Cadmium, Copper, Lead, and Zinc Contents of Fish Marketed in NW Mexico

To assess if they were within the safety limits for human consumption, the Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn contents of fish muscles, bought from separate stalls of the fish markets of nine cities of NW Mexico, were determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry. Considering all fish and markets, the mean contents were Zn: 23.23±5.83, Cu: 1.72±0.63, Cd: 0.27 ± 0.07, and Pb: 0.09 ± 0.04 µg/g (dry weight). Cu, Zn, and Pb did not reach levels of concern for human consumption, but the high Cd values determined in Mazatlán (Mugil cephalus: 0.48±0.15; Diapterus spp.: 0.57±0.33; Lutjanus spp.: 0.72±0.12; small shark: 0.87±0.19 µg/g dry weight) indicate that this was the only metal of concern for human health because the daily individual consumption of fish muscle to reach the PTDI would be within 0.27 and 0.41 kg

Interpretative and predictive modelling of Joint European Torus collisionality scans

Transport modelling of Joint European Torus (JET) dimensionless collisionality scaling experiments in various operational scenarios is presented. Interpretative simulations at a fixed radial position are combined with predictive JETTO simulations of temperatures and densities, using the TGLF transport model. The model includes electromagnetic effects and collisions as well as □(→┬E ) X □(→┬B ) shear in Miller geometry. Focus is on particle transport and the role of the neutral beam injection (NBI) particle source for the density peaking. The experimental 3-point collisionality scans include L-mode, and H-mode (D and H and higher beta D plasma) plasmas in a total of 12 discharges. Experimental results presented in (Tala et al 2017 44th EPS Conf.) indicate that for the H-mode scans, the NBI particle source plays an important role for the density peaking, whereas for the L-mode scan, the influence of the particle source is small. In general, both the interpretative and predictive transport simulations support the experimental conclusions on the role of the NBI particle source for the 12 JET discharges

Effect of photon fluence rates of white and blue-green light on growth efficiency and Pigment Content Of Three Diatom Species In Batch Cultures

This study provides information on the combined effect of light quality and photon fluence rates (light intensity) on growth efficiency and pigment content of the coastal plankton diatoms Chaetoceros sp., Skeletonema costatum and Thalassiosira pseudonana. The relative growth efficiencies of the three species were significantly higher at 210 µE m-2s-1, under mixed bluegreen light for Chaetoceros sp. and S. costatum, and with white light for T. pseudonana. The chlorophyll a contents of the three species grown under blue-green light, alone or mixed with white light, were significantly higher (P < 0.001) than those with white light and, in all cases, contents were lower at high photon fluence rates, while carotenoids showed inverse trends. The relative growth efficiencies of the three species were significantly different (P < 0.001). There were also changes in the relative pigment concentrations associated with the growth phase, probably due to autoshading

Semicontinuous cultures of Four microalgae with a nonconventional medium

Four microalgae, Chaetoceros sp., Phaeodactylum tricomutum Bohlin, Tetraselmis sp. and Pavlova lutheri (Droop) Hibberd, were kept in semicontinuous cultures at dilution rates between 75 and 15%, depending on species and medium. The quantity and quality of the biomass produced using a nonconventional culture medium were compared to that obtained with a traditional formulation. The biomass produced did not differ qualitatively as a result of medium or dilution rates, but the daily yield of Tetraselmis sp. and of Pavlova lutheri was significantly lower with the nonconventional medium. The best yields of Chaetoceros, Phaeodactylum, Tetraselmis and Pavlova were with dilution rates of 50, 60 and 40% for the conventional medium and 25, 70, 40 and 30% for the nonconventional formulation. The savings, in terms of cost of chemicals, range between 91 and 70%, depending on the grade of the chemicals and on the species in culture

A DC to HF Volume PEEC Formulation Based on Hertz Potentials and the Cell Method

A new Partial Element Equivalent Circuit formulation based on Hertz potentials and the Cell Method is presented. Conductive, dielectric, and magnetic linear-homogeneous media are considered by means of conduction, polarization, and magnetization current densities. The use of edge unknowns leads to reduce system size with respect to typical face-based approaches

Wildfire behaviour modelling for wildfire hazard characterization: an Earth Observation application

The study is intended as a contribution to the developement of a wildfire behaviour modelling methodology effective in wildfire hazard characterization on a local scale and providing an appropriate scientific information available in decision making processes for wildfire management. Satellite sensor technologies has been investigated in order to acquire updated and reliable input data with a suitable spatial and temporal resolution. The modelling methodology has been validated and calibrated to past events recorded in wildland fire databases of Umbria and Sardinia Regions. Afterwards, an heuristic local research method has been implemented to optimize the accuracy of the models and to estimate their predictive capacity

Fast Fourier transform-volume integral : a smart approach for the electromagnetic design of complex systems in large fusion devices

A volume integral (VI) equation method based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) is proposed for the electromagnetic simulation of complex systems in large magnetic confinement fusion (MCF) devices. Such FFT-VI allows for dramatically reducing the time and the human effort required to adapt the CAD input files to models suited for electromagnetic simulations. Moreover, with FFT-VI the mesh generation is performed automatically and is very efficient and robust. The adoption of the FFT allows for significantly reducing the computation time and the memory requirements, therefore making simulations with several millions of unknowns feasible. Numerical results show that, in terms of numerical performances, the FFT-VI method applied to challenging electromagnetic problems in representative MCF devices is markedly superior with respect to the state of the art VI techniques. A sample implementation of FFT-VI is made publicly available

Marching on-in-time unstructured PEEC method for electrically large structures with conductive, dielectric, and magnetic media

The Marching On-In-Time (MOT) unstructured Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) method for time domain electromagnetic problems is presented. The method allows the transient analysis of electrically large electromagnetic devices consisting of conductive, dielectric, and magnetic media coupled with external lumped circuits. By re-formulating PEEC following the Coulombian interpretation of magnetization phenomena and by using electric and magnetic vector potentials, the proposed approach allows for a completely equivalent treatment of electric and magnetic media and inhomogeneous and anisotropic materials are accounted for as well. With respect to the recently proposed Marching On-In-Time PEEC approach, based on the standard (structured) discretization of PEEC, the method presented in this paper uses a different space and time MOT discretization, which allows for a reduction in the number of the unknowns. Analytical and industrial test cases consisting in electrically large devices are considered (e.g., the model of a Neutral Beam Injector adopted in thermonuclear fusion applications). Results obtained from the simulations show that the proposed method is accurate and yields good performances. Moreover, when rich harmonic content transient phenomena are considered, the unstructured MOT\u2013PEEC method allows for a significant reduction of the memory and computation time when compared to techniques based on Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform applied to the frequency domain unstructured PEEC approach