No abstract

Despite being considered an extreme environment, several studies have shown that life in the deep subsurface is abundant and diverse. Microorganisms inhabiting these systems live within the rock pores and, therefore, the geochemical and geohydrological characteristics of this matrix may influence the distribution of underground biodiversity. In this study, correlative fluorescence and Raman microscopy (Raman-FISH) was used to analyze the mineralogy associated with the presence of members of the genus Acidovorax, an iron oxidizing microorganisms, in native rock samples of the Iberian Pyrite Belt subsurface. Our results suggest a strong correlation between the presence of Acidovorax genus and pyrite, suggesting that the mineral might greatly influence its subsurface distribution.

Extended full-dimensional quasiclassical trajectory calculations have been performed for the H(a)H(b) (v(ab) = 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, j(ab) = 0) + H(c)H(d) (v(cd) = 0, j(cd) = 0) collisions at values of the translational energy ranging from threshold to 1.5 eV and values of the total angular momentum quantum number J varying from zero to very large ones. Collision-induced dissociation, four-center exchange reaction, and single exchange process probabilities have been calculated. Full-dimensional classical calculations were found to reproduce well the corresponding (J = 0) quantum results, including the thresholds. In contrast, the agreement of full-dimensional classical calculations with the corresponding both quantum and classical reduced dimensionality ones was found to be poor. The effect of varying J on the efficiency of the various processes has also been investigated. Four-center reactions were found to be favored by low values of J, whereas dissociation processes were found to be favored by higher values of J, as expected from the fact that energy exchange takes place at longer range than mass exchange. To evaluate to what extent the J = 0 full-dimensional calculations represent the unconstrained dynamics of the system, J-shift model classical results were compared with the all-J ones. Product vibrational distributions for both partially dissociative and exchange processes were also found to depend significantly on the value of J.

The Cl + CH4 reaction has been investigated using a full dimensional quasiclassical trajectory technique and a new potential energy surface. The new surface is generated by expanding the interaction in terms of minimum energy paths in the Bond Order space. Results are compared with those obtained on another recently proposed potential energy surface and with experimental data.