575 research outputs found
Molecular Mechanisms by which Tetrahydrofuran Affects COâ Hydrate Growth: Implications for Carbon Storage
Gas hydrates have attracted siginifcant fundamental and applied interests due to their important role in various technological and enviromental processes. More recently, gas hydrates have shown potential applications for greenhouse gas capture and storage. To facilitate the latter application, introducing chemical additives into clathrate hydrates could help to enhance hydrate formation/growth rates, provided the gas storage capacity is not reduced. Employing equilibrium molecular dynamics, we study the impact of tetrahydrofuran (THF) on the kinetics of carbon dioxide (COâ) hydrate growth/dissociation and on the COâ storage capacity of hydrates. Our simulations reproduce experimental data for COâ and COâ+THF hydrates at selected operating conditions. The simulated results confirm that THF in stoichiometric concentration does reduce COâ storage capacity. This is not only due to the shortage of COâ trapping in sII hydrate 5^{12} cages, but also because of the favored THF occupancy in hydrate cages due to preferential THFâwater hydrogen bonds. An analysis of the dynamical properties for COâ and THF at the hydrate-liquid interface reveals that THF can expedite COâ diffusion yielding a shift in the conditions conducive to COâ hydrate growth and stability to lower pressures and higher temperatures compared to systems without THF. These simulation results augment literature experimental observations, as they provide needed insights into the molecular mechanisms that can be adjusted to achieve optimal COâ storage in hydrates
Sheared bioconvection in a horizontal tube
The recent interest in using microorganisms for biofuels is motivation enough
to study bioconvection and cell dispersion in tubes subject to imposed flow. To
optimize light and nutrient uptake, many microorganisms swim in directions
biased by environmental cues (e.g. phototaxis in algae and chemotaxis in
bacteria). Such taxes inevitably lead to accumulations of cells, which, as many
microorganisms have a density different to the fluid, can induce hydrodynamic
instabilites. The large-scale fluid flow and spectacular patterns that arise
are termed bioconvection. However, the extent to which bioconvection is
affected or suppressed by an imposed fluid flow, and how bioconvection
influences the mean flow profile and cell transport are open questions. This
experimental study is the first to address these issues by quantifying the
patterns due to suspensions of the gravitactic and gyrotactic green
biflagellate alga Chlamydomonas in horizontal tubes subject to an imposed flow.
With no flow, the dependence of the dominant pattern wavelength at pattern
onset on cell concentration is established for three different tube diameters.
For small imposed flows, the vertical plumes of cells are observed merely to
bow in the direction of flow. For sufficiently high flow rates, the plumes
progressively fragment into piecewise linear diagonal plumes, unexpectedly
inclined at constant angles and translating at fixed speeds. The pattern
wavelength generally grows with flow rate, with transitions at critical rates
that depend on concentration. Even at high imposed flow rates, bioconvection is
not wholly suppressed and perturbs the flow field.Comment: 19 pages, 9 figures, published version available at
http://iopscience.iop.org/1478-3975/7/4/04600
Acoustic characterization of Hofstadter butterfly with resonant scatterers
We are interested in the experimental characterization of the Hofstadter
butterfly by means of acoustical waves. The transmission of an acoustic pulse
through an array of 60 variable and resonant scatterers periodically distribued
along a waveguide is studied. An arbitrary scattering arrangement is realized
by using the variable length of each resonator cavity. For a periodic
modulation, the structures of forbidden bands of the transmission reproduce the
Hofstadter butterfly. We compare experimental, analytical, and computational
realizations of the Hofstadter butterfly and we show the influence of the
resonances of the scatterers on the structure of the butterfly
Hysteresis effect due to the exchange Coulomb interaction in short-period superlattices in tilted magnetic fields
We calculate the ground-state of a two-dimensional electron gas in a
short-period lateral potential in magnetic field, with the Coulomb
electron-electron interaction included in the Hartree-Fock approximation. For a
sufficiently short period the dominant Coulomb effects are determined by the
exchange interaction. We find numerical solutions of the self-consistent
equations that have hysteresis properties when the magnetic field is tilted and
increased, such that the perpendicular component is always constant. This
behavior is a result of the interplay of the exchange interaction with the
energy dispersion and the spin splitting. We suggest that hysteresis effects of
this type could be observable in magneto-transport and magnetization
experiments on quantum-wire and quantum-dot superlattices.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, Revtex, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Ultra-stable implanted 83Rb/83mKr electron sources for the energy scale monitoring in the KATRIN experiment
The KATRIN experiment aims at the direct model-independent determination of
the average electron neutrino mass via the measurement of the endpoint region
of the tritium beta decay spectrum. The electron spectrometer of the MAC-E
filter type is used, requiring very high stability of the electric filtering
potential. This work proves the feasibility of implanted 83Rb/83mKr calibration
electron sources which will be utilised in the additional monitor spectrometer
sharing the high voltage with the main spectrometer of KATRIN. The source
employs conversion electrons of 83mKr which is continuously generated by 83Rb.
The K-32 conversion line (kinetic energy of 17.8 keV, natural line width of 2.7
eV) is shown to fulfill the KATRIN requirement of the relative energy stability
of +/-1.6 ppm/month. The sources will serve as a standard tool for continuous
monitoring of KATRIN's energy scale stability with sub-ppm precision. They may
also be used in other applications where the precise conversion lines can be
separated from the low energy spectrum caused by the electron inelastic
scattering in the substrate.Comment: 30 pages, 10 figures, 1 table, minor revision of the preprint,
accepted by JINST on 5.2.201
Real-world effectiveness of abrocitinib treatment in patients with difficult-to-treat atopic dermatitis
Phase transitions in soft-committee machines
Equilibrium statistical physics is applied to layered neural networks with
differentiable activation functions. A first analysis of off-line learning in
soft-committee machines with a finite number (K) of hidden units learning a
perfectly matching rule is performed. Our results are exact in the limit of
high training temperatures. For K=2 we find a second order phase transition
from unspecialized to specialized student configurations at a critical size P
of the training set, whereas for K > 2 the transition is first order. Monte
Carlo simulations indicate that our results are also valid for moderately low
temperatures qualitatively. The limit K to infinity can be performed
analytically, the transition occurs after presenting on the order of N K
examples. However, an unspecialized metastable state persists up to P= O (N
K^2).Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
A Laterally Modulated 2D Electron System in the Extreme Quantum Limit
We report on magnetotransport of a two-dimensional electron system (2DES),
located 32 nm below the surface, with a surface superlattice gate structure of
periodicity 39 nm imposing a periodic modulation of its potential. For low
Landau level fillings , the diagonal resistivity displays a rich pattern
of fluctuations, even though the disorder dominates over the periodic
modulation. Theoretical arguments based on the combined effects of the
long-wavelength, strong disorder and the short-wavelength, weak periodic
modulation present in the 2DES qualitatively explain the data.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Light scattering from a periodically modulated two dimensional electron gas with partially filled Landau levels
We study light scattering from a periodically modulated two dimensional
electron gas in a perpendicular magnetic field. If a subband is partially
filled, the imaginary part of the dielectric function as a function of
frequency contains additional discontinuities to the case of completely filled
subbands. The positions of the discontinuities may be determined from the
partial filling factor and the height of the discontinuity can be directly
related to the modulation potential. The light scattering cross section
contains a new peak which is absent for integer filling.Comment: RevTex, 4 figures. To appear in Phys. Rev. B as a brief repor
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