Evaluation of Pesticide Contamination of Ground Water in Two Agricultural Areas of Portugal

In two Portuguese agricultural areas, "Beira Litoral" and "Ribatejo e Oeste", several pesticides regularly applied in vineyards, maize, potato, tomato for industry, apple, pear and rice were detected in ground water. Atrazine was the most frequently detected, being found in 70% of the total of 79 sites selected in the year 2000, followed by its metabolites desethylatrazine and desisopropylatrazine with frequencies of detection, respectively, of 56% and 48% and by simazine (37%), alachlor (25%), metolachlor (24%) and metribuzin (15%). Other pesticides and metabolites i.e. 3,4-dichloroaniline, dimethoate, f and g -endosulfan, lindane, molinate and prometryn were also detected but at lower occurrences. Pesticides were detected mainly in ground water wells used for irrigation purposes, although in some locations they were also found in water wells used for human consumption. In this study, it was also observed a seasonal variation of pesticide residues in ground water of shallow and deep wells.     

Coherent control in the presence of intrinsic decoherence: proton transfer in large molecular systems

An efficient semiclassical approach is developed and used to calculate the coherent-control map and time dependent decoherence measure for the excited-state proton transfer dynamics associated with the keto-enolic tautomerization reaction of 2-(2'-hydroxyphenyl)-oxazole. The method extends the usual bichromatic coherent-control scenario to simulate control at finite times after photoexcitation of the system. Extensive coherent control is demonstrated in a large molecule despite the ultrafast decoherence phenomena, providing results of broad theoretical and experimental interest.     

Electronic ferroelectricity in the falicov-kimball model

I show that a spontaneous electric polarization exists in the solution of the Falicov-Kimball model by mapping the strong coupling limit of this Hamiltonian into an xxz spin 1/2 model with a magnetic field. In this way, I determine the phase diagram of the strongly interacting model and show the existence of a transition to a mixed-valence regime containing two phases: an orbitally ordered state and a Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons with a built-in electric polarization.     

Rabi flopping in a two-level system with a time-dependent energy renormalization: intersubband transitions in quantum wells

We obtain pulse-driven Rabi oscillations guided by a generalization of the rotating-wave approximation to include, in the optical-Bloch equations, two-level systems with a time-varying transition energy. We achieve this by using chirped pulses with the central frequency given by the time-varying transition energy. Using this approach, we predict Rabi oscillations in intersubband transitions in a two-subband n-type modulation-doped quantum well by taking into account the time-dependent intersubband energy-gap renormalization due to depolarization-shift effects. We obtain Rabi oscillations for jpi (j=0,1,2, ) pulses in the presence of dephasing.     

Exact ground states of a frustrated 2D magnet: deconfined fractional excitations at a first-order quantum phase transition

We introduce a frustrated spin 1/2 Hamiltonian which is an extension of the two dimensional J1-J2 Heisenberg model. The ground states of this model are exactly obtained at a first-order quantum phase transition between two valence bond crystals. At this point, the low energy excitations are deconfined spinons and spin-charge separation occurs under doping in the limit of low concentration of holes. In addition, this point is characterized by the proliferation of topological defects.     

FTIR study of the ethanol electrooxidation on Pt(100) modified by osmium nanodeposits

In the present work, ethanol electrooxidation on a Pt(100) electrode modified by different coverage degrees of osmium nanoislands obtained by spontaneous depositions, was extensively studied employing in situ FTIR spectroscopy. A collection of spectra of the ethanol adsorption and oxidation processes was acquired during the first series of a positive potential step, to determine the intermediate species, as well as the main products formed. The spectroscopic results obtained were correlated with conventional electrochemical results obtained by cyclic voltammetry. It was shown that the catalytic activity of Pt(100) for ethanol oxidation increases significantly after osmium deposition and that the mechanistic pathway for this reaction depends directly on the osmium coverage degree. Thus, for low osmium coverage (theta;( Os) up to 0.15) the formation of CO as an intermediate was favored and hence the full oxidation of adsorbed ethanol to CO(2) was increased. For higher osmium coverages (theta;(Os) up to 0.33), the higher the coverage is, the more the direct ethanol oxidation to acetaldehyde and acetic acid is favored. For osmium coverage degree of 0.40, the catalytic activity of the electrode for ethanol oxidation decreased. On an almost complete osmium layer (theta;(Os) = 0.92) obtained by electrodeposition at 50 mV vs reversible hydrogen electrode, the catalytic activity for ethanol oxidation shows a much lower value.     

Scars of the Wigner Function

We propose a picture of Wigner function scars as a sequence of concentric rings along a two-dimensional surface inside a periodic orbit. This is verified for a two-dimensional plane that contains a classical hyperbolic orbit of a Hamiltonian system with 2 degrees of freedom. The stationary wave functions are the familiar mixture of scarred and random waves, but the spectral average of the Wigner functions in part of the plane is nearly that of a harmonic oscillator and individual states are also remarkably regular. These results are interpreted in terms of the semiclassical picture of chords and centers.     

Balance of mass, momentum, and energy in splintering central collisions for 40Ar up to 115 MeV /Nucleon

For central collisions of (17-115)A MeV 40Ar+Cu, Ag, Au, an overall balance is determined for the average mass, energy, and longitudinal momentum. Light charged particles and fragments are separated into forward-focused and isotropic components in the frame of the heaviest fragment. Energy removal by the isotropic component reaches 1-2 GeV. For such high deposition energies, statistical multifragmentation models predict much more extensive nuclear disassembly than is observed.     

Gamow-teller strengths of the inverse beta transition 176Yb-->176Lu for spectroscopy of proton-proton and other sub-MeV solar neutrinos

Discrete Gamow-Teller (GT) transitions 176Yb-->176Lu at low excitation energies have been measured via the ( 3He,t) reaction at 450 MeV and at 0 degrees. For 176Yb, two low-lying states are observed, setting low thresholds Q(nu) = 301 and 445 keV for neutrino ( nu) capture. Capture rates estimated from the measured GT strengths, the simple two-state excitation structure, and the low Q(nu) in Yb-Lu indicate that Yb-based nu detectors are well suited for a direct measurement of the sub-MeV solar electron-neutrino ( nu(e)) spectrum including pp neutrinos.     

Thermal behavior of in vitro mineralized anionic collagen matrices

In the present study porcine skin and bovine pericardium were used as a source of type I collagen. Both were submitted to an alkaline treatment and mineralized by the alternate soaking method. Thermal stability and extent of mineralization have been investigated using DSC and TG. After alkaline hydrolysis there is a decrease in thermal stability but mineralization stabilizes collagen structure. Thermogravimetric data have shown that the amount of hydroxyapatite present in bovine pericardium matrix (45%) was greater than on porcine skin matrix (20%). Presence of hydroxyapatite was confirmed by EDX.