Entropy, non-ergodicity and non-Gaussian behaviour in ballistic transport

Ballistic transportation introduces new challenges in the thermodynamic properties of a gas of particles. For example, violation of mixing, ergodicity and of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem may occur, since all these processes are connected. In this work, we obtain results for all ranges of diffusion, i.e., both for subdiffusion and superdiffusion, where the bath is such that it gives origin to a colored noise. In this way we obtain the skewness and the non-Gaussian factor for the probability distribution function of the dynamical variable. We put particular emphasis on ballistic diffusion, and we demonstrate that in this case, although the second law of thermodynamics is preserved, the entropy does not reach a maximum and a non-Gaussian behavior occurs. This implies the non-applicability of the central limit theorem.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figure

Antagonistic Effect of Eight Sri Lankan Isolates of Pseudomonas fluorescens on, Meloidogyne incognita in Tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum

The study was conducted to determine the efficacy of Pseudomonas fluorescens isolates collected from eight locations in the Central Province of Sri Lanka against Meloidogyne incognita in tomato. Isolates were tested under laboratory conditions to determine the efficacy on egg hatchability and mortality of second stage juveniles. A planthouse experiment was conducted using potted tomato plants to determine the potential of P. fluorescens isolates and effective application technique. All tested isolates have significantly inhibited egg hatchability and increased the juvenile mortality after 72 hours. P. fluorescens isolate from Kangkung field in Pallekelle (PK) and tomato field in Udispattuwa (UT I) recorded 95% and 95.5% inhibition of egg hatchability after 72 hours. P. fluorescens isolates collected from tomato fields in Bopane (BT II) and Udispattuwa (UT II) and from Kangkung field in Pallekelle recorded the higher mortality of second stage juveniles 93%, 87% and 83.3% respectively. The highest reduction in the root knots (96.8%, 96.3%), egg masses (98.5%, 98.2%) and lower root galling index (1 and 1) were recorded in tomato plants treated as soil drench with UT II and PK isolates respectively.The root dipping technique gave higher reduction in the number of root knots (47.4%), egg masses (44.9%) and lower root galling index (3.75) were recorded from BT II, UT II and tomato fields in Nugethenna (NT) isolates respectively. UT II and PK found to be the most effective isolates and most effective application technique determined as soil drenching ten days after transplanting under plant house conditions

VirtualECare: group support in collaborative networks organizations for digital homecare

Collaborative Work plays an important role in today’s organizations and normally in areas where decisions must be made. However, any decision that involves a collective or group of decision makers is, by itself, complex but is becoming normal in recent years. In this work we present the VirtualECare project (Figure 10), intelligent multi‐agent system able to monitor, interact and serve its customers, which are, normally, in need of care services. In the last years there has been a substantially increase in the number of people needed of intensive care, especially among the elderly, a phenomenon that is related to population ageing. However, this is not exclusive of the elderly, as diseases as obesity, diabetes, and blood pressure have been increasing among young adults. As a new reality, it has to be dealt by the health sector, and particularly by the public one. Thus, the importance of finding new and cost effective ways for health care delivery are of particular importance, especially when one want them not to be removed from their “habitat”. Following this line of thinking, the VirtualECare project will be presented, like similar ones that preceded it. Recently we have assisted to a growing interest in combining the advances in information society ‐ computing, telecommunications and presentation – in order to create Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS). Indeed, the new economy, along with increased competition in today’s complex business environments, takes the companies to seek complementarities in order to increase competitiveness and reduce risks. Under these scenarios, planning takes a major role in a company life. However, effective planning depends on the generation and analysis of ideas (innovative or not) and, as a result, the idea generation and management processes are crucial. Our objective is to apply the above presented GDSS to a new area. We believe that the use of GDSS in the healthcare arena will allow professionals to achieve better results in the analysis of one’s Electronically Clinical Profile (ECP). This achievement is vital, regarding the explosion of knowledge and skills, together with the need to use limited resources and get better results

Quantum transport and momentum conserving dephasing

We study numerically the influence of momentum-conserving dephasing on the transport in a disordered chain of scatterers. Loss of phase memory is caused by coupling the transport channels to dephasing reservoirs. In contrast to previously used models, the dephasing reservoirs are linked to the transport channels between the scatterers, and momentum conserving dephasing can be investigated. Our setup provides a model for nanosystems exhibiting conductance quantization at higher temperatures in spite of the presence of phononic interaction. We are able to confirm numerically some theoretical predictions.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Low-energy electron scattering from methanol and ethanol

Measured and calculated differential cross sections for elastic (rotationally unresolved) electron scattering from two primary alcohols, methanol (CH3OH) and ethanol (C2H5OH), are reported. The measurements are obtained using the relative flow method with helium as the standard gas and a thin aperture as the collimating target gas source. The relative flow method is applied without the restriction imposed by the relative flow pressure conditions on helium and the unknown gas. The experimental data were taken at incident electron energies of 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 50, and 100 eV and for scattering angles of 5°–130°. There are no previous reports of experimental electron scattering differential cross sections for CH3OH and C2H5OH in the literature. The calculated differential cross sections are obtained using two different implementations of the Schwinger multichannel method, one that takes all electrons into account and is adapted for parallel computers, and another that uses pseudopotentials and considers only the valence electrons. Comparison between theory and experiment shows that theory is able to describe low-energy electron scattering from these polyatomic targets quite well

Witnessing causal nonseparability

Our common understanding of the physical world deeply relies on the notion that events are ordered with respect to some time parameter, with past events serving as causes for future ones. Nonetheless, it was recently found that it is possible to formulate quantum mechanics without any reference to a global time or causal structure. The resulting framework includes new kinds of quantum resources that allow performing tasks - in particular, the violation of causal inequalities - which are impossible for events ordered according to a global causal order. However, no physical implementation of such resources is known. Here we show that a recently demonstrated resource for quantum computation - the quantum switch - is a genuine example of "indefinite causal order". We do this by introducing a new tool - the causal witness - which can detect the causal nonseparability of any quantum resource that is incompatible with a definite causal order. We show however that the quantum switch does not violate any causal nequality.Comment: 15 + 12 pages, 5 figures. Published versio

Avaliação do padrão de visitação de Apis mellifera em três cultivares de meloeiro em Petrolina-PE, Brasil.

Para o cultivo do meloeiro, a presença de abelhas no período de florescimento é fundamental para garantir a polinização e incrementar a produção de frutos. Nesse sentido, objetivou-se verificar se há diferenças no comportamento de visitas e no recurso floral forrageado por Apis mellifera, em três cultivares de meloeiro. O trabalho foi desenvolvido no Campo Experimental da Embrapa Semiárido, em Petrolina-PE, com as cultivares do tipo Amarelo (BRS Araguaia), Pele-de-Sapo (P-33) e Cantaloupe (CAN-4), com observações da biologia floral, morfologia e comportamento de A. mellifera no período de 05h00 às 18h00. O pico de visitação foi diferente, ocorrendo de 11h00 às 12h00; 10h00 às 11h00 e de 15h00 às 16h00 para o tipo amarelo, cantaloupe e pele de sapo respectivamente. Quanto ao recurso floral forrageado, a coleta de néctar foi constante ao longo do dia, enquanto que a de pólen ocorreu principalmente no período da manhã. Quanto ao tipo floral, as flores hermafroditas receberam, de modo geral, mais visitas na cultivar do tipo amarelo e pele-de-sapo, sendo o inverso registrado para a do tipo cantaloupe. O maior número de visitas registrado nesse tipo floral pode ser atribuído às diferenças morfológicas, uma vez que suas flores são maiores e, portanto, poderiam ser mais atrativa

Good practices for a literature survey are not followed by authors while preparing scientific manuscripts

The number of citations received by authors in scientific journals has become a major parameter to assess individual researchers and the journals themselves through the impact factor. A fair assessment therefore requires that the criteria for selecting references in a given manuscript should be unbiased with respect to the authors or the journals cited. In this paper, we advocate that authors should follow two mandatory principles to select papers (later reflected in the list of references) while studying the literature for a given research: i) consider similarity of content with the topics investigated, lest very related work should be reproduced or ignored; ii) perform a systematic search over the network of citations including seminal or very related papers. We use formalisms of complex networks for two datasets of papers from the arXiv repository to show that neither of these two criteria is fulfilled in practice