Assessment of ultraviolet radiation exposures in photobiological experiments

The interfering effect of ultraviolet (UV) radiation on the natural function of biological processes is wavelength specific and the UV spectrum must be weighted with the action spectrum for the process. The UV spectral irradiance may be measured with calibrated spectroradiometers. Alternatively, the biologically effective UV may be measured with broadband devices. This paper reviews the techniques for assessing biologically effective exposures in photobiological experiments. UV meters, such as the Robertson-Berger (RB) meter, or passive dosimeters, such as polysulphone, that possess a spectral response approximating the human erythemal response can be used to estimate erythemally effective exposure or actinic exposure due to solar UV. The sensitivity of the RB meter is about 0.56 uW cm-2 and polysulphone can record an exposure of about 2mJ cm-2. For photobiological processes other than erythema these devices are not suitable to determine the exposure. In terms of these applications, a spectrum evaluator consisting of four different types of dosimeter material can be employed to evaluate the UV spectrum of the source. This method can be useful both for solar UV studies and research with UV lamps that possess radiation wavelengths shorter than 295nm. The device can be used to measure exposures where the actinic and erythemal action spectra differ significantly. It can also be used to assess exposure due to low levels of UV (about 0.01uW cm-2) caused by radiation filtered through glasses or plastic

Universality in the off-equilibrium critical dynamics of the 3d3d diluted Ising model

We study the off-equilibrium critical dynamics of the three dimensional diluted Ising model. We compute the dynamical critical exponent $z$ and we show that it is independent of the dilution only when we take into account the scaling-corrections to the dynamics. Finally we will compare our results with the experimental data.Comment: Final Version, 5 Latex pages (RevTeX) plus 3 eps figure

Effect of cloud on UVA and exposure to humans

The daily autumn and winter UVA exposures and 6-minute UVA irradiance data for a Southern Hemisphere, subtropical site (Toowoomba, Australia, 27.6 S, 151.9 E) are presented. This data is used to quantify the effect of cloud on UVA using an integrated sky-camera and radiation system. Additionally, an estimate of the effect of enhanced UVA exposure on humans is made. The measurement system consisted of broadband visible-infrared and UVA sensors together with a sun tracking, wide-angle video camera. The mean daily June exposure was found to be 409 kJm-2. Under the constraints of the uncertainty of both the UVA measurement system and clear-sky model, one case of enhanced UVA irradiance was found. Three cases of cloud enhancement of daily UVA exposure, approaching clear-sky levels, were also determined using a calculated clear-sky envelope. It was also determined that for a fulltime outdoor worker, the additional UVA exposure could approach approximately that of one third of a full winter's day. For indoor workers with an outside lunch break of noon to 1 pm, the additional UVA exposure was on average 6.9 kJm-2 over three cloud enhanced days. To the authors' knowledge this is the first paper to present some evidence of cloud enhanced UVA human exposure

On the Four-Dimensional Diluted Ising Model

In this letter we show strong numerical evidence that the four dimensional Diluted Ising Model for a large dilution is not described by the Mean Field exponents. These results suggest the existence of a new fixed point with non-gaussian exponents.Comment: 9 pages. compressed ps-file (uufiles

Correlation between magnetic and transport properties of phase separated La0.5_{0.5}Ca0.5_{0.5}MnO3_{3}

The effect of low magnetic fields on the magnetic and electrical transport properties of polycrystalline samples of the phase separated compound La$_{0.5}$Ca$_{0.5}$MnO$_{3}$ is studied. The results are interpreted in the framework of the field induced ferromagnetic fraction enlargement mechanism. A fraction expansion coefficient af, which relates the ferromagnetic fraction f with the applied field H, was obtained. A phenomenological model to understand the enlargement mechanism is worked out.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, presented at the Fifth LAW-MMM, to appear in Physica B, Minor change

Slow Dynamics in Glasses

We will review some of the theoretical progresses that have been recently done in the study of slow dynamics of glassy systems: the general techniques used for studying the dynamics in the mean field approximation and the emergence of a pure dynamical transition in some of these systems. We show how the results obtained for a random Hamiltonian may be also applied to a given Hamiltonian. These two results open the way to a better understanding of the glassy transition in real systems

Replica Symmetry Breaking in the Random Replicant Model

We study the statistical mechanics of a model describing the coevolution of species interacting in a random way. We find that at high competition replica symmetry is broken. We solve the model in the approximation of one step replica symmetry breaking and we compare our findings with accurate numerical simulations.Comment: 12 pages, TeX, 5 postscript figures are avalaible upon request, submitted to Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Genera

A Generalization of the Brodsky-Lepage Formalism

We present an approach that generalizes in a natural way the perturbative QCD formalism developed by Brodsky and Lepage for the study of exclusive hadronic processes to the case of $L\neq 0$ mesons. As an application of our approach we consider here the production of meson pairs, involving tensor and pseudotensor mesons, in photon-photon collisions.Comment: LaTeX, 5 pages, 1 embedded ps figure, uses macros sprocl.sty, epsfig.sty. Talk delivered by F. Murgia at the PHOTON'97 Conference, Egmond aan Zee, The Netherlands, May 10-15, 1997. To be published in the proceedings by World Scientifi

Off-Equilibrium Dynamics at Very Low Temperatures in 3d Spin Glasses

We present a high statistic systematic study of the overlap correlation function well below the critical temperature in the three dimensional Gaussian spin glass. The off-equilibrium correlation function has been studied confirming the power law behavior for the dynamical correlation length. In particular we have computed the dynamical critical exponent $z$ in a wide range of temperatures, $0.35 \le T \le 0.9$, obtaining a dependence $z(T)=6.2/T$ in a very good agreement with recent experiments. Moreover, we report a study of the violation of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem for very low temperatures $T=0.5$ and $T=0.35$. All our numerical results avoid a droplet model interpretation even when $T$ is as low as $T=0.35$.Comment: LaTeX, 14 pages and 5 figures. A minor arithmetic error corrected and references update

Ising spin glass transition in magnetic field out of mean-field

The spin-glass transition in external magnetic field is studied both in and out of the limit of validity of mean-field theory on a diluted one dimensional chain of Ising spins where exchange bonds occur with a probability decaying as the inverse power of the distance. Varying the power in this long-range model corresponds, in a one-to-one relationship, to change the dimension in spin-glass short-range models. Evidence for a spin-glass transition in magnetic field is found also for systems whose equivalent dimension is below the upper critical dimension at zero magnetic field.Comment: 5 pages, 1 table, 6 figures, data analysis mistake corrected, new figures, new scaling approach to critical properties introduce