a mixed culture

The present study intended to determine the kinetics of biological degradation of fluorene by a mixed culture of microorganisms. Batch experiments were performed, being the inoculum an enriched mixed culture from a contaminated wastewater. Fluorene was quantified in the aqueous phase by solid phase micro-extraction (SPME), and analyzed in a GC-FID. The mixed culture was able to degrade fluorene and experimental results showed that biosorption had no influence on fluorene removal. The kinetic parameters, maximum reaction rate (kmax) and half saturation constant (Ks), respectively, 3.20×10–4 h–1 ± 0.93×10–4 h–1 and 126 μg L–1, were calculated

The social determinants of polymorphous prejudice against lesbian and gay individuals: the case of Portugal

In the present article, we analyze polymorphous prejudice against lesbians and gays according to a sample of Portuguese heterosexual individuals. We tested the differential importance of demographic-, ideological-, and psychological-level variables to predicting this phenomenon. Our results show that male, Catholic, right-wing respondents with fewer lesbian and gay (LG) friends prove the group exhibiting the highest levels of polymorphous prejudice. Furthermore, the introduction of psychological-level variables into the regression models increased the explained variance in polymorphous prejudice, above and beyond the remaining predictors. Additionally, we report different patterns of results when deploying regression analyses at the level of the sub-scales of polymorphous prejudice. We discuss our results within the light of contemporary sexual prejudice frameworks before reviewing the utility of results to interventions targeting discriminated LG individuals.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Alterações bioquímicas em larvas de Danio rerio por exposição à mistura de herbicidas.

Resumo: A cana-de-açúcar é o carro-chefe da agricultura paulista e o Brasil é líder mundial na produção do etanol em larga escala, um combustível renovável que contribui para a redução da emissão de gases de efeito estufa, por evitar a queima de combustíveis fósseis. A alta produtividade desta cultura necessita, entretanto, do uso intensivo de defensivos agrícolas, que podem contaminar mananciais próximos às áreas de cultivo ou mesmo serem transportados afetando ecossistemas distantes. O uso simultâneo de diferentes herbicidas é comum nas lavouras, mas sua interação e o impacto sobre espécies não-alvo não são bem conhecidos. O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar o efeito da mistura de herbicidas ametrina e diuron, usada na lavoura canavieira, sobre o desenvolvimento embrionário e a atividade de biomarcadores de larvas de Danio rerio, um cipriníedo tropical amplamente utilizado em ensaios ecotoxicológicos

The superconducting phase transition and gauge dependence

The gauge dependence of the renormalization group functions of the Ginzburg-Landau model is investigated. The analysis is done by means of the Ward-Takahashi identities. After defining the local superconducting order parameter, it is shown that its exponent $\beta$ is in fact gauge independent. This happens because in $d=3$ the Landau gauge is the only gauge having a physical meaning, a property not shared by the four-dimensional model where any gauge choice is possible. The analysis is done in both the context of the $\epsilon$-expansion and in the fixed dimension approach. It is pointed out the differences that arise in both of these approaches concerning the gauge dependence.Comment: RevTex, 3 pages, no figures; accepted for publication in PRB; this paper is a short version of cond-mat/990527