146 research outputs found
Review of strategies for modelling the environmental fate of pesticides discharged into riverine systems
International audiencePesticides are often produced and stored in large quantities near rivers posing a potential hazard for the aquatic environment. Accidental incidents such as storage facility fires are of major concern as significant amounts of pesticide chemicals can enter the nearby riverine system possibly causing considerable environmental damage (for example the Sandoz fire in Basel in 1986 which polluted the Rhine river). In order to assess the potential impact on the riverine environment of such an incident it is necessary to identify the controlling environmental fate processes that affect pesticides in freshwater systems. A strategy for mathematically modelling these processes to predict the fate of the chemical contaminants then needs to be established. This paper discuss and reviews the major environmental controlling fate processes of selected herbicides in freshwater. Strategies on how to mathematical model the environmental fate of pesticides in rivers are also considered
Perturbation theories for the S=1/2 spin ladder with four-spin ring exchange
The isotropic S=1/2 antiferromagnetic spin ladder with additional four-spin
ring exchange is studied perturbatively in the strong coupling regime with the
help of cluster expansion technique, and by means of bosonization in the weak
coupling limit. It is found that a sufficiently large strength of ring exchange
leads to a second-order phase transition, and the shape of the boundary in the
vicinity of the known exact transition point is obtained. The critical exponent
for the gap is found to be , in agreement both with exact results
available for the dimer line and with the bosonization analysis. The phase
emerging for high values of the ring exchange is argued to be gapped and
spontaneously dimerized. The results for the transition line from strong
coupling and from weak coupling match with each other naturally.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, some minor changes in text and reference
Identificação molecular de Bartonella henselae em paciente com SIDA soronegativo para doença da arranhadura do gato no Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Bartonella henselae is associated with a wide spectrum of clinical manifestations, including cat scratch disease, endocarditis and meningoencephalitis, in immunocompetent and immunocompromised patients. We report the first molecularly confirmed case of B. henselae infection in an AIDS patient in state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Although DNA sequence of B. henselae has been detected by polymerase chain reaction in a lymph node biopsy, acute and convalescent sera were nonreactive.Bartonella henselae está associada a um amplo espectro de manifestações clÃnicas, incluindo a doença da arranhadura de gato, endocardite, e meningoencefalite, em pacientes imunocompetentes e imunocomprometidos. Relatamos o primeiro caso confirmado por método molecular de B. henselae em um paciente com SIDA no estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. Apesar da sequência de DNA de B. henselae ser detectada pela reação em cadeia da polimerase em uma biópsia do linfonodo, soros das fases aguda e convalescente foram não reativos
Spin-Flavor Structure of Large N Baryons
The spin-flavor structure of large N baryons is described in the 1/N
expansion of QCD using quark operators. The complete set of quark operator
identities is obtained, and used to derive an operator reduction rule which
simplifies the 1/N expansion. The operator reduction rule is applied to the
axial currents, masses, magnetic moments and hyperon non-leptonic decay
amplitudes in the limit, to first order in breaking, and
without assuming symmetry. The connection between the Skyrme and quark
representations is discussed. An explicit formula is given for the quark model
operators in terms of the Skyrme model operators to all orders in for
the two flavor case.Comment: 36 pages, 2 eps figures, uses revte
FERMION ZERO MODES AND BLACK-HOLE HYPERMULTIPLETS WITH RIGID SUPERSYMMETRY
The gravitini zero modes riding on top of the extreme Reissner-Nordstrom
black-hole solution of N=2 supergravity are shown to be normalizable. The
gravitini and dilatini zero modes of axion-dilaton extreme black-hole solutions
of N=4 supergravity are also given and found to have finite norms. These norms
are duality invariant. The finiteness and positivity of the norms in both cases
are found to be correlated with the Witten-Israel-Nester construction; however,
we have replaced the Witten condition by the pure-spin-3/2 constraint on the
gravitini. We compare our calculation of the norms with the calculations which
provide the moduli space metric for extreme black holes.
The action of the N=2 hypermultiplet with an off-shell central charge
describes the solitons of N=2 supergravity. This action, in the
Majumdar-Papapetrou multi-black-hole background, is shown to be N=2 rigidly
supersymmetric.Comment: 18 pages, LaTe
Dairy-CropSyst: Gaseous emissions and nutrient fate modeling tool
Dairy confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) are required to implement nutrient management plans for minimizing the risk of water resource degradation and report gaseous emissions when exceeding certain threshold values. Although tools exist to aid in completing such tasks, few integrate the impact of on-farm manure treatment unit operations such as anaerobic digestion, solids separation, and nutrient recovery. Furthermore, existing tools do not estimate the nutrient value of recovered products and effluent leaving the dairy system or the nutrient fate after effluent is applied to crop fields. Dairy-CropSyst is a decision support tool for researchers and CAFO managers aimed at evaluating the effects of different manure treatment unit operations on gaseous emission and nutrient fate in dairy systems. The model tracks nutrients through the dairy system, including inorganic and organic forms of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. This is accomplished by integrating established transformation and emission equations, performance parameters of manure treatments from industrial data and literature, and using a cropping system model for the land application evaluation. Predicted and observed emission values for greenhouse gases (GHG) and ammonia from different dairy unit operations were found in good agreement. The use of Dairy-CropSyst has the potential to assist the dairy industry in decision making on manure management treatment strategies and as a tool for reporting GHG and ammonia emissions
Formation of a cytoplasmic salt bridge network in the matrix state is a fundamental step in the transport mechanism of the mitochondrial ADP/ATP carrier
Mitochondrial ADP/ATP carriers catalyze the equimolar exchange of ADP and ATP across the mitochondrial inner membrane. Structurally, they consist of three homologous domains with a single substrate binding site. They alternate between a cytoplasmic and matrix state in which the binding site is accessible to these compartments for binding of ADP or ATP. It has been proposed that cycling between states occurs by disruption and formation of a matrix and cytoplasmic salt bridge network in an alternating way, but formation of the latter has not been shown experimentally. Here, we show that state-dependent formation of the cytoplasmic salt bridge network can be demonstrated by measuring the effect of mutations on the thermal stability of detergent-solubilized carriers locked in a specific state. For this purpose, mutations were made to increase or decrease the overall interaction energy of the cytoplasmic network. When locked in the cytoplasmic state by the inhibitor carboxyatractyloside, the thermostabilities of the mutant and wild-type carriers were similar, but when locked in the matrix state by the inhibitor bongkrekic acid, they correlated with the predicted interaction energy of the cytoplasmic network, demonstrating its formation. Changing the interaction energy of the cytoplasmic network also had a profound effect on the kinetics of transport, indicating that formation of the network is a key step in the transport cycle. These results are consistent with a unique alternating access mechanism that involves the simultaneous rotation of the three domains around a central translocation pathway
Lubricated revolute joints in rigid multibody systems
The main purpose of this work is to present a general methodology for modeling lubricated revolute joints in constrained rigid multibody systems. In the dynamic analysis of journal-bearings, the hydrodynamic forces, which include both squeeze and wedge effects, generated by the lubricant fluid, oppose the journal motion. The hydrodynamic forces are obtained by integrating the pressure distribution evaluated with the aid of Reynolds’ equation, written for the dynamic regime. The hydrodynamic forces built up by the lubricant fluid are evaluated from the system state variables and included into the equations of motion of the multibody system. Numerical examples are presented in order to demonstrate the use of the methodologies and procedures described in this work.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT
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