A Stochastic Texture-based Approach for Evaluating Solute Travel Times to Groundwater at Regional Scale by Coupling GIS and Transfer Function

AbstractInterpreting and predicting the evolution of non-point source (NPS) pollution of soil and surface and subsurface water from agricultural chemicals and pathogens, as well as overexploitation of groundwater resources at regional scale are continuing challenges for natural scientists. The presence and build up of NPS pollutants may be harmful for both soil and groundwater resources. Accordingly, this study mainly aims to developing a regional-scale simulation methodology for groundwater vulnerability that use real soil profiles data. A stochastic approach will be applied to account for the effect of vertical heterogeneity on variability of solute transport in the vadose zone. The approach relies on available datasets and offers quantitative answers to soil and groundwater vulnerability to non-point source of chemicals at regional scale within a defined confidence interval. The study area is located in the Metaponto agricultural site, Basilicata Region-South Italy, covering approximately 12000 hectares. Chloride will be considered as a generic pollutant for simulation purposes. The methodology is based on three sequential steps: 1) designing and building of a spatial database containing environmental and physical information regarding the study area, 2) developing travel time distributions for specific textural sequences in the soil profile, coming from texture-based transfer functions, 3) final representation of results through digital mapping. Distributed output of soil pollutant leaching behavior, with corresponding statistical uncertainties, will be visualized in GIS maps. Of course, this regional-scale methodology may be extended to any specific pollutants for any soil, climatic and land use conditions

Cosmological Perturbations from the Standard Model Higgs

We propose that the Standard Model (SM) Higgs is responsible for generating the cosmological perturbations of the universe by acting as an isocurvature mode during a de Sitter inflationary stage. In view of the recent ATLAS and CMS results for the Higgs mass, this can happen if the Hubble rate during inflation is in the range $(10^{10}- 10^{14})$ GeV (depending on the SM parameters). Implications for the detection of primordial tensor perturbations through the $B$-mode of CMB polarization via the PLANCK satellite are discussed. For example, if the Higgs mass value is confirmed to be $m_h=125.5$ GeV and $m_t, \alpha_s$ are at their central values, our mechanism predicts tensor perturbations too small to be detected in the near future. On the other hand, if tensor perturbations will be detected by PLANCK through the $B$-mode of CMB, then there is a definite relation between the Higgs and top masses, making the mechanism predictive and falsifiable.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures. Minor corrections and references added to match published versio

Non-Gaussianities from the Standard Model Higgs

We have recently proposed that the Standard Model Higgs might be responsible for generating the cosmological perturbations of the universe by acting as an isocurvature mode during a de Sitter inflationary stage. In this paper we study the level of non-Gaussianity in the cosmological perturbations which are inevitably generated due to the non-linearities of the Standard Model Higgs potential. In particular, for the current central value of the top mass, we find that a future detection of non-Gaussianity would exclude the detection of tensor modes by the PLANCK satellite

High-density mapping to guide ablation of a right bundle branch morphology premature ventricular contraction from the right outflow tract

The Rhythmia ultrahigh-density mapping system with a specific algorithm seems to be helpful in identifying the target area to successfully treat multiple morphologies by catheter ablation in the right ventricular outflow tract RVOT. Interestingly, the acquisition process seemed to be extremely faster than a standard manual point-by-point premature ventricular contraction (PVC) mapping

3-(2,4-Dibromo­anilino)-2,2-dimethyl-2,3-dihydro­naphtho[1,2-b]furan-4,5-dione: a new substituted aryl­amino nor-β-lapachone derivative

The title compound, C20H15Br2NO3, shows the furan ring to adopt a half-chair conformation and the two ring systems to be approximately perpendicular [dihedral angle = 71.0 (2)°]. In the crystal structure, inter­molecular C—H⋯O contacts link the mol­ecules

Quantum Resonant Leptogenesis and Minimal Lepton Flavour Violation

It has been recently shown that the quantum Boltzmann equations may be relevant for the leptogenesis scenario. In particular, they lead to a time-dependent CP asymmetry which depends upon the previous dynamics of the system. This memory effect in the CP asymmetry is particularly important in resonant leptogenesis where the asymmetry is generated by the decays of nearly mass-degenerate right-handed neutrinos. We study the impact of the non-trivial time evolution of the CP asymmetry in the so-called Minimal Lepton Flavour Violation framework where the charged-lepton and the neutrino Yukawa couplings are the only irreducible sources of lepton-flavour symmetry breaking and resonant leptogenesis is achieved. We show that significant quantitative differences arise with respect to the case in which the time dependence of the CP asymmetry is neglected.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figure

Efeito do Envelhecimento nas Manifestações Fonoaudiológicas da Doença de Machado-Joseph: relato de um caso

Resumo: A doença de Machado-Joseph (DMJ) é uma degeneração espinocerebelar autossômica dominante que acarreta perdas funcionais progressivas e dependência ao indivíduo. Este trabalho descreve o acompanhamento fonoaudiológico de uma paciente de 60 anos, portadora de DMJ, encaminhada do Serviço de Genética ao Serviço de Fisiatria do Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA). Sob a avaliação fonoaudiológica, confirmou-se o comprometimento da deglutição e da fala sendo indicada a realização diária de exercícios miofuncionais orofaríngeos. Após o período de tratamento, a queixa de engasgos ainda ocorria, diferente do que é observado durante o acompanhamento de pacientes mais jovens com o mesmo quadro funcional. Esse resultado poderia tanto ser decorrente de perdas específicas do envelhecimento quanto da falta de motivação para realizar as prescrições, o que torna este relato relevante para o aprofundamento da prática fonoaudiológica. Palavras-chave: Doença de Machado-Joseph. Envelhecimento. Disfagia. Disartria. Fonoaudiologia. Reabilitação. Abstract: Machado-Joseph disease (MJD) is an autossomal dominant spinocerebellar degeneration which causes progressive functional losses and dependence. This work describes the speech-language therapy follow-up of a 60 year-old female patient with MJD, referred from Serviço de Genética to Serviço de Fisiatria of Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA). A speech-language therapy assessment confirmed that swallowing and speech were affected, and the daily practice of myofunctional oral-pharingeal exercises was recommended. Following the treatment period, the patient still complained about gasps, unlike what has been found in the follow-up of younger patients with the same functional picture. This result may have been due to either the aging specific losses or the lack of motivation to carry out recommendations, which makes this report relevant to the understanding of the speech-language therapy practice. Keywords: Machado-Joseph Disease. Aging. Dysphagia. Dysarthria. Speech-Language Therapy. Rehabilitation

On the Importance of Electroweak Corrections for Majorana Dark Matter Indirect Detection

Recent analyses have shown that the inclusion of electroweak corrections can alter significantly the energy spectra of Standard Model particles originated from dark matter annihilations. We investigate the important situation where the radiation of electroweak gauge bosons has a substantial influence: a Majorana dark matter particle annihilating into two light fermions. This process is in p-wave and hence suppressed by the small value of the relative velocity of the annihilating particles. The inclusion of electroweak radiation eludes this suppression and opens up a potentially sizeable s-wave contribution to the annihilation cross section. We study this effect in detail and explore its impact on the fluxes of stable particles resulting from the dark matter annihilations, which are relevant for dark matter indirect searches. We also discuss the effective field theory approach, pointing out that the opening of the s-wave is missed at the level of dimension-six operators and only encoded by higher orders.Comment: 25 pages, 6 figures. Minor corrections to match version published in JCA

Relativistic effects and primordial non-Gaussianity in the galaxy bias

When dealing with observables, one needs to generalize the bias relation between the observed galaxy fluctuation field to the underlying matter distribution in a gauge-invariant way. We provide such relation at second-order in perturbation theory adopting the local Eulerian bias model and starting from the observationally motivated uniform-redshift gauge. Our computation includes the presence of primordial non-Gaussianity. We show that large scale-dependent relativistic effects in the Eulerian bias arise independently from the presence of some primordial non-Gaussianity. Furthermore, the Eulerian bias inherits from the primordial non-Gaussianity not only a scale-dependence, but also a modulation with the angle of observation when sources with different biases are correlated.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX file; version accepted for publication in JCA

Can AMS-02 discriminate the origin of an anti-proton signal?

Indirect searches can be used to test dark matter models against expected signals in various channels, in particular antiprotons. With antiproton data available soon at higher and higher energies, it is important to test the dark matter hypothesis against alternative astrophysical sources, e.g. econdaries accelerated in supernova remnants. We investigate the two signals from different dark matter models and different supernova remnant parameters, as forecasted for the AMS-02, and show that they present a significant degeneracy