384 research outputs found
Nouvelles trappes à sédiment destinées aux milieux peu profonds vidangeables
Les mesures de taux de sédimentation en milieux aquatiques peu profonds sont rares et sont souvent réalisées à l'aide de méthodes inadaptées. Les trappes à sédiment utilisées ont au minimum 25 cm de haut. Par conséquent, pour beaucoup de milieux peu profonds, plus de 25 % de la colonne d'eau ne sont pas échantillonnés. Nous avons pallié ce problème en développant un réceptacle mis en place dans les sédiments et destiné à recevoir des trappes à sédiment cylindriques. Le sommet des trappes peut alors être situé à moins de 5 cm de la surface des sédiments. Ce système est utilisable pour des milieux de profondeur inférieure à cinq mètres. Nos résultats montrent que les trappes à sédiments généralement utilisées sous-estiment de 35 à 79 % du taux de sédimentation. Les particules négligées proviennent des flux sédimentaires primaire et secondaire.Sediment traps are a unique tool that can be used to investigate particle settling flux throughout the water column, whereas other methods such as sediment dating can only measure accumulation rates of bottom sediments. Several works on trapping efficiency have shown that cylindrical traps with height/diameter ratio greater than to 5 (10 in turbulent systems) are the more appropriate instruments to correctly measure the downward settling flux of particulate matter. Furthermore, traps with a diameter narrower than 5 cm should be avoided. It is well documented that bottle-type vessels overestimate the settling sediment whereas funnels and flat containers underestimate it. All this support the idea that an ideal trap must be at least 25 cm high, and in this sense, numerous studies investigating shallow aquatic systems have neglected a large proportion of the water column. Consequently, mechanical and biological processes occurring in this layer of the water column have not been taken into accountWe have overcome this problem with a structure composed of two parts (figure 2).The first part is a receptacle (bucket) buried in the sediment and intended to receive cylindrical traps. The top of the receptacle is placed 2 cm above the sediment. A guide made of a rope covered with a PVC tube is placed in the centre of the receptacle. This receptacle is intended to receive cylindrical traps whose tops stand less than 5 cm higher than the surface of the sediments.The second part is composed of seven cylinders (height/diameter ratio=10) which are fixed in a PVC disc 600 mm in diameter and 15 mm deep. The cylinders are placed around the central axis of the PVC disc. The bottom of the cylinders is closed with a removable polyethylene cap. Another cylinder, through which the guide can slide, is placed on the central axis. The bottom part of this last cylinder is ballasted with concrete. The stability of this second part, during both deposition and removal steps, is ensured by the low density of the PVC disc, the ballast at the bottom of the central cylinder, and the symmetry of the structure. This removable part may be lifted from the receptacle with three 2 mm diameter ropes attached to the PVC disc and fixed to a float. This apparatus may be used as deep as five meters.The sediment traps were tested in two extensively-managed fish ponds in North-Eastern France. Our investigations showed that tubes with a diameter between 26 and 140 mm could be efficiently used to estimate the sedimentation rate, whereas cylinders with a narrower diameter missed a large amount of particles. The use of tubes with a diameter above 50 mm, which is preferable for the study of turbulent systems, seems to allow the collection of sufficient sediment during a short period of time. We selected tubes with a diameter of 57 mm, which made it possible to handle them easily during the removal. Our investigations showed that in turbulent systems and for high sedimentation rates (> 5 kg·m-2 ·month-1), the top of the cylinders must be placed 1 cm above the top of the PVC disc. When considering low sedimentation rates (< 5 kg·m-2 ·month-1), we did not observe any significant differences between the cylinders placed 0 and 1 cm above the PVC disc.Complementary investigations were conducted in order to compare sedimentation rates estimated 1) by the apparatus we designed, in which the top of the cylinders was placed 5 cm above the sediment surface, 2) by traditional traps (57 mm in diameter and a height/diameter ratio of 5) in which the top of the cylinders was 28.5 cm above the sediment surface.These results showed that in shallow systems (1.2 m deep), traditional traps underestimate the downward settling flux of particulate matter by 35 to 79%. Furthermore, we compared the organic matter content of the sediment collected by the two types of traps with the organic matter content of bottom sediment, suspended particles, and submerged macrophytes. Results showed that the underestimation of particles was not only due to the resuspension of bottom sediment, but also to the sedimentation of phytoplankton and submerged macrophyte fragments which are not collected by the traditional traps
Polaronic optical absorption in electron-doped and hole-doped cuprates
Polaronic features similar to those previously observed in the photoinduced
spectra of cuprates have been detected in the reflectivity spectra of
chemically doped parent compounds of high-critical-temperature superconductors,
both -type and -type. In NdCuO these features, whose
intensities depend both on doping and temperature, include local vibrational
modes in the far infrared and a broad band centered at 1000 cm.
The latter band is produced by the overtones of two (or three) local modes and
is well described in terms of a small-polaron model, with a binding energy of
about 500 cm. Most of the above infrared features are shown to survive
in the metallic phase of NdCeCu0, BiSrCuO, and
YBaCuO, where they appear as extra-Drude peaks. The occurrence
of polarons is attributed to local modes strongly coupled to carriers, as shown
by a comparison with tunneling results.Comment: File latex, 31 p., submitted to Physical Review B. Figures may be
faxed upon reques
QGIS AND OPEN DATA CUBE APPLICATIONS FOR LOCAL CLIMATE ZONES ANALYSIS LEVERAGING PRISMA HYPERSPECTRAL SATELLITE DATA
Climate change poses a significant threat to humans and biodiversity, impacting various aspects of livelihoods, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Understanding climate change and its interaction with the environment is crucial for achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Local Climate Zones (LCZ) play a key role in comprehending climate change by categorizing urban areas also based on their thermal characteristics. This study presents prototype open-source software tools developed to integrate ground and satellite data for LCZ analysis in the Metropolitan City of Milan (Northern Italy). These tools consist of a QGIS plugin to access and preprocess ground-based meteorological sensor data and a client-server platform, based on the Open Data Cube and Docker technologies, for the exploitation of multispectral and hyperspectral satellite data in LCZ mapping and analysis. The tools’ architecture, data retrieval methods, and analysis capabilities are described in detail. The QGIS plugin facilitates the access and preprocessing of ground-based sensor data within the user-friendly QGIS environment. The platform enables seamless ground-sensor and satellite data management and analysis, using Jupyter Notebooks as an interface to support programmatic operations on the data. The proposed tools provide a framework for studying climate change and its local impacts on urban environments, with the potential of empowering users to effectively analyze and mitigate its effects
Infrared signatures of charge stripes in La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO(4)
The in-plane optical conductivity of seven La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO(4) single crystals
with x between 0 and 0.15 has been studied from 30 to 295 K. All doped samples
exhibit strong peaks in the far-infrared, which closely resemble those observed
in Cu-O "ladders" with one-dimensional charge-ordering. The behavior with
doping and temperature of the peak energy, width, and intensity allows us to
conclude that we are observing charge stripes dynamics in La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO(4) on
the fast time scale of infrared spectroscopy.Comment: 9 pages including figs. in pdf forma
Measurements of the Complex Conductivity of NbxSi1-x Alloys on the Insulating Side of the Metal-Insulator Transition
We have conducted temperature and frequency dependent transport measurements
in amorphous Nb_x Si_{1-x} samples in the insulating regime. We find a
temperature dependent dc conductivity consistent with variable range hopping in
a Coulomb glass. The frequency dependent response in the millimeter-wave
frequency range can be described by the expression with the exponent somewhat smaller than one. Our ac
results are not consistent with extant theories for the hopping transport.Comment: 4 pages with 3 figures; published version has a different title from
original (was: "Electrodynamics in a Coulomb glass"
Colossal dielectric constants in transition-metal oxides
Many transition-metal oxides show very large ("colossal") magnitudes of the
dielectric constant and thus have immense potential for applications in modern
microelectronics and for the development of new capacitance-based
energy-storage devices. In the present work, we thoroughly discuss the
mechanisms that can lead to colossal values of the dielectric constant,
especially emphasising effects generated by external and internal interfaces,
including electronic phase separation. In addition, we provide a detailed
overview and discussion of the dielectric properties of CaCu3Ti4O12 and related
systems, which is today's most investigated material with colossal dielectric
constant. Also a variety of further transition-metal oxides with large
dielectric constants are treated in detail, among them the system La2-xSrxNiO4
where electronic phase separation may play a role in the generation of a
colossal dielectric constant.Comment: 31 pages, 18 figures, submitted to Eur. Phys. J. for publication in
the Special Topics volume "Cooperative Phenomena in Solids: Metal-Insulator
Transitions and Ordering of Microscopic Degrees of Freedom
Double-blind randomized study on the myeloprotective effect of melatonin in combination with carboplatin and etoposide in advanced lung cancer
Prospective of the Application of Ultrasounds in Archaeology
[EN] This paper presents a prospective analysis of non destructive testing (NDT) based on
ultrasounds in the field of archaeology applications. Classical applications of ultrasounds techniques are reviewed, including ocean exploration to detect wrecks, imaging of archaeological sites, and cleaning archaeological objects. The potential of prospective applications is discussed from the perspective of signal processing, with emphasis on the area of linear time variant models. Thus, the use of ultrasound NDT is proposed for new ceramic cataloguing and restoration methods.This work has been supported by the Generalitat Valenciana under grant PROMETEO/2010/040, and the Spanish Administration and the FEDER Programme of the European Union under grant TEC2011-23403 01/01/2012.Salazar Afanador, A.; Rodriguez Martinez, A.; Safont Armero, G.; Vergara Domínguez, L. (2012). Prospective of the Application of Ultrasounds in Archaeology. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. 42:1-5. https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/42/1/012010S154
Single-spin readout for buried dopant semiconductor qubits
In the design of quantum computer architectures that take advantage of the
long coherence times of dopant nuclear and electron spins in the solid-state,
single-spin detection for readout remains a crucial unsolved problem. Schemes
based on adiabatically induced spin-dependent electron tunnelling between
individual donor atoms, detected using a single electron transistor (SET) as an
ultra-sensitive electrometer, are thought to be problematic because of the low
ionisaton energy of the final D- state. In this paper we analyse the adiabatic
scheme in detail. We find that despite significant stabilization due to the
presence of the D+, the field strengths required for the transition lead to a
shortened dwell-time placing severe constraints on the SET measurement time. We
therefore investigate a new method based on resonant electron transfer, which
operates with much reduced field strengths. Various issues in the
implementation of this method are also discussed.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl
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