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Surface mineral crusts: A priority target in search for life on Mars
Mineral crusts are strong candidates in the search for evidence of life during planetary exploration, and should be an important target for examination in impact craters. Crusts in the Haughton crater readily yield a biological signature
Towards a modeling of the time dependence of contact area between solid bodies
I present a simple model of the time dependence of the contact area between
solid bodies, assuming either a totally uncorrelated surface topography, or a
self affine surface roughness. The existence of relaxation effects (that I
incorporate using a recently proposed model) produces the time increase of the
contact area towards an asymptotic value that can be much smaller than
the nominal contact area. For an uncorrelated surface topography, the time
evolution of is numerically found to be well fitted by expressions of
the form [, where the exponent depends on
the normal load as , with close to 0.5. In
particular, when the contact area is much lower than the nominal area I obtain
, i.e., a logarithmic time increase of the
contact area, in accordance with experimental observations. The logarithmic
increase for low loads is also obtained analytically in this case. For the more
realistic case of self affine surfaces, the results are qualitatively similar.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure
Breakdown of disordered media by surface loads
We model an interface layer connecting two parts of a solid body by N
parallel elastic springs connecting two rigid blocks. We load the system by a
shear force acting on the top side. The springs have equal stiffness but are
ruptured randomly when the load reaches a critical value. For the considered
system, we calculate the shear modulus, G, as a function of the order
parameter, \phi, describing the state of damage, and also the ``spalled''
material (burst) size distribution. In particular, we evaluate the relation
between the damage parameter and the applied force and explore the behaviour in
the vicinity of material breakdown. Using this simple model for material
breakdown, we show that damage, caused by applied shear forces, is analogous to
a first-order phase transition. The scaling behaviour of G with \phi is
explored analytically and numerically, close to \phi=0 and \phi=1 and in the
vicinity of \phi_c, when the shear load is close but below the threshold force
that causes material breakdown. Our model calculation represents a first
approximation of a system subject to wear induced loads.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figure
Contact and Friction of Nano-Asperities: Effects of Adsorbed Monolayers
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study contact between a rigid,
nonadhesive, spherical tip with radius of order 30nm and a flat elastic
substrate covered with a fluid monolayer of adsorbed chain molecules. Previous
studies of bare surfaces showed that the atomic scale deviations from a sphere
that are present on any tip constructed from discrete atoms lead to significant
deviations from continuum theory and dramatic variability in friction forces.
Introducing an adsorbed monolayer leads to larger deviations from continuum
theory, but decreases the variations between tips with different atomic
structure. Although the film is fluid, it remains in the contact and behaves
qualitatively like a thin elastic coating except for certain tips at high
loads. Measures of the contact area based on the moments or outer limits of the
pressure distribution and on counting contacting atoms are compared. The number
of tip atoms making contact in a time interval grows as a power of the interval
when the film is present and logarithmically with the interval for bare
surfaces. Friction is measured by displacing the tip at a constant velocity or
pulling the tip with a spring. Both static and kinetic friction rise linearly
with load at small loads. Transitions in the state of the film lead to
nonlinear behavior at large loads. The friction is less clearly correlated with
contact area than load.Comment: RevTex4, 17 pages, 13 figure
A statistical mechanics description of environmental variability in metabolic networks
Many of the chemical reactions that take place within a living cell are irreversible. Due to evolutionary pressures, the number of allowable reactions within these systems are highly constrained and thus the resulting metabolic networks display considerable asymmetry. In this paper, we explore possible evolutionary factors pertaining to the reduced symmetry observed in these networks, and demonstrate the important role environmental variability plays in shaping their structural organization. Interpreting the returnability index as an equilibrium constant for a reaction network in equilibrium with a hypothetical reference system, enables us to quantify the extent to which a metabolic network is in disequilibrium. Further, by introducing a new directed centrality measure via an extension of the subgraph centrality metric to directed networks, we are able to characterise individual metabolites by their participation within metabolic pathways. To demonstrate these ideas, we study 116 metabolic networks of bacteria. In particular, we find that the equilibrium constant for the metabolic networks decreases significantly in-line with variability in bacterial habitats, supporting the view that environmental variability promotes disequilibrium within these biochemical reaction system
Search for Sterile Neutrinos with a Radioactive Source at Daya Bay
The far site detector complex of the Daya Bay reactor experiment is proposed
as a location to search for sterile neutrinos with > eV mass. Antineutrinos
from a 500 kCi 144Ce-144Pr beta-decay source (DeltaQ=2.996 MeV) would be
detected by four identical 20-ton antineutrino targets. The site layout allows
flexible source placement; several specific source locations are discussed. In
one year, the 3+1 sterile neutrino hypothesis can be tested at essentially the
full suggested range of the parameters Delta m^2_{new} and sin^22theta_{new}
(90% C.L.). The backgrounds from six nuclear reactors at >1.6 km distance are
shown to be manageable. Advantages of performing the experiment at the Daya Bay
far site are described
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