Testing the inversion of asteroids' Gaia photometry combined with ground-based observations

We investigated the reliability of the genetic algorithm which will be used to invert the photometric measurements of asteroids collected by the European Space Agency Gaia mission. To do that, we performed several sets of simulations for 10 000 asteroids having different spin axis orientations, rotational periods and shapes. The observational epochs used for each simulation were extracted from the Gaia mission simulator developed at the Observatoire de la C\^{o}te d'Azur, while the brightness was generated using a Z-buffer standard graphic method. We also explored the influence on the inversion results of contaminating the data set with Gaussian noise with different $\sigma$ values. The research enabled us to determine a correlation between the reliability of the inversion method and the asteroid's pole latitude. In particular, the results are biased for asteroids having quasi-spherical shapes and low pole latitudes. This effect is caused by the low lightcurve amplitude observed under such circumstances, as the periodic signal can be lost in the photometric random noise when both values are comparable, causing the inversion to fail. Such bias might be taken into account when analysing the inversion results, not to mislead it with physical effects such as non-gravitational forces. Finally, we studied what impact on the inversion results has combining a full lightcurve and Gaia photometry collected simultaneously. Using this procedure we have shown that it is possible to reduce the number of wrong solutions for asteroids having less than 50 data points. The latter will be of special importance for planning ground-based observations of asteroids aiming to enhance the scientific impact of Gaia on Solar system science.Comment: Accepted in MNRA

Magnetite and its transformation to hematite in a soil derived from steatite.

O presente trabalho objetivou caracterizar o mineral magnetico e identificar suas rotas pedogeneticas de transformacao em um solo formado sobre esteatito, de Minas Gerais, Brasil. O oxido de ferro isoestrutural ao espinelio foi identificado e caracterizado por analises quimicas, difracao de raios X, espectroscopia Mossbauer e medidas de magnetizacao de saturacao. Na rocha fresca, foi encontrada magnetita estequiometrica e bem cristalizada, com parametro da rede cubica, ao = 0.8407(5) nm. Nas fracoes areia e silte, foram detectadas magnetita parcialmente alterada e hematita estequiometrica e bem cristalizada, com parametros de rede hexagonal, a = 0.5036(3) nm e c = 1.375(4)nm. A ocorrencia dessas hematitas deveu-se principalmente a oxidacao do Fe2+ a Fe3+, no sitio octaedrico de magnetita, durante a pedogenese. Esse processo foi caracterizado pelo aparecimento de pequena quantidade de Fe3+ eletronicamente desacoplada, encontrada nas magnetitas parcialmente oxidadas, cujas formulas para as diferentes estequiometrias foram propostas. Verificou-se tambem pequena quantidade de ilmenita nas amostras de rocha e de solo

Automatic detection of Acacia longifolia invasive species based on UAV-acquired aerial imagery

The Acacia longifolia species is known for its rapid growth and dissemination, causing loss of biodiversity in the affected areas. In order to avoid the uncontrolled spread of this species, it is important to effectively monitor its distribution on the agroforestry regions. For this purpose, this paper proposes the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) for the detection of Acacia longifolia, from images acquired by an unmanned aerial vehicle. Two models based on the same CNN architecture were elaborated. One classifies image patches into one of nine possible classes, which are later converted into a binary model; this model presented an accuracy of and in the validation and training sets, respectively. The second model was trained directly for binary classification and showed an accuracy of and for the validation and test sets, respectively. The results show that the use of multiple classes, useful to provide the aerial vehicle with richer semantic information regarding the environment, does not hamper the accuracy of Acacia longifolia detection in the classifier’s primary task. The presented system also includes a method for increasing classification’s accuracy by consulting an expert to review the model’s predictions on an automatically selected sub-set of the samples.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An educational game to teach children about air quality using augmented reality and tangible interaction with sensors

Air pollution is known to be one of the main causes of injuries to the respiratory system and even premature death. Gases, particles, and biological compounds affect not only the air we breathe outdoors, but also indoors. Children are highly affected by the poor quality of the air they breathe because their organs and immune systems are still in the developmental stages. To contribute to raising children’s awareness to these concerns, this article presents the design, implementation, and experimental validation of an serious augmented reality game for children to playfully learn about air quality by interacting with physical sensor nodes. The game presents visual representations of the pollutants measured by the sensor node, rendering tangible the invisible. Causal knowledge is elicited by stimulating the children to expose real-life objects (e.g., candles) to the sensor node. The playful experience is amplified by letting children play in pairs. The game was evaluated using the Wizard of Oz method in a sample of 27 children aged between 7 and 11 years. The results show that the proposed game, in addition to improving children’s knowledge about indoor air pollution, is also perceived by them as easy to use and a useful learning tool that they would like to continue using, even in other educational contexts.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Determination of the liquid pool surfactant and protein concentration for semi-batch foam fractionation columns

A model is derived for the change with time of the concentration of a surface-active component in the liquid pool of a semi-batch foam fractionation process. The transport of surface-active material to the gas-liquid interface was assumed to be limited by the mass transfer rates, and the concentration of the adsorbed material at the interface was assumed to be in equilibrium with the concentration of liquid adjacent to the bubble gas surface. This model was compared to experimental data obtained for semi-batch foam fractionation of aqueous solutions of bovine serum albumin and cetyltrimetylammonium bromide.114Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq

Effects of gluon number fluctuations on photon - photon collisions at high energies

We investigate the effects of gluon number fluctuations on the total $\gamma\gamma$, $\gamma^*\gamma^*$ cross sections and the photon structure function $F_2^\gamma(x,Q^2)$. Considering a model which relates the dipole-dipole and dipole-hadron scattering amplitudes, we estimate these observables by using event-by-event and physical amplitudes. We demonstrate that both analyses are able to describe the LEP data, but predict different behaviours for the observables at high energies, with the gluon fluctuations effects decreasing the cross sections. We conclude that the study of $\gamma \gamma$ interactions can be useful to constrain the QCD dynamics.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. Improved version with two new figures. Version to be published in Physical Review