INFLUÊNCIA NEOTECTÔNICA NO ESTABELECIMENTO DOS VALES DOS RIOS PARAÍBA E MAMANGUAPE, NORTE DA BACIA PARAÍBA (PB)

Evidências geológicas e geomorfológicas de atividade neotectônica têm sido crescentes em diversas áreas do nordeste brasileiro, apesar dessa região ser considerada como tectonicamente estável dada sua localização na margem passiva da placa Sulamericana. Grande parte desse registro neotectônico ocorre na Bacia Paraíba, caracterizada por altos e baixos topográficos e por sistemas de drenagem com feições anômalas. Publicações prévias propuseram que cursos fluviais terminais desta bacia, como é o caso dos rios Paraíba e Mamanguape, estão confinados a grabens. Porém, faltam dados geológicos e geomorfológicos que comprovem essa interpretação. Este trabalho reúne informações estratigráficas de subsuperfície com dados morfoestruturais que permitem sustentar a hipótese de controle neotectônico no desenvolvimento dos cursos terminais dos rios Paraíba e Mamanguape. Para isso, a análise morfoestrutural derivada de produtos de sensoriamento remoto foi integrada com a correlação estratigráfica regional com base em dados de subsuperfície. A análise morfoestrutural revelou lineamentos compatíveis com a orientação de estruturas tectônicas regionais dominantes no nordeste brasileiro, bem como uma variedade de anomalias de drenagem. A correlação estratigráfica mostrou variações expressivas nas espessuras dos estratos sedimentares em curtas distâncias, que são sugestivas da presença de falhas. Atividades tectônicas teriam ocorrido no Neógeno, ou seja, durante a deposição da Formação Barreiras, bem como no Quaternário tardio, após a deposição dos Sedimentos Pós-Barreiras. Portanto, o mais provável é que o estabelecimento dos vales fluviais dos rios Paraíba e Mamanguape tenha ocorrido em grabens formados por reativações de falhas pré-existentes no embasamento précambriano.</p

Pulsed FCAW of Martensitic Stainless Clads onto Mild Steel: Microstructure, Hardness, and Residual Stresses

The low carbon martensitic stainless AWS 410NiMo steel has in its chemical composition 13% chromium, 4% nickel, and 0.4% molybdenum (wt.%) and is used in turbine recovery, rotors, and high-pressure steam pump housings due to its resistance to impact at low temperatures, as well as to corrosion and cavitation. Those applications of the AWS 410NiMo steel frequently demand repair, which is performed by welding or cladding. Arc welding is a well-established technique for joining materials and presents several parameters that influence the mechanical performance of the weld bead. Although numerous welding processes exist, optimizing welding parameters for specific applications and materials is always challenging. The present work deals with a systematic study to verify the correlation between the pulsed fluxed core arc welding (FCAW) parameters, namely pulse current and frequency, welding speed, and contact tip work distance (CTWD), and the bead morphology, microstructure formation, residual stress, and hardness of the martensitic clad. The substrate used was the AISI 1020 steel, and the AWS 410NiMo steel was the filler metal for clad deposition. From the initial nine (9) samples, three (3) were selected for in-depth characterization. Lower heat input resulted in lower dilution, more elevated hardness, and lower compressive residual stresses. Therefore, the results highlight the need for selecting the proper heat input, even when using a pulsed FCAW procedure, to achieve the desired performance of the clad. In the present case, a higher heat input appears to be more advantageous owing to the lower convexity index, smooth hardness transition between fusion and heat-affected zones in addition to more elevated compressive stresses.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Juxtaposing BTE and ATE – on the role of the European insurance industry in funding civil litigation

One of the ways in which legal services are financed, and indeed shaped, is through private insurance arrangement. Two contrasting types of legal expenses insurance contracts (LEI) seem to dominate in Europe: before the event (BTE) and after the event (ATE) legal expenses insurance. Notwithstanding institutional differences between different legal systems, BTE and ATE insurance arrangements may be instrumental if government policy is geared towards strengthening a market-oriented system of financing access to justice for individuals and business. At the same time, emphasizing the role of a private industry as a keeper of the gates to justice raises issues of accountability and transparency, not readily reconcilable with demands of competition. Moreover, multiple actors (clients, lawyers, courts, insurers) are involved, causing behavioural dynamics which are not easily predicted or influenced. Against this background, this paper looks into BTE and ATE arrangements by analysing the particularities of BTE and ATE arrangements currently available in some European jurisdictions and by painting a picture of their respective markets and legal contexts. This allows for some reflection on the performance of BTE and ATE providers as both financiers and keepers. Two issues emerge from the analysis that are worthy of some further reflection. Firstly, there is the problematic long-term sustainability of some ATE products. Secondly, the challenges faced by policymakers that would like to nudge consumers into voluntarily taking out BTE LEI

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Penilaian Kinerja Keuangan Koperasi di Kabupaten Pelalawan

This paper describe development and financial performance of cooperative in District Pelalawan among 2007 - 2008. Studies on primary and secondary cooperative in 12 sub-districts. Method in this stady use performance measuring of productivity, efficiency, growth, liquidity, and solvability of cooperative. Productivity of cooperative in Pelalawan was highly but efficiency still low. Profit and income were highly, even liquidity of cooperative very high, and solvability was good

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Severe early onset preeclampsia: short and long term clinical, psychosocial and biochemical aspects

Preeclampsia is a pregnancy specific disorder commonly defined as de novo hypertension and proteinuria after 20 weeks gestational age. It occurs in approximately 3-5% of pregnancies and it is still a major cause of both foetal and maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide1. As extensive research has not yet elucidated the aetiology of preeclampsia, there are no rational preventive or therapeutic interventions available. The only rational treatment is delivery, which benefits the mother but is not in the interest of the foetus, if remote from term. Early onset preeclampsia (<32 weeks’ gestational age) occurs in less than 1% of pregnancies. It is, however often associated with maternal morbidity as the risk of progression to severe maternal disease is inversely related with gestational age at onset2. Resulting prematurity is therefore the main cause of neonatal mortality and morbidity in patients with severe preeclampsia3. Although the discussion is ongoing, perinatal survival is suggested to be increased in patients with preterm preeclampsia by expectant, non-interventional management. This temporising treatment option to lengthen pregnancy includes the use of antihypertensive medication to control hypertension, magnesium sulphate to prevent eclampsia and corticosteroids to enhance foetal lung maturity4. With optimal maternal haemodynamic status and reassuring foetal condition this results on average in an extension of 2 weeks. Prolongation of these pregnancies is a great challenge for clinicians to balance between potential maternal risks on one the eve hand and possible foetal benefits on the other. Clinical controversies regarding prolongation of preterm preeclamptic pregnancies still exist – also taking into account that preeclampsia is the leading cause of maternal mortality in the Netherlands5 - a debate which is even more pronounced in very preterm pregnancies with questionable foetal viability6-9. Do maternal risks of prolongation of these very early pregnancies outweigh the chances of neonatal survival? Counselling of women with very early onset preeclampsia not only comprises of knowledge of the outcome of those particular pregnancies, but also knowledge of outcomes of future pregnancies of these women is of major clinical importance. This thesis opens with a review of the literature on identifiable risk factors of preeclampsia