278 research outputs found
Water quality impacts of young green roofs in a tropical city: a case study from Singapore
This study examined the effects of two substrates (SOIL and COMMERCIAL) and grass on the green roof runoff quality in Singapore. Ten events were sampled over a 9-month period. Rainfall and green roof runoff from grass and bare experimental configurations were tested for total organic carbon (TOC), nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients (NO3−-N and PO43−-P), cations/anions and trace metals (Fe, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb). All configuration units neutralised acid rainfall and removed metals except Fe despite their proximity to an industrial area. Concentrations decrease over the monitoring period for most water quality variables. The COMMERCIAL (COM) configurations elevated Cl− (3.8–10.8 ppm), SO42− (1.5–32.4 ppm), NO3−-N (7.8–75.6 ppm) and NH4+-N (22.0–53.1 ppm) concentrations in the runoff. Concentrations of NO3−-N (4.5–67.7 ppm) and NH4+-N (14.7–53.0 ppm) remained high at the end of the monitoring period for the COMgrass configuration, even with dilution from monsoon rainfall, making it suitable as an irrigation water source and a fertiliser substitute. The SOIL substrate retained N-nutrients, TOC and trace metals with concentrations comparable or below rainfall inputs. This substrate is suitable for widespread green roof applications in Singapore and other tropical cities. We recommend substrate testing before their approval for use on green roofs and encourage the long-term monitoring of these systems
Floodplain sediment from a 100-year-recurrence flood in 2005 of the Ping River in northern Thailand
Hydrology and Earth System Sciences124959-97
Density of states "width parity" effect in d-wave superconducting quantum wires
We calculate the density of states (DOS) in a clean mesoscopic d-wave
superconducting quantum wire, i.e. a sample of infinite length but finite width
. For open boundary conditions, the DOS at zero energy is found to be zero
if is even, and nonzero if is odd. At finite chemical potential, all
chains are gapped but the qualtitative differences between even and odd
remain.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, new figures and extended discussio
Uncertainty in below-ground carbon biomass for major land covers in Southeast Asia
10.1016/j.foreco.2013.09.042Forest Ecology and Management310915-926FECM
Creating diamond color centers for quantum optical applications
Nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond have distinct promise as solid-state
qubits. This is because of their large dipole moment, convenient level
structure and very long room-temperature coherence times. In general, a
combination of ion irradiation and subsequent annealing is used to create the
centers, however for the rigorous demands of quantum computing all processes
need to be optimized, and decoherence due to the residual damage caused by the
implantation process itself must be mitigated. To that end we have studied
photoluminescence (PL) from NV, NV and GR1 centers formed by ion
implantation of 2MeV He ions over a wide range of fluences. The sample was
annealed at C to minimize residual vacancy diffusion, allowing for
the concurrent analysis of PL from NV centers and irradiation induced vacancies
(GR1). We find non-monotic PL intensities with increasing ion fluence,
monotonic increasing PL in NV/NV and GR1/(NV + NV) ratios, and
increasing inhomogeneous broadening of the zero-phonon lines with increasing
ion fluence. All these results shed important light on the optimal formation
conditions for NV qubits. We apply our findings to an off-resonant photonic
quantum memory scheme using vibronic sidebands
Response function analysis of excited-state kinetic energy functional constructed by splitting k-space
Over the past decade, fundamentals of time independent density functional
theory for excited state have been established. However, construction of the
corresponding energy functionals for excited states remains a challenging
problem. We have developed a method for constructing functionals for excited
states by splitting k-space according to the occupation of orbitals. In this
paper we first show the accuracy of kinetic energy functional thus obtained. We
then perform a response function analysis of the kinetic energy functional
proposed by us and show why method of splitting the k-space could be the method
of choice for construction of energy functionals for excited states.Comment: 11 page
Dephasing in sequential tunneling through a double-dot interferometer
We analyze dephasing in a model system where electrons tunnel sequentially
through a symmetric interference setup consisting of two single-level quantum
dots. Depending on the phase difference between the two tunneling paths, this
may result in perfect destructive interference. However, if the dots are
coupled to a bath, it may act as a which-way detector, leading to partial
suppression of the phase-coherence and the reappearance of a finite tunneling
current. In our approach, the tunneling is treated in leading order whereas
coupling to the bath is kept to all orders (using P(E) theory). We discuss the
influence of different bath spectra on the visibility of the interference
pattern, including the distinction between "mere renormalization effects" and
"true dephasing".Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures; For a tutorial introduction to dephasing see
http://iff.physik.unibas.ch/~florian/dephasing/dephasing.htm
Critical behavior of weakly-disordered anisotropic systems in two dimensions
The critical behavior of two-dimensional (2D) anisotropic systems with weak
quenched disorder described by the so-called generalized Ashkin-Teller model
(GATM) is studied. In the critical region this model is shown to be described
by a multifermion field theory similar to the Gross-Neveu model with a few
independent quartic coupling constants. Renormalization group calculations are
used to obtain the temperature dependence near the critical point of some
thermodynamic quantities and the large distance behavior of the two-spin
correlation function. The equation of state at criticality is also obtained in
this framework. We find that random models described by the GATM belong to the
same universality class as that of the two-dimensional Ising model. The
critical exponent of the correlation length for the 3- and 4-state
random-bond Potts models is also calculated in a 3-loop approximation. We show
that this exponent is given by an apparently convergent series in
(with the central charge of the Potts model) and
that the numerical values of are very close to that of the 2D Ising
model. This work therefore supports the conjecture (valid only approximately
for the 3- and 4-state Potts models) of a superuniversality for the 2D
disordered models with discrete symmetries.Comment: REVTeX, 24 pages, to appear in Phys.Rev.
The First Naked-eye Superflare Detected from Proxima Centauri
Proxima b is a terrestrial-mass planet in the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri's high stellar activity, however, casts doubt on the habitability of Proxima b: sufficiently bright and frequent flares and any associated proton events may destroy the planet's ozone layer, allowing lethal levels of UV flux to reach its surface. In 2016 March, the Evryscope observed the first naked-eye-brightness superflare detected from Proxima Centauri. Proxima increased in optical flux by a factor of ∼68 during the superflare and released a bolometric energy of 1033.5 erg, ∼10× larger than any previously detected flare from Proxima. Over the last two years the Evryscope has recorded 23 other large Proxima flares ranging in bolometric energy from 1030.6 to 1032.4 erg; coupling those rates with the single superflare detection, we predict that at least five superflares occur each year. Simultaneous high-resolution High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectroscopy during the Evryscope superflare constrains the superflare's UV spectrum and any associated coronal mass ejections. We use these results and the Evryscope flare rates to model the photochemical effects of NOx atmospheric species generated by particle events from this extreme stellar activity, and show that the repeated flaring may be sufficient to reduce the ozone of an Earth-like atmosphere by 90% within five years; complete depletion may occur within several hundred kyr. The UV light produced by the Evryscope superflare would therefore have reached the surface with ∼100× the intensity required to kill simple UV-hardy microorganisms, suggesting that life would have to undergo extreme adaptations to survive in the surface areas of Proxima b exposed to these flares
Search for lepton-flavor violation at HERA
A search for lepton-flavor-violating interactions and has been performed with the ZEUS detector using the entire HERA I
data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 130 pb^{-1}. The data
were taken at center-of-mass energies, , of 300 and 318 GeV. No
evidence of lepton-flavor violation was found, and constraints were derived on
leptoquarks (LQs) that could mediate such interactions. For LQ masses below
, limits were set on , where
is the coupling of the LQ to an electron and a
first-generation quark , and is the branching ratio of
the LQ to the final-state lepton ( or ) and a quark . For
LQ masses much larger than , limits were set on the four-fermion
interaction term for LQs that couple to an electron and a quark
and to a lepton and a quark , where and are
quark generation indices. Some of the limits are also applicable to
lepton-flavor-violating processes mediated by squarks in -Parity-violating
supersymmetric models. In some cases, especially when a higher-generation quark
is involved and for the process , the ZEUS limits are the most
stringent to date.Comment: 37 pages, 10 figures, Accepted by EPJC. References and 1 figure (Fig.
6) adde
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