1,803 research outputs found
Modeling and simulation of wetted porous thermal barriers operating under high temperature or high heat flux
Porous media with high water content can be successfully used as thermal barriers to operate under high exposure temperatures and/or high heat fluxes. Modeling and simulation of such systems presents difficulties and challenges, which are pointed and worked out in this work. Liquid water and water vapor transfers are considered, including the capillary effects for the liquid phase, as well as the air transfer inside the porous medium. Heat transfer model includes conduction, radiation, enthalpy convection, sensible heating and phase change. A realistic model is considered at the exposed boundary in what concerns mass transfer: the outflow mass transfer is dictated by the water effusion and not by the convection transfer mechanism between the exposed surface and the environment. A set of numerical aspects is detailed, concerning both the numerical modeling and the solution of the discretization equations, which are crucial to obtain successful simulations. Some illustrative results are presented, showing the potential of the wetted porous media when used as thermal barriers, as well as the capabilities of the presented physical and numerical models to deal with such systems.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V3H-4RKDHVC-2/1/633ef2cefc7a7e2178f1d59743e3d24
Classical Rotons in Cold Atomic Traps
We predict the emergence of a roton minimum in the dispersion relation of
elementary excitations in cold atomic gases in the presence of diffusive light.
In large magneto-topical traps, multiple-scattering of light is responsible for
the collective behavior of the system, which is associated to an effective
Coulomb-like interaction between the atoms. In optically thick clouds, the
re-scattered light undergoes diffusive propagation, which is responsible for a
stochastic short-range force acting on the atoms. We show that the dynamical
competition between these two forces results on a new polariton mode, which
exhibits a roton minimum. Making use of Feynman's formula for the static
structure factor, we show that the roton minimum is related to the appearance
of long-range order in the system.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Composição botânica da dieta consumida por bovinos em pastagens de quicuio-da-amazônia (Brachiaria humidicola) estabelecida em área de vegetação secundária.
Composição botânica da dieta consumida por bovinos em pastagens de quicuio-da-amazônia (Brachiaria humidicola) estabelecida em área de vegetação secundária através da análise microhistológica das fezes (2ª fase experimental).
Quantum Control of a Single Qubit
Measurements in quantum mechanics cannot perfectly distinguish all states and
necessarily disturb the measured system. We present and analyse a proposal to
demonstrate fundamental limits on quantum control of a single qubit arising
from these properties of quantum measurements. We consider a qubit prepared in
one of two non-orthogonal states and subsequently subjected to dephasing noise.
The task is to use measurement and feedback control to attempt to correct the
state of the qubit. We demonstrate that projective measurements are not optimal
for this task, and that there exists a non-projective measurement with an
optimum measurement strength which achieves the best trade-off between gaining
information about the system and disturbing it through measurement back-action.
We study the performance of a quantum control scheme that makes use of this
weak measurement followed by feedback control, and demonstrate that it realises
the optimal recovery from noise for this system. We contrast this approach with
various classically inspired control schemes.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, v2 includes new references and minor change
Inflammatory Mediators Release in Urine from Mice Injected with Crotalus durissus terrificus Venom
In this study, we investigated in groups of female BALB/c mice injected with Crotalus durissus terrificus venom (Cdt) the renal function based on creatinine clearance, percentage of fractional excretion cytokines and histological examination of renal tissue. Cdt caused renal alterations that induced proteinuria during the initial hours post-venom and reduced creatinine clearance 15 min. up to 2 hours post-venom administration. In urine from mice injected with Cdt induced a decrease in IL-4 levels. More pronounced increments of IL-5, IL-6 and IFN-γ were observed after 15 and 30 min, respectively. The highest levels of TNF and IL-10 were observed at 1 and 4 hs, respectively. The ratios of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines in animals injected with Cdt, which may be manifested in the inflammatory status during the envenoming. In groups of animals treated with Cdt were observed a decreasing in creatinine clearance and its effect on glomerular filtration rate was accompanied by decreased fractional excretion of cytokines and morphologic disturbances. This loss of change selectively in envenomation could thus explain why the relatively excretion of cytokines is reduced while of total proteins increases. In conclusion the fractional excretion of
cytokines is significantly reduced in mice injected with Cdt, despite proteinuria
Gravitational Optics: Self-phase modulation and harmonic cascades
Nonlinear wave interaction of low amplitude gravitational waves in flat
space-time is considered. Analogy with optics is established. It is shown that
the flat metric space-time is equivalent to a centro-symmetric optical medium,
with no second order susceptibility. The lowest order nonlinear effects are
those due to the third order nonlinearity and include self-phase modulation and
high harmonic generation. These processes lead to an efficient energy dilution
of the gravitational wave energy over an increasingly large spectral range.Comment: 12 pages, REVTEX
How do diversity and functional nestedness of bird communities respond to changes in the landscape caused by eucalyptus plantations?
Studies of functional diversity can help to understand processes that determine the presence of species in different habitats. Measurement of functional diversity in silviculture areas is important because different functional traits can show different responses to this landscape alteration, and therefore ecological functions can be affected. This study evaluated functional and taxonomic differences in bird assemblages in a native forest and eucalyptus plantations, and also assessed the functional nestedness of the bird species. We censused birds in eucalyptus plantations of four different ages, and also in a native forest. The results showed higher functional and taxonomic diversity of birds in the native forest than in plantations and higher similarity of functional traits between plantations of different ages. The high functional diversity in the native forest indicates a greater variety of functional traits, resulting in greater functional complementarity than in plantations. The association of some traits with the native forest, such as nectarivory and foraging in air, indicates the importance of native habitats in maintaining species and functions related to such traits. Already, species traits in eucalyptus plantations represent a subset of those that were recorded in the native forest, indicating that some functions are maintained in plantations. Our results demonstrate that the species occurrence in the plantations and native forest is determined by species traits. Thus, the maintenance of some functions in plantations is provided, although there is a higher functional diversity in native forest
Partitioned trace distances
New quantum distance is introduced as a half-sum of several singular values
of difference between two density operators. This is, up to factor, the metric
induced by so-called Ky Fan norm. The partitioned trace distances enjoy similar
properties to the standard trace distance, including the unitary invariance,
the strong convexity and the close relations to the classical distances. The
partitioned distances cannot increase under quantum operations of certain kind
including bistochastic maps. All the basic properties are re-formulated as
majorization relations. Possible applications to quantum information processing
are briefly discussed.Comment: 8 pages, no figures. Significant changes are made. New section on
majorization is added. Theorem 4.1 is extended. The bibliography is enlarged
L2F/INESC-ID at SemEval-2019 Task 2: unsupervised lexical semantic frame induction using contextualized word representations
Building large datasets annotated with semantic information, such as FrameNet, is an expensive process. Consequently, such resources are unavailable for many languages and specific domains. This problem can be alleviated by using unsupervised approaches to induce the frames evoked by a collection of documents. That is the objective of the second task of SemEval 2019, which comprises three subtasks: clustering of verbs that evoke the same frame and clustering of arguments into both frame-specific slots and semantic roles. We approach all the subtasks by applying a graph clustering algorithm on contextualized embedding representations of the verbs and arguments. Using such representations is appropriate in the context of this task, since they provide cues for word-sense disambiguation. Thus, they can be used to identify different frames evoked by the same words. Using this approach we were able to outperform all of the baselines reported for the task on the test set in terms of Purity F1, as well as in terms of BCubed F1 in most cases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
- …