3,074 research outputs found
Greenstone belts: Their components and structure
Greenstone sucessions are defined as the nongranitoid component of granitoid-greenstone terrain and are linear to irregular in shape and where linear are termed belts. The chemical composition of greenstones is described. Also discussed are the continental environments of greenstone successions. The effects of contact with granitoids, geophysical properties, recumbent folds and late formation structures upon greenstones are examined. Large stratigraphy thicknesses are explained
Chemical and Statistical Analysis of a Sampled Interval in the Camp Nelson Limestone (Upper Ordovician) Madison County, Central Kentucky
The Camp Nelson Limestone of the High Bridge Group (Upper Ordovician) is mined at seven sites in central and north-central Kentucky for industrial, construction, and agricultural uses. As part of a regional investigation of its chemical characteristics, a 67-foot section in the upper Camp Nelson, which is being mined at Boonesborough, Madison County, was sampled for major-element analysis.
The upper Camp Nelson in the Boonesborough Mine consists of two zones (23 and 30 feet thick) of low-silica stone (4 percent or less total SiO2) separated by a 14-foot section of slightly argillaceous limestone with an average silica content of 5.19 percent. The lower 23-foot zone has an average silica content of 1.75 percent and an average total carbonate (CaCO3 + MgCO3) content of 96.03 percent. The upper 30-foot zone has an average silica content of 2.48 percent and an average total carbonate content of 93.17 percent.
A statistical study showed a relationship between the sampling interval and the reliability of the mean carbonate (or contaminant) value for a limestone ledge. Moderately high reliability (0.80 to 0.85) can be obtained by taking three to four samples per ledge. If only high reliability (0.90) of the mean value is acceptable, samples should be taken at 1-foot intervals. Very high reliability would require sampling at 1/2-foot intervals
Climate Change Challenges for Land Conservation: Rethinking Conservation Easements, Strategies, and Tools
Climate change has significant consequences for land conservation. Government agencies and nonprofit land trusts heavily rely on perpetual conservation easements. However, climate change and other dynamic landscape changes raise questions about the effectiveness and adaptability of permanent conservation instruments like conservation easements. Building upon a study of 269 conservation easements and interviews with seventy conservation-easement professionals in six different states, we examine the adaptability of conservation easements to climate change. We outline four potential approaches to enhance conservation outcomes under climate change: (1) shift land-acquisition priorities to account for potential climate change impacts; (2) consider conservation tools other than perpetual conservation easements; (3) ensure that the terms of conservation easements permit the holder to adapt to climate change successfully; and (4) provide for more active stewardship of conservation lands. There is still a good deal of uncertainty as to the legal fate of a conservation easement that no longer meets its original purposes. Many state laws provide that conservation easements can be modified or terminated in the same manner as traditional easements. Yet conservation easements are in many ways unlike other easements. The beneficiary is usually the public, not merely a neighboring landowner, and the holder is always a nonprofit conservation organization or a government agency. Thus, there is a case to be made for adaptive protection. An overly narrow focus on perpetual property rights could actually thwart efforts to meet adaptation needs over the long term. We call for careful attention to ensuring conservation outcomes in dynamic landscapes over time
A Systematic Extended Iterative Solution for QCD
An outline is given of an extended perturbative solution of Euclidean QCD
which systematically accounts for a class of nonperturbative effects, while
allowing renormalization by the perturbative counterterms. Proper vertices
Gamma are approximated by a double sequence Gamma[r,p], with r the degree of
rational approximation w.r.t. the QCD mass scale Lambda, nonanalytic in the
coupling g, and p the order of perturbative corrections in g-squared,
calculated from Gamma[r,0] - rather than from the perturbative Feynman rules
Gamma(0)(pert) - as a starting point. The mechanism allowing the
nonperturbative terms to reproduce themselves in the Dyson-Schwinger equations
preserves perturbative renormalizability and is tied to the divergence
structure of the theory. As a result, it restricts the self-consistency problem
for the Gamma[r,0] rigorously - i.e. without decoupling approximations - to the
superficially divergent vertices. An interesting aspect of the scheme is that
rational-function sequences for the propagators allow subsequences describing
short-lived excitations. The method is calculational, in that it allows known
techniques of loop computation to be used while dealing with integrands of
truly nonperturbative content.Comment: 48 pages (figures included). Scope of replacement: correction of a
technical defect; no changes in conten
Equivalence between free quantum particles and those in harmonic potentials and its application to instantaneous changes
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly citedIn quantum physics the free particle and the harmonically trapped particle are arguably the most important systems a physicist needs to know about. It is little known that, mathematically, they are one and the same. This knowledge helps us to understand either from the viewpoint of the other. Here we show that all general time-dependent solutions of the free-particle Schrodinger equation can be mapped to solutions of the Schrodinger equation for harmonic potentials, both the trapping oscillator and the inverted `oscillator'. This map is fully invertible and therefore induces an isomorphism between both types of system, they are equivalent. A composition of the map and its inverse allows us to map from one harmonic oscillator to another with a different spring constant and different center position. The map is independent of the state of the system, consisting only of a coordinate transformation and multiplication by a form factor, and can be chosen such that the state is identical in both systems at one point in time. This transition point in time can be chosen freely, the wave function of the particle evolving in time in one system before the transition point can therefore be linked up smoothly with the wave function for the other system and its future evolution after the transition point. Such a cut-and-paste procedure allows us to describe the instantaneous changes of the environment a particle finds itself in. Transitions from free to trapped systems, between harmonic traps of different spring constants or center positions, or, from harmonic binding to repulsive harmonic potentials are straightforwardly modelled. This includes some time dependent harmonic potentials. The mappings introduced here are computationally more efficient than either state-projection or harmonic oscillator propagator techniques conventionally employed when describing instantaneous (non-adiabatic) changes of a quantum particle's environmentPeer reviewe
Mode-by-mode summation for the zero point electromagnetic energy of an infinite cylinder
Using the mode-by-mode summation technique the zero point energy of the
electromagnetic field is calculated for the boundary conditions given on the
surface of an infinite solid cylinder. It is assumed that the dielectric and
magnetic characteristics of the material which makes up the cylinder
and of that which makes up the surroundings obey the relation . With this
assumption all the divergences cancel. The divergences are regulated by making
use of zeta function techniques. Numerical calculations are carried out for a
dilute dielectric cylinder and for a perfectly conducting cylindrical shell.
The Casimir energy in the first case vanishes, and in the second is in complete
agreement with that obtained by DeRaad and Milton who employed a Green's
function technique with an ultraviolet regulator.Comment: REVTeX, 16 pages, no figures and tables; transcription error in
previous version corrected, giving a zero Casimir energy for a tenuous
cylinde
Electromagnetic Casimir densities for a wedge with a coaxial cylindrical shell
Vacuum expectation values of the field square and the energy-momentum tensor
for the electromagnetic field are investigated for the geometry of a wedge with
a coaxal cylindrical boundary. All boundaries are assumed to be perfectly
conducting and both regions inside and outside the shell are considered. By
using the generalized Abel-Plana formula, the vacuum expectation values are
presented in the form of the sum of two terms. The first one corresponds to the
geometry of the wedge without the cylindrical shell and the second term is
induced by the presence of the shell. The vacuum energy density induced by the
shell is negative for the interior region and is positive for the exterior
region. The asymptotic behavior of the vacuum expectation values are
investigated in various limiting cases. It is shown that the vacuum forces
acting on the wedge sides due to the presence of the cylindrical boundary are
always attractive.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure
Can spacetime curvature induced corrections to Lamb shift be observable?
The Lamb shift results from the coupling of an atom to vacuum fluctuations of
quantum fields, so corrections are expected to arise when the spacetime is
curved since the vacuum fluctuations are modified by the presence of spacetime
curvature. Here, we calculate the curvature-induced correction to the Lamb
shift outside a spherically symmetric object and demonstrate that this
correction can be remarkably significant outside a compact massive
astrophysical body. For instance, for a neutron star or a stellar mass black
hole, the correction is 25% at a radial distance of ,
16% at and as large as 1.6% even at , where is
the mass of the object, the Newtonian constant, and the speed of light.
In principle, we can look at the spectra from a distant compact super-massive
body to find such corrections. Therefore, our results suggest a possible way of
detecting fundamental quantum effects in astronomical observations.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, slight title change, clarifications and more
discussions added, version to be published in JHE
Fluctuations of the vacuum energy density of quantum fields in curved spacetime via generalized zeta functions
For quantum fields on a curved spacetime with an Euclidean section, we derive
a general expression for the stress energy tensor two-point function in terms
of the effective action. The renormalized two-point function is given in terms
of the second variation of the Mellin transform of the trace of the heat kernel
for the quantum fields. For systems for which a spectral decomposition of the
wave opearator is possible, we give an exact expression for this two-point
function. Explicit examples of the variance to the mean ratio of the vacuum energy density of a
massless scalar field are computed for the spatial topologies of and , with results of , and
respectively. The large variance signifies the importance
of quantum fluctuations and has important implications for the validity of
semiclassical gravity theories at sub-Planckian scales. The method presented
here can facilitate the calculation of stress-energy fluctuations for quantum
fields useful for the analysis of fluctuation effects and critical phenomena in
problems ranging from atom optics and mesoscopic physics to early universe and
black hole physics.Comment: Uses revte
At-risk registers integrated into primary care to stop asthma crises in the UK (ARRISA-UK): study protocol for a pragmatic, cluster randomised trial with nested health economic and process evaluations
Background: Despite effective treatments and long-standing management guidelines, there are approximately 1400 hospital admissions for asthma weekly in the United Kingdom (UK), many of which could be avoided. In our previous research, a secondary analysis of the intervention (ARRISA) suggested an improvement in the management of at-risk asthma patients in primary care. ARRISA involved identifying individuals at risk of adverse asthma events, flagging their electronic health records, training practice staff to develop and implement practice-wide processes of care when alerted by the flag, plus motivational reminders. We now seek to determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of ARRISA in reducing asthma-related crisis events. Methods: We are undertaking a pragmatic, two-arm, multicentre, cluster randomised controlled trial, plus health economic and process evaluation. We will randomise 270 primary care practices from throughout the UK covering over 10,000 registered patients with ‘at-risk asthma’ identified according to a validated algorithm. Staff in practices randomised to the intervention will complete two 45-min eLearning modules (an individually completed module giving background to ARRISA and a group-completed module to develop practice-wide pathways of care) plus a 30-min webinar with other practices. On completion of training at-risk patients’ records will be coded so that a flag appears whenever their record is accessed. Practices will receive a phone call at 4 weeks and a reminder video at 6 weeks and 6 months. Control practices will continue to provide usual care. We will extract anonymised routine patient data from primary care records (with linkage to secondary care data) to determine the percentage of at-risk patients with an asthma-related crisis event (accident and emergency attendances, hospitalisations and deaths) after 12 months (primary outcome). We will also capture the time to crisis event, all-cause hospitalisations, asthma control and any changes in practice asthma management for at-risk and all patients with asthma. Cost-effectiveness analysis and mixed-methods process evaluations will also be conducted. Discussion: This study is novel in terms of using a practice-wide intervention to target and engage with patients at risk from their asthma and is innovative in the use of routinely captured data with record linkage to obtain trial outcomes. Trial registration: ISRCTN95472706. Registered on 5 December 2014
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