Green functions of the damped wave equation and applications

This work presents some results on the Green Functions of the Damped Wave Equation. We exhibit its fundamental solution and we study it. This fundamental solution allows us to obtain the solution of the initial value problem when the initial conditions are general distributions. We also give conditions on these initial conditions that insure us uniqueness of solution. To this purpose we develop some theory about the semigroup, as an application, and we finally apply our results to the price evolution of an asset in a Financial Model we propose

Pigment composition of 'Hass' avocado and the extracted oil : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Technology in Food Technology at Massey University

The changes in the concentration of pigments in the skin and the three pulp sections of the Persea americana (Hass var.) and the extracted oil up to 13 days after harvest at 20°C were identified and quantified by High Pressure Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). In the fresh tissue, seven pigments identified belonging to the carotenoid family were lutein, β-carotene, neoxanthin, violaxanthin, zeaxanthin, antheraxanthin and α-carotene. Chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b, pheophytin a and pheophytin b, chlorophyllide a and chlorophyllide b were identified and measured. In the oil extracted using Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE), lutein and antheraxanthin were identified. Neoxanthin, violaxanthin and zeaxanthin were not present. The [β-carotene and α-carotene were not tested due to the limitation of the method used in the oil determination. Chlorophyllide a and chlorophyllide b were absent. In the pulp starting from the dark pulp adjacent to the skin towards the stone, the carotenoid and chlorophyll concentrations in the fresh tissue and the extracted oil both showed a decreasing pattern. The highest oil yield was found to be between days 6 and day 8 after harvest. The pigment composition patterns of the avocado fresh tissue correspond to that of the extracted oil. There was an on-going increase in the concentration of the total anthocyanins in the avocado skin. The major anthocyanin identified was cyanidin 3-O-glucoside. Cold pressed avocado oil in the laboratory and in a commercial factory with different levels of skin included during the malaxing were produced. The peroxide value, free fatty acid value, fatty acid composition and antifungal diene were measured to determine the quality of avocado oil with different levels of skin. These showed that the addition of skin had no effect on the quality of oil produced. The addition of skin during cold pressed extraction increased the pigment levels. The stability of factory cold pressed avocado oil with added skin was investigated using accelerated shelf life testing. The addition of skin during avocado oil production in the factory shortened the shelf life. Storage of avocado oil under dark and at lower temperatures (≤20°C) provided greater stability for avocado oil pigments. The levels of antifungal diene in the avocado oil were undetectable. The comprehensive data regarding pigment composition obtained in this research may be of used in food technology, nutrition, postharvest management and gene technology. Keywords: avocado fruit, avocado oil, pigments, colour, carotenoids, chlorophylls, anthocyanin, lutein, chlorophyll a chlorophyll b, chlorophyllides, pheophytins, accelerated solvent extraction, cold pressed extraction, diene, peroxide value, shelf life

Eastern European Countries and the EMU: departure situation and transition strategies.

The large amount of literatuture wihin the EMU makes compleatly imposible in one paper to analyze the consequences of the creation of a "monetary zone " in Europe. However, the recent decision of the European Council to incorporate in two phases the most of Eastern European Countires, introduces an interessant issue in order to evaluate the effects in terms of stability, future, dimension and optimality of a EMU based on 21 states. The paper starts explaining the baseic advances of the EMU, introducing some general data of the countries that are suposed to enter in future. As a second part of the paper the basic points of the Optimum Currency Areas will be established, and finally the third part would be an analysis of the future structure of the EMU using the OCA theory and and empirical analysis.

Syntactic parsing of unrestricted Spanish text

This research focusses on the syntactical parsing of morphologycal tagged corpora. A proposal for a corpus oriented Spanish grammar is presented in this document. This work has been developed in the framework of the ITEM project and its main goal is to provide multilingual background for information extraction and retrieval tasks. The main goal of Tacat analyser is to provide a way of obtaining large amounts of bracketed and parsed corpora, both general land specific domain. Tacat uses context free grammars and has as input following categories of Parole specification.The incremental methodology that we use allows us to recognise different levels of complexity in the analysis and to produce compatible outputs of all the grammars.Postprint (published version

Algo más que una promesa

La decisión de José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero de repatriar de forma inmediata la Brigada Plus Ultra, enviada a la zona centro-sur de Irak por el Gobierno Aznar, es algo más que el cumplimiento de una promesa electoral. El historiador francés Fernand Braudel escribió que cada generación se complace en negar a la anterior. Es una manera de decir que la clave de la sucesión histórica es la polémica entre padres e hijos y la acumulación entre abuelos y nietos. En política exterior suele pasar algo parecido cuando se ha roto el consenso. Los primeros pasos en política exterior de George W. Bush como presidente fueron resumidos acertadamente con la fórmula “ABC” (“Anything but Clinton”, cualquier cosa menos Clinton). Y José María Aznar hizo tres cuartos de lo mismo con Felipe González. Pero ahora, con la victoria electoral de José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, el ex presidente está conociendo la otra cara de la ausencia de consenso. La decisión de Zapatero de repatriar de forma inmediata la Brigada Plus Ultra, enviada a la zona centro-sur de Irak por el Gobierno Aznar, es algo más que el cumplimiento de una promesa electoral