Phase-dependent exciton transport and energy harvesting from thermal environments

Non-Markovian effects in the evolution of open quantum systems have recently attracted widespread interest, particularly in the context of assessing the efficiency of energy and charge transfer in nanoscale biomolecular networks and quantum technologies. With the aid of many-body simulation methods, we uncover and analyse an ultrafast environmental process that causes energy relaxation in the reduced system to depend explicitly on the phase relation of the initial state preparation. Remarkably, for particular phases and system parameters, the net energy flow is uphill, transiently violating the principle of detailed balance, and implying that energy is spontaneously taken up from the environment. A theoretical analysis reveals that non-secular contributions, significant only within the environmental correlation time, underlie this effect. This suggests that environmental energy harvesting will be observable across a wide range of coupled quantum systems.Comment: 5 + 4 pages, 3 + 2 figures. Comments welcom

Nuevos resultados de la revisión taxonómica de los géneros Palicourea y Psychotria (Rubiaceae, Psychotrieae) en Cuba

The authors carried out a taxonomic study and revised and identified about 7,000 herbarium sheets of the genera Palicourea and Psychotria preserved in the collections of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba (HAC) and of the National Botanical Garden of Cuba (HAJB) with the purpose to complete the manuscript in preparation for the volume of the Rubiaceae Family of the Flora of Cuba. The results are as follows: Recognized 20 species of the genus Palicourea and 59 species of Psychotria. Revalidated 4 species new to the Flora of Cuba: Palicourea brachystigma Urb., Psychotria brevinodis Urb., Psychotria earlei Urb. and Psychotria tubulocubensis Govaerts. Established 3 new combinations: Palicourea ekmanii (Urb.) Borhidi et Oviedo, Palicourea odorata (Wr. ex Griseb.) Borhidi et Oviedo and Psychotria costivenia subsp. clementis (Britt.) Borhidi et Oviedo. Recognized and described 9 species and 1 subspecies of the genus Psychotria new to science: P. bissei Borhidi et Oviedo, P. brittonii Oviedo et Borhidi, P. ermitensis Borhidi et Oviedo, P. cromophila Oviedo et Borhidi, P. oblongicarpa Borhidi et Oviedo, P. pulchrinervis Borhidi et Oviedo, P. reflexiloba Borhidi et Oviedo, Psychotria reflexipes Borhidi et Oviedo, Psychotria rubens Borhidi et Oviedo, Psychotria costivenia subsp. wrightiana Borhidi et Oviedo. Following the concept of C. W. Hamilton (1989) recognised 10 species groups, 5 of them identical with the described ones from Mexico and Central America: the carthagenensis group with 4 species, the costivenia group with 10 species, the graciliflora group with 9 species, the nervosa group with 3 and the tenuifolia group with 1 species. Furthermore, the authors established 5 new groups, characteristic for the Greater Antillean flora: cathetoneura group with 4 species, the evenia group with 7 species, the lasiophthalma group with 4 species, the revoluta group with 10 species and the shaferi group with 9 species

Effect of Electrolyte Balance in Low-Protein Diets on Broiler Performance and Tibial Dyschondroplasia Incidence

A proper dietary electrolyte balance (DEB) is essential to ensure an optimum acid-base equilibrium and broiler performance. In low-CP diets, this balance can be affected by reduction of soybean meal and inclusion of high levels of synthetic amino acids. Although, some studies have related low-protein diets supplemented with amino acids and DEB, these relations are not well explained, because some research demonstrates confusion about the deficiency and balance of nutrients. The objective of these experiments was to evaluate the DEB effects of diets with low levels of protein supplemented with amino acids on broiler performance and bone development. Results indicated that DEB and CP content influenced broiler chick performance in the starter and growing periods. There was no significant effect due to the interaction between DEB and CP content for tibial dyschondroplasia incidence (TD) or in bone breaking resistance during the growing period of either experiment. The incidence of TD was reduced with 253 mEq/kg DEB in the starter period

A micrometeorological data base for the Mexico City Metropolitan Area

In order to overcome the lack of the surface micrometeorological data required for air quality studies in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA), a long-term micrometeorological campaign was carried out in this area along the 2001-year. Three micrometeorological surface stations were installed at sites located at north, north-east, and south sectors of the MCMA. Each station was equipped with a 3D ultrasonic turbulence sensor and with conventional meteorological sensors for temperature, relative humidity, pressure, global radiation, net radiation, and rain. The sampling rates were 10 Hz for the ultrasonic sensor, and 1 Hz for the conventional sensors. One-hour averages were calculated for all the meteorological parameters and for the turbulence parameters such as friction velocity, scale temperature, Monin-Obukhov length, sensible heat flux and turbulent kinetic energy, among others. A simple micrometeorological database was prepared and mounted on a free access Internet page to furnish a specialized tool to the local Authorities to be utilized in health prevention and pollution regulation applications

FLICK: developing and running application-specific network services

Data centre networks are increasingly programmable, with application-specific network services proliferating, from custom load-balancers to middleboxes providing caching and aggregation. Developers must currently implement these services using traditional low-level APIs, which neither support natural operations on application data nor provide efficient performance isolation. We describe FLICK, a framework for the programming and execution of application-specific network services on multi-core CPUs. Developers write network services in the FLICK language, which offers high-level processing constructs and application-relevant data types. FLICK programs are translated automatically to efficient, parallel task graphs, implemented in C++ on top of a user-space TCP stack. Task graphs have bounded resource usage at runtime, which means that the graphs of multiple services can execute concurrently without interference using cooperative scheduling. We evaluate FLICK with several services (an HTTP load-balancer, a Memcached router and a Hadoop data aggregator), showing that it achieves good performance while reducing development effort

Correcciones a la taxonomía y nomenclatura del género Psychotria s. l. En las floras de Cuba, la Española y Jamaica

The reorganisation and new circumscription of the gigantic genus Psychotria started with the classic article of Nepokroeff and co-authors in 1999, based on molecular phylogenetic studies. Its statements and suggestions were followed by the separations and modifications of different genera, as the extension of Margaritopsis by Andersson in 2001 and C. M. Taylor in 2005, revalidation and extension of Notopleura by C. M. Taylor in 2001, the new circumscription of the genus Psychotria by Andersson, in 2002, and revalidation of Carapichea by C. M. Taylor in 2012. The major modification of the neotropical Psychotria was the union of the Palicourea and the Heteropsychotria subgenus of Psychotria (Steyermark 1972) suggested by Nepokroeff and co-authors mentioning that this change would provoke the transfer of about 250 neotropical Psychotria species. This process started with the article of C. M. Taylor and co-authors in 2010, followed by Borhidi in 2011 and further changes are forecast by C. M. Taylor in the Flora Mesoamericana (2012). The mentioned modification concerning mainly the species of the Mexican and Mesoamerican flora and some species of wider neotropical distribution. In the Antillean floras Palicourea and Psychotria are treated according the traditional concept of Alain (Cuba in 1962, Hispaniola in 1995) and the monographs of C. M. Taylor in 1988, and 1989. In the recent paper the authors publish the first results of the taxonomic revision of the Psychotria s. l. species of the Cuban and Hispaniolan flora proposing 4 new combinations and a short actualised review of the taxa concerned the former corrections listed above

Requirements of Sodium and Chloride by Leghorn Laying Hens

Sodium and Cl are low-cost nutrients with great influence on feed conversion ratio (FCR), eggshell quality, and excreta moisture. Actual values of dietary requirements of these minerals for commercial laying hens are not well defined. These requirements were reevaluated in a factorial experiment using corn-soybean meal basal diets. No significant influence of Na and Cl levels was observed on egg production (%), egg weight (g), or feed intake (g/d), but levels of these minerals had variable effects on FCR, eggshell quality, and excreta moisture. The optimum requirement of Na changed according to the variable evaluated and level of Cl used

Addiciones y correcciones a la monografía Rubiáceas de Cuba

An important molecular-phylogenetic monography appeared about the Chiococceae tribe of the Caribbean region by Paudyal et al. (2018) proposing several new taxonomic modifying decisions concerning also to the monographic treatment of the recently (2017) published Rubiáceas de Cuba, as the confirmation and extension of the genus Solenandra revalidated by Borhidi (2002) and the separation of the new endemic Cuban genus Ramonadoxa Paudyal and Delprete from Chiococca. The molecular-phylogenetic studies did not verify the separation of Ceuthocarpus Aiello from Schmidtottia Urb. neither Phyllacanthus Hook. f. as independent genus from Catesbaea L