2,363 research outputs found
Water Management Efficiency in the Food and Beverage Industry
Water is critical for food production, food security, and health. Water quality management influences freshwater sustainability, land, and energy administration. Global agriculture accounts for more than 70% of all water consumption; the fertilizer, manure, and pesticide overspills are chief sources of water pollution worldwide. On a global scale, food-related waste directly impacts local food production and water resource management. The purpose of this multiple-case study on the food and beverage (FB) industry in the State of Georgia was to identify successful strategies for improving water management efficiency. The concepts of systems thinking, adaptive resource management, and integrated water resource management provided the conceptual framework for the study. Data were collected via personal interviews with 2 global supply chain leaders in the FB industry and 1 water expert in the public water utility system in Georgia. The findings showed 10 themes: sustainability; mission-driven culture; ethical responsibility; water quality and governance; food safety and sanitation; water conservation and climatic trends; waste management; nutrition and the freeze drying method; knowledge sharing and collaboration; and water detention and retention systems. The study results are intended to contribute to social change by providing information to global supply chain leaders, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and sustainability leaders to implement sustainability beyond the environmental value; these findings will also help achieve a positive posture on resource overconsumption and waste management for efficient and complex decision making within a worldwide spectrum
First bounds on the high-energy emission from isolated Wolf-Rayet binary systems
High-energy gamma-ray emission is theoretically expected to arise in tight
binary star systems (with high mass loss and high velocity winds), although the
evidence of this relationship has proven to be elusive so far. Here we present
the first bounds on this putative emission from isolated Wolf-Rayet (WR) star
binaries, WR 147 and WR 146, obtained from observations with the MAGIC
telescope.Comment: (Authors are the MAGIC Collaboration.) Manuscript in press at The
Astrophysical Journal Letter
Observation of Pulsed Gamma-rays Above 25 GeV from the Crab Pulsar with MAGIC
One fundamental question about pulsars concerns the mechanism of their pulsed
electromagnetic emission. Measuring the high-end region of a pulsar's spectrum
would shed light on this question. By developing a new electronic trigger, we
lowered the threshold of the Major Atmospheric gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov
(MAGIC) telescope to 25 GeV. In this configuration, we detected pulsed
gamma-rays from the Crab pulsar that were greater than 25 GeV, revealing a
relatively high cutoff energy in the phase-averaged spectrum. This indicates
that the emission occurs far out in the magnetosphere, hence excluding the
polar-cap scenario as a possible explanation of our measurement. The high
cutoff energy also challenges the slot-gap scenario.Comment: Slight modification of the analysis: Fitting a more general function
to the combined data set of COMPTEL, EGRET and MAGIC. Final result and
conclusion is unchange
Simultaneous multi-frequency observation of the unknown redshift blazar PG 1553+113 in March-April 2008
The blazar PG 1553+113 is a well known TeV gamma-ray emitter. In this paper,
we determine its spectral energy distribution using simultaneous
multi-frequency data in order to study its emission processes. An extensive
campaign was carried out between March and April 2008, where optical, X-ray,
high-energy (HE) gamma-ray, and very-high-energy (VHE) gamma-ray data were
obtained with the KVA, Abastumani, REM, RossiXTE/ASM, AGILE and MAGIC
telescopes, respectively. This is the first simultaneous broad-band (i.e.,
HE+VHE) gamma-ray observation, though AGILE did not detect the source. We
combine data to derive source's spectral energy distribution and interpret its
double peaked shape within the framework of a synchrotron self compton modelComment: 5 pages, 2 figures, publishe
Probing quantum gravity using photons from a flare of the active galactic nucleus Markarian 501 observed by the MAGIC telescope
We analyze the timing of photons observed by the MAGIC telescope during a
flare of the active galactic nucleus Mkn 501 for a possible correlation with
energy, as suggested by some models of quantum gravity (QG), which predict a
vacuum refractive index \simeq 1 + (E/M_{QGn})^n, n = 1,2. Parametrizing the
delay between gamma-rays of different energies as \Delta t =\pm\tau_l E or
\Delta t =\pm\tau_q E^2, we find \tau_l=(0.030\pm0.012) s/GeV at the 2.5-sigma
level, and \tau_q=(3.71\pm2.57)x10^{-6} s/GeV^2, respectively. We use these
results to establish lower limits M_{QG1} > 0.21x10^{18} GeV and M_{QG2} >
0.26x10^{11} GeV at the 95% C.L. Monte Carlo studies confirm the MAGIC
sensitivity to propagation effects at these levels. Thermal plasma effects in
the source are negligible, but we cannot exclude the importance of some other
source effect.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, Phys. Lett. B, reflects published versio
Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV
The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8 TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum
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