Multiplicity fluctuations in hadron-hadron and nucleus-nucleus collisions and percolation of strings

We argue that recent NA49 results on multiparticle distributions and fluctuations, as a function of the number of participant nucleons, suggest that percolation plays an important role in particle production at high densities.Comment: 13 pages, 5 eps figures, late

Rapidity and energy dependence of average transverse momentum and particle density in saturation models

Saturation models -- colour glass condensate and string percolation -- impose a strict relation between the average transverse momentum, , and the rapidity particle densities, dn/dy. By combining this relation with an appropriate evolution equation for dn/dy, and imposing energy-momentum conservation, we obtain a fair description of data, for generic AB collisions (hadron-hadron, hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus) at all rapidities and (high) energies. Predictions are given for the LHC.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Forward-Backward rapidity correlations at all rapidities

We discuss forward-bacward rapidity correlations in the general situation of asymmetrical collisions, asymmetric rapidity windows, higher rapidities and higher energy. We give predictions for RHIC and LHC.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Limiting fragmentation in heavy-ion collisions and percolation of strings

The observed limiting fragmentation of charged particle distributions in heavy ion collisions is difficult to explain as it does not apply to the proton spectrum itself. On the other hand, string percolation provides a mechanism to regenerate fast particles, eventually compensating the rapidity shift (energy loss) of the nucleons. However a delicate energy-momentum compensation is required, and in our framework we see no reason for limiting fragmentation to be exact. A prediction, based on percolation arguments, is given for the charged particle density in the full rapidity interval at LHC energy $(\sqrt s =5500 GeV)$.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures (2 eps files), late

Using geolocated tweets for characterization of Twitter in Portugal and the Portuguese administrative regions

The information published by the millions of public social network users is an important source of knowledge that can be used in academic, socioeconomic or demographic studies (distribution of male and female population, age, marital status, birth), lifestyle analysis (interests, hobbies, social habits) or be used to study online behavior (time spent online, interaction with friends or discussion about brands, products or politics). This work uses a database of about 27 million Portuguese geolocated tweets, produced in Portugal by 97.8 K users during a 1-year period, to extract information about the behavior of the geolocated Portuguese Twitter community and show that with this information it is possible to extract overall indicators such as: the daily periods of increased activity per region; prediction of regions where the concentration of the population is higher or lower in certain periods of the year; how do regional habitants feel about life; or what is talked about in each region. We also analyze the behavior of the geolocated Portuguese Twitter users based on the tweeted contents, and find indications that their behavior differs in certain relevant aspect from other Twitter communities, hypothesizing that this is in part due to the abnormal high percentage of young teenagers in the community. Finally, we present a small case study on Portuguese tourism in the Algarve region. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first study that shows geolocated Portuguese users' behavior in Twitter focusing on geographic regional use.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

MISNIS: an intelligent platform for Twitter topic mining

Twitter has become a major tool for spreading news, for dissemination of positions and ideas, and for the commenting and analysis of current world events. However, with more than 500 million tweets flowing per day, it is necessary to find efficient ways of collecting, storing, managing, mining and visualizing all this information. This is especially relevant if one considers that Twitter has no ways of indexing tweet contents, and that the only available categorization “mechanism” is the #hashtag, which is totally dependent of a user's will to use it. This paper presents an intelligent platform and framework, named MISNIS - Intelligent Mining of Public Social Networks’ Influence in Society - that facilitates these issues and allows a non-technical user to easily mine a given topic from a very large tweet's corpus and obtain relevant contents and indicators such as user influence or sentiment analysis. When compared to other existent similar platforms, MISNIS is an expert system that includes specifically developed intelligent techniques that: (1) Circumvent the Twitter API restrictions that limit access to 1% of all flowing tweets. The platform has been able to collect more than 80% of all flowing portuguese language tweets in Portugal when online; (2) Intelligently retrieve most tweets related to a given topic even when the tweets do not contain the topic #hashtag or user indicated keywords. A 40% increase in the number of retrieved relevant tweets has been reported in real world case studies. The platform is currently focused on Portuguese language tweets posted in Portugal. However, most developed technologies are language independent (e.g. intelligent retrieval, sentiment analysis, etc.), and technically MISNIS can be easily expanded to cover other languages and locations

Espirais e Hélices - Do Polímero mais abundante da natureza

A celulose é o polímero renovável mais abundante do mundo. É o principal constituinte das paredes celulares das plantas, as quais constituem a sua principal fonte

Precoder and combiner design for generalized spatial modulation based multiuser MIMO systems

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) schemes based on generalized spatial modulations (GSM) have been widely considered as potential candidate techniques for next-generation wireless networks, as they can improve both spectral and energy efficiency. In this paper we propose a multi-user MIMO system, where a base station transmits precoded GSM symbols to several receivers. In the adopted GSM approach, multiple antennas transmit different high-level QAM symbols simultaneously. The precoder is designed in order to remove interference between users while an iterative algorithm is applied at the receiver to accomplish single-user GSM detection. Simulation results show that the presented GSM MU-MIMO approach is capable to effectively exploit a large number of transmit antennas deployed at the transmitter and also provide performance gains over conventional MU-MIMO schemes with identical spectral efficiencies.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

When the Diagnosis is a Victim of the Circumstances

Introduction: Haemoptysis is a common symptom which can sometimes mimic gastrointestinal bleeding. Case description: We describe the case of a 31-year-old man who presented to the emergency department after an episode of sudden nausea and presumed massive haematemesis. The situation was interpreted as gastrointestinal bleeding but clinical evolution and greater attention to the anamnesis resulted in a diagnosis of pulmonary tuberculosis and the provision of appropriate care. Discussion: This report emphasizes the difficulty of differentiating between haemoptysis and haematemesis and the importance of a careful anamnesis and attention to all clinical circumstances for an accurate diagnosis. Learning points: Haematemesis and haemoptysis are not always distinguished from each other when a patient's history is being collected.Despite being a rare manifestation of tuberculosis, in the correct epidemiological context, haemoptysis should raise the suspicion of pulmonary tuberculosis.The clinical setting and the need for immediate care should not limit clinical investigation or the differential diagnosis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio