Phase transitions and crossovers in reaction-diffusion models with catalyst deactivation

The activity of catalytic materials is reduced during operation by several mechanisms, one of them being poisoning of catalytic sites by chemisorbed impurities or products. Here we study the effects of poisoning in two reaction-diffusion models in one-dimensional lattices with randomly distributed catalytic sites. Unimolecular and bimolecular single-species reactions are considered, without reactant input during the operation. The models show transitions between a phase with continuous decay of reactant concentration and a phase with asymptotic non-zero reactant concentration and complete poisoning of the catalyst. The transition boundary depends on the initial reactant and catalyst concentrations and on the poisoning probability. The critical system behaves as in the two-species annihilation reaction, with reactant concentration decaying as t^{-1/4} and the catalytic sites playing the role of the second species. In the unimolecular reaction, a significant crossover to the asymptotic scaling is observed even when one of those parameters is 10% far from criticality. Consequently, an effective power-law decay of concentration may persist up to long times and lead to an apparent change in the reaction kinetics. In the bimolecular single-species reaction, the critical scaling is followed by a two-dimensional rapid decay, thus two crossovers are found.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure

Disorder Averaging and Finite Size Scaling

We propose a new picture of the renormalization group (RG) approach in the presence of disorder, which considers the RG trajectories of each random sample (realization) separately instead of the usual renormalization of the averaged free energy. The main consequence of the theory is that the average over randomness has to be taken after finding the critical point of each realization. To demonstrate these concepts, we study the finite-size scaling properties of the two-dimensional random-bond Ising model. We find that most of the previously observed finite-size corrections are due to the sample-to-sample fluctuation of the critical temperature and scaling is more adequate in terms of the new scaling variables.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures include

Some features of flow and particle transport in porous structures

There has been a growing interest in the study of porous and complex flow structures due to its impact in technology. This concerns not only environmental but also diagnostic and therapeutic exposure in medical research. Physics of flow within porous structures is especially important to model transport and deposition of viruses, pollutants and drugs deep in these structures. In this work we analyze numerically low and medium Reynolds number flows in axisymmetric cylindrical duct surrounded by a torus. We also consider three different particle sizes (0.02, 0.1 and 20 micron) for possible physiological and environmental applications

Desempenho e avaliação das carcaças de borregos castrados ou inteiros terminados em confinamento.

Este trabalho teve como objetivo avaliar o desempenho e a qualidade da carcaça de borregos castrados e inteiros terminados em confinamento

A sociodemographic and neuropsychological characterization of an illiterate population

The objectives of this article are to characterize the performance and to discuss the performance differences between literate and illiterate participants in a well-defined study population. We describe the participant-selection procedure used to investigate this population. Three groups with similar sociocultural backgrounds living in a relatively homogeneous fishing community in southern Portugal were characterized in terms of socioeconomic and sociocultural background variables and compared on a simple neuropsychological test battery; specifically, a literate group with more than 4 years of education (n = 9), a literate group with 4 years of education (n = 26), and an illiterate group (n = 31) were included in this study. We compare and discuss our results with other similar studies on the effects of literacy and illiteracy. The results indicate that naming and identification of real objects, verbal fluency using ecologically relevant semantic criteria, verbal memory, and orientation are not affected by literacy or level of formal education. In contrast, verbal working memory assessed with digit span, verbal abstraction, long-term semantic memory, and calculation (i.e., multiplication) are significantly affected by the level of literacy. We indicate that it is possible, with proper participant-selection procedures, to exclude general cognitive impairment and to control important sociocultural factors that potentially could introduce bias when studying the specific effects of literacy and level of formal education on cognitive brain function

Does time constrain affect consumer intention to purchase? A case study with orange/pomegranate juice.

The influence of time pressure on consumer perception may be particularly relevant for the design of food packages. The aim of the present work was to evaluate the influence of time-constraint on results from a rating-based conjoint task, using pomegranate/orange juice as case study. One hundred consumers evaluated the intention to purchase of images of juice bottles, which were designed by manipulating the following variables: bottle design, front-of-pack nutritional information, nutrition claim and processing claim. They were randomly divided into two experimental conditions: control and time-constraint. Consumers with a time-constraint gave significantly higher intention to purchase scores than those in control condition, but time-constraint did not largely modify the way in which consumers evaluated their intention to purchase. In both experimental conditions consumers gave higher intention to purchase scores for bottles with traditional design, which included processing claim and front-of-pack nutritional information. Result suggests that graphic design could help consumers to make healthier food choices.Food: the tree that sustains life. 1648