Report on a mission to Romania to investigate production, processing and marketing of fresh water fish

Abstract not availabl

Hourly and seasonal variation in photosynthesis and stomatal conductance of soybean grown at future CO2 and ozone concentrations for three years under fully open air conditions.

published or submitted for publicatio

The comparison of core and geophysical log measurements obtained in the Nirex investigation of the Sellafield region

The Sellafield region, west Cumbria, is the focus of one of the most thorough geological investigations in the United Kingdom. The Sellafield Site is defined as an area immediately around the potential repository, extending 6.5 km north-south by 8 km eastwest. Twenty six deep boreholes were drilled within the area up to the end of 1995, with a total depth of approximately 28 km. Most of these boreholes have been continuously cored, a total of over 17 kilometres of core, with average core recovery well in excess of 90%. All boreholes were logged with a comprehensive suite of geophysical logs, including many state of the art tools. Laboratory physical property analysis of hundreds of sample cores has been carried out. Pilot studies were carried out to compare and contrast datasets and to investigate the relationships between the different data scales. Various techniques, including fractal analysis and Artificial Neural Networks, were tried in order to explore the relationships of these data at a variety of measurement scales. The pilot study was conducted in two stages: (1) evaluation of the primary controlling factors of the physical properties; (2) testing the validity of ‘Up-scaling’. The rocks of the Borrowdale Volcanic Group provided the most challenging problems due to the physical properties being dominated by fracturing and associated alteration zones. Relationships between data types at different scales were established suggesting that the extrapolation of properties derived from core and wireline logs across three-dimensional seismic grids would allow an understanding of the properties throughout a three-dimensional volum

The effect of a secondary task on drivers’ gap acceptance and situational awareness at junctions

The current studies explored the roles of the visuospatial and phonological working memory subsystems on drivers’ gap acceptance and memory for approaching vehicles at junctions. Drivers’ behaviour was measured in a high-fidelity driving simulator when at a junction, with, and without a visuospatial or phonological load. When asked to judge when to advance across the junction, gap acceptance thresholds, memory for vehicles and eye movements were not different when there was a secondary task compared to control. However, drivers’ secondary task performance was more impaired in the visuospatial than phonological domain. These findings suggest that drivers were able to accept impairment in the secondary task while maintaining appropriate safety margins and situational awareness. These findings can inform the development of in-car technologies, improving the safety of road users at junctions. Practitioner summary: Despite research indicating that concurrent performance on working memory tasks impairs driving, a matched visuospatial or phonological memory load did not change drivers’ gap acceptance or situational awareness at junctions. Drivers displayed appropriate compensatory behaviour by prioritising the driving task over the visuospatial secondary task. Abbreviations: ROW: right of way; RIG: random time interval generatio

Vacuum-UV negative photoion spectroscopy of CH4

Using synchrotron radiation in the range 12-35 eV, negative ions are detected by mass spectrometry following vacuum-UV photoexcitation of methane. Ion yields for H$^-$, CH$^-$ and CH$_2^-$ are recorded, the spectra of CH$^-$ and CH$_2^-$ for the first time. All ions display a linear dependence of signal with pressure, showing that they arise from unimolecular ion-pair dissociation. Cross sections for ion-pair formation are put onto an absolute scale by calibrating the signal strengths with those of F$^-$ from SF$_6$ and CF$_4$. Following normalisation to total vacuum-UV absorption cross sections, quantum yields for anion production are reported. There is a major discrepancy in the H$^-$ cross section with an earlier measurement, which remains unresolved. The anions arise from both direct and indirect ion-pair mechanisms. For a generic polyatomic molecule AB, the former is defined as AB $\rightarrow$ A$^-$ + B$^+$ (+ neutrals), the latter as the predissociative crossing of an initially-excited Rydberg state of AB by an ion-pair state. In a separate experiment, the threshold photoelectron spectrum of the second valence band of CH$_4$, ionisation to CH$_4^+$ A $^2$A$_1$ at 22.4 eV, is recorded with an instrumental resolution of 0.004 eV; many of the Rydberg states observed in indirect ion-pair formation converge to this state. The widths of the peaks are lifetime limited, increasing with increasing $v$ in the $v_1$ (a$_1$) vibrational ladder. They are the first direct measurement of an upper value to the dissociation rate of these levels into fragment ions

Wilson Lines off the Light-cone in TMD PDFs

Transverse Momentum Dependent (TMD) parton distribution functions (PDFs) also take into account the transverse momentum ($p_T$) of the partons. The $p_T$-integrated analogues can be linked directly to quark and gluon matrix elements using the operator product expansion in QCD, involving operators of definite twist. TMDs also involve operators of higher twist, which are not suppressed by powers of the hard scale, however. Taking into account gauge links that no longer are along the light-cone, one finds that new distribution functions arise. They appear at leading order in the description of azimuthal asymmetries in high-energy scattering processes. In analogy to the collinear operator expansion, we define a universal set of TMDs of definite rank and point out the importance for phenomenology.Comment: 12 pages, presented by the first author at the Light-Cone Conference 2013, May 20-24, 2013, Skiathos, Greece. To be published in Few Body System

Anthropogenic controls on overwash deposition: Evidence and consequences

Accelerated sea level rise and the potential for an increase in frequency of the most intense hurricanes due to climate change threaten the vitality and habitability of barrier islands by lowering their relative elevation and altering frequency of overwash. High-density development may further increase island vulnerability by restricting delivery of overwash to the subaerial island. We analyzed pre-Hurricane Sandy and post-Hurricane Sandy (2012) lidar surveys of the New Jersey coast to assess human influence on barrier overwash, comparing natural environments to two developed environments (commercial and residential) using shore-perpendicular topographic profiles. The volumes of overwash delivered to residential and commercial environments are reduced by 40% and 90%, respectively, of that delivered to natural environments. We use this analysis and an exploratory barrier island evolution model to assess long-term impacts of anthropogenic structures. Simulations suggest that natural barrier islands may persist under a range of likely future sea level rise scenarios (7-13 mm/yr), whereas developed barrier islands will have a long-term tendency toward drowning

Solidification of Al-Sn-Cu based immiscible alloys under intense shearing

The official published version of the Article can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2009 The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society and ASM InternationalThe growing importance of Al-Sn based alloys as materials for engineering applications necessitates the development of uniform microstructures with improved performance. Guided by the recently thermodynamically assessed Al-Sn-Cu system, two model immiscible alloys, Al-45Sn-10Cu and Al-20Sn-10Cu, were selected to investigate the effects of intensive melt shearing provided by the novel melt conditioning by advanced shear technology (MCAST) unit on the uniform dispersion of the soft Sn phase in a hard Al matrix. Our experimental results have confirmed that intensive melt shearing is an effective way to achieve fine and uniform dispersion of the soft phase without macro-demixing, and that such dispersed microstructure can be further refined in alloys with precipitation of the primary Al phase prior to the demixing reaction. In addition, it was found that melt shearing at 200 rpm and 60 seconds will be adequate to produce fine and uniform dispersion of the Sn phase, and that higher shearing speed and prolonged shearing time can only achieve minor further refinement.This work is funded by the EPSRC and DT