Thermal Effects of Microwave Energy in Agricultural Soil Radiation

The thermal treatment by millimeter waves for the soil disinfection can be one possible alternative to chemical treatments. This physical method is based on incrementing the soil temperature and its pathogens irradiating with high frequency electromagnetic waves. So the previous knowledge of the temperature distribution in the irradiated soil is essential for achieving an effective bad microorganism and weed seeds elimination. This report analyse the heating kinetic and spatial distribution of the maximum temperatures reached by the soil. It is presented a mathematic model about how are distributed the reached temperatures in the depth of the irradiated soil. This model concludes that when an orchard soil is irradiated superficially by microwaves, the microwaves have a big attenuation due to the soil dielectric properties and the water located in the pores of the most superficial layer. This fact causes a shield effect blocking the waves penetration in few centimetres. The heating by radiation is reduced to the superficial layer. The heating propagation in the depth is occurred by conduction following the Fourier equations.     

Elastic instability of the nano-structured state as an intrinsic probe to study the early formation stages of sol–gel derived (Pb<Subscript>1-x</Subscript>Ca<Subscript>x</Subscript>)TiO<Subscript>3</Subscript> thin films

A novel method to investigate the early formation stages of polycrystalline (Pb_1-xCa_x)TiO₃ (PCT) perovskite films by means of traditional Brillouin and micro-Brillouin spectroscopy (BS, mBS) is described in the present work. The films were prepared by chemical solution deposition (CSD) onto oxidized (100)Si substrates and treated at temperatures between 350–650 °C by rapid thermal processing (RTP). The elastic instability observed by Brillouin spectroscopy at the nano-structured state of the PCT films was used here to determine their crystallization temperatures. Coexistence of different nanocrystalline phases (e.g., pyrochlore, perovskite) in the films could also be detected by this technique. The reliability of these results is demonstrated by complementary information obtained by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning force microscopy (SFM). The effects of the annealing temperature and of the Ca²⁺ content on the crystallization process of these films are also discussed. PACS 78.35.+c; 77.84.-s; 61.82.Rx     

On Genuine Bernstein–Durrmeyer Operators

We continue the studies on the so–called genuine Bernstein–Durrmeyer operators U _n by establishing a recurrence formula for the moments and by investigating the semigroup T(t) approximated by U _n . Moreover, for sufficiently smooth functions the degree of this convergence is estimated. We also determine the eigenstructure of U _n , compute the moments of T(t) and establish asymptotic formulas. Received: January 26, 2007.     

Trace element concentrations from São Francisco River - PR analyzed with PIXE technique

Summary Kulcsszavak (angolul, ha nem azonos az elozovel)     

A Model for Spacetime: The Role of Interpretation in Some Grothendieck Topoi

We analyse the proposition that the spacetime structure is modified at short distances or at high energies due to weakening of classical logic. The logic assigned to the regions of spacetime is intuitionistic logic of some topoi. Several cases of special topoi are considered. The quantum mechanical effects can be generated by such semi-classical spacetimes. The issues of: background independence and general relativity covariance, field theoretic renormalization of divergent expressions, the existence and definition of path integral measures, are briefly discussed in the proposal. The connection with some problems in foundations of mathematics and differential topology are also discussed.     

Order Embeddings with Irrational Codomain: Debreu Properties of Real Subsets

The objective of this paper is to investigate the role of the set of irrational numbers as the codomain of order-preserving functions defined on topological totally preordered sets. We will show that although the set of irrational numbers does not satisfy the Debreu property it is still nonetheless true that any lower (respectively, upper) semicontinuous total preorder representable by a real-valued strictly isotone function (semicontinuous or not) also admits a representation by means of a lower (respectively, upper) semicontinuous strictly isotone function that takes values in the set of irrational numbers. These results are obtained by means of a direct construction. Moreover, they can be related to Cantor’s characterization of the real line to obtain much more general results on the semicontinuous Debreu properties of a wide family of subsets of the real line.      

The Polyakov path integral over bordered surfaces

Following the general scheme of the convariant path integral quantization of gauge systems, two alternative formulations of the first quantized closed bosonic string in a position representation are presented. In both approaches the covariant path integral representations of the propagator and of the higher order off-shell amplitudes are constructed. For a wide class of gauges the explicit formulae for off-shell amplitudes are obtained. This paper is the continuation of our previous work where the corresponding problems in the open string case were considered [20].     

On bulk-service MAP/PH L,N /1/N G-Queues with repeated attempts

We consider a retrial queue with a finite buffer of size N, with arrivals of ordinary units and of negative units (which cancel one ordinary unit), both assumed to be Markovian arrival processes. The service requirements are of phase type. In addition, a PH^L,N bulk service discipline is assumed. This means that the units are served in groups of size at least L, where 1≤ L≤ N. If at the completion of a service fewer than L units are present at the buffer, the server switches off and waits until the buffer length reaches the threshold L. Then it switches on and initiates service for such a group of units. On the contrary, if at the completion of a service L or more units are present at the buffer, all units enter service as a group. Units arriving when the buffer is full are not lost, but they join a group of unsatisfied units called “orbit”. Our interest is in the continuous-time Markov chain describing the state of the queue at arbitrary times, which constitutes a level dependent quasi-birth-and-death process. We start by analyzing a simplified version of our queueing model, which is amenable to numerical calculation and is based on spatially homogeneous quasi-birth-and-death processes. This leads to modified matrix-geometric formulas that reveal the basic qualitative properties of our algorithmic approach for computing performance measures. AMS Subject Classification: Primary 60K25 Secondary 68M20 90B22.