On the modeling of low-Reynolds-number turbulence

A full Reynolds-stress closure that is capable of describing the flow all the way to the wall was formulated for turbulent flow through circular pipe. Since viscosity does not appear explicitly in the pressure redistribution terms, conventional high-number models for these terms are found to be applicable. However, the models for turbulent diffusion and viscous dissipation have to be modified to account for viscous diffusion near a wall. Two redistribution and two diffusion models are investigated for their effects on the model calculations. Wall correction to pressure redistribution modeling is also examined. Diffusion effects on calculated turbulent properties are further investigated by simplifying the transport equations to algebraic equations for Reynolds stress. Two approximations are explored. These are the equilibrium and nonequilibrium turbulence assumptions. Finally, the two-equation closure is also used to calculate the flow in question and the results compared with all the other model calculations. Fully developed pipe flows at two moderate Reynolds numbers are used to validate these model calculations

Multi-robot region-of-interest reconstruction with Dec-MCTS

© 2019 IEEE. We consider the problem of reconstructing regions of interest of a scene using multiple robot arms and RGB-D sensors. This problem is motivated by a variety of applications, such as precision agriculture and infrastructure inspection. A viewpoint evaluation function is presented that exploits predicted observations and the geometry of the scene. A recently proposed non-myopic planning algorithm, Decentralised Monte Carlo tree search, is used to coordinate the actions of the robot arms. Motion planning is performed over a navigation graph that considers the high-dimensional configuration space of the robot arms. Extensive simulated experiments are carried out using real sensor data and then validated on hardware with two robot arms. Our proposed targeted information gain planner is compared to state-of-the-art baselines and outperforms them in every measured metric. The robots quickly observe and accurately detect fruit in a trellis structure, demonstrating the viability of the approach for real-world applications

Social media use and impact during the holiday travel planning process

Through an empirical study among holiday travellers, residing in the Former Soviet Union Republics, this paper presents a comprehensive view of role and impact of social media on the whole holiday travel planning process: Before, during and after the trip, providing insights on usage levels, scope of use, level of influence and trust. Findings suggest that social media are predominantly used after holidays for experience sharing. It is also shown that there is a strong correlation between perceived level of influence from social media and changes made in holiday plans prior to final decisions. Moreover, it is revealed that user-generated content is perceived as more trustworthy when compared to official tourism websites, travel agents and mass media advertising

Optimal Time Allocation Process for Growth-Focused Entrepreneurs

For many entrepreneurs, time is a key constraint. They need to invest time to achieve growth, but also lose time because of recurring crises. We develop a simple stochastic dynamic program to model how an entrepreneur should prioritize between improving processes to reduce crises versus harvesting revenue or ensuring future growth. We show that it is initially optimal to prioritize process improvement: an entrepreneur should strive for high process quality early in the venture’s growth process. We numerically analyze a simple heuristic derived from this optimal policy and identify the conditions under which it is (or is not) effective. It performs near optimally except when process quality or revenue rate may deteriorate too fast or when the cost of process improvement or revenue enhancement is too high. Our work provides a theoretical foundation for the advice found in the popular entrepreneurship and time management literature to invest time now to save time later

Observation of the Dependence of Scintillation from Nuclear Recoils in Liquid Argon on Drift Field

We have exposed a dual-phase Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (LAr-TPC) to a low energy pulsed narrowband neutron beam, produced at the Notre Dame Institute for Structure and Nuclear Astrophysics to study the scintillation light yield of recoiling nuclei in a LAr-TPC. A liquid scintillation counter was arranged to detect and identify neutrons scattered in the LAr-TPC target and to select the energy of the recoiling nuclei. We report the observation of a significant dependence on drift field of liquid argon scintillation from nuclear recoils of 11 keV. This observation is important because, to date, estimates of the sensitivity of noble liquid TPC dark matter searches are based on the assumption that electric field has only a small effect on the light yield from nuclear recoils.Comment: v3 updated to reflect published version, including a set of plots for 49.9 keV dat

Formation of the Black Holes in the Highest Redshift Quasars

The recent discovery of luminous quasars up to a redshift z=6.43 has renewed interest in the formation of black holes massive enough to power quasars. If black holes grow by Eddington-limited gas accretion with a radiative efficiency of at least 10%, the time required to grow from a stellar black hole to ~10^9 msun is ~10^9 years, close to the age of the universe at z=6. Black hole mergers may accelerate the rate of mass growth, but can also completely eject black holes from halo centers owing to the gravitational wave recoil effect. Recently, Haiman concluded that black hole ejections likely do not allow black holes to grow to ~10^9 msun by z=6.43. We reexamine this problem and show that, by using a different halo escape velocity, accounting for the dependence of the recoil velocity on the black hole binary mass ratio and spins, and allowing seed black holes to form in all halos down to virial temperatures of 2000 K, black hole masses may reach ~10^9 msun as early as z=9 starting from stellar seeds, without super-Eddington accretion. In this particular case, we find that these massive black holes form from the merger of ~10^4 stellar black holes formed in low-mass halos at z~20, which must all grow close to the maximum Eddington rate over most of the time available from their birth to z~6. The alternative is that black holes can grow more rapidly by super-Eddington accretion.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Cavity-induced coherence effects in spontaneous emission from pre-Selection of polarization

Spontaneous emission can create coherences in a multilevel atom having close lying levels, subject to the condition that the atomic dipole matrix elements are non-orthogonal. This condition is rarely met in atomic systems. We report the possibility of bypassing this condition and thereby creating coherences by letting the atom with orthogonal dipoles to interact with the vacuum of a pre-selected polarized cavity mode rather than the free space vacuum. We derive a master equation for the reduced density operator of a model four level atomic system, and obtain its analytical solution to describe the interference effects. We report the quantum beat structure in the populations.Comment: 6 pages in REVTEX multicolumn format, 5 figures, new references added, journal reference adde

The Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1 complex mediates activation of TopBP1 by ATM

The activation of ATR-ATRIP in response to double-stranded DNA breaks (DSBs) depends upon ATM in human cells and Xenopus egg extracts. One important aspect of this dependency involves regulation of TopBP1 by ATM. In Xenopus egg extracts, ATM associates with TopBP1 and thereupon phosphorylates it on S1131. This phosphorylation enhances the capacity of TopBP1 to activate the ATR-ATRIP complex. We show that TopBP1 also interacts with the Mre11-Rad50-Nbs1 (MRN) complex in egg extracts in a checkpoint-regulated manner. This interaction involves the Nbs1 subunit of the complex. ATM can no longer interact with TopBP1 in Nbs1-depleted egg extracts, which suggests that the MRN complex helps to bridge ATM and TopBP1 together. The association between TopBP1 and Nbs1 involves the first pair of BRCT repeats in TopBP1. In addition, the two tandem BRCT repeats of Nbs1 are required for this binding. Functional studies with mutated forms of TopBP1 and Nbs1 suggested that the BRCT-dependent association of these proteins is critical for a normal checkpoint response to DSBs. These findings suggest that the MRN complex is a crucial mediator in the process whereby ATM promotes the TopBP1-dependent activation of ATR-ATRIP in response to DSBs