A Bio-Wicking System to Prevent Frost Heave in Alaskan Pavements: Phase II Implementation

Water within pavement layers is the major cause of pavement deterioration. High water content results in significant reduction in soil’s resilient behavior and an increase in permanent deformation. Especially in cold regions, frost heave and thaw weakening cause extensive damage to roads and airfields. Conventional drainage systems can only drain gravity water not capillary water. Both preliminary lab and field tests have proven the drainage efficiency of a newly developed H2Ri geotextile with wicking fabrics. In this report, continuous research was conducted to verify the effectiveness of the wicking fabric in mitigating frost boil issues in Alaskan pavemnets. Two test sections were selected at two low volume roads on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Soil moisture and temperature sensors were installed within the road embankments. The monitored data was used to analyze the soil migrations and evaluate the drainage performance of the wicking fabric. Preliminary monitoring results showed that the wicking fabric was effective in mitigating the frost boil problem

RKKY interaction in three-dimensional electron gases with linear spin-orbit coupling

We theoretically study the impacts of linear spin-orbit coupling (SOC) on the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction between magnetic impurities in two kinds of three-dimensional noncentrosymmetric systems. It has been found that linear SOCs lead to the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction and the Ising interaction, in addition to the conventional Heisenberg interaction. These interactions possess distinct range functions from three dimensional electron gases and Dirac/Weyl semimetals. In the weak SOC limit, the Heisenberg interaction dominates over the other two interactions in a moderately large region of parameters. Sufficiently strong Rashba SOC makes the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction or the Ising interaction dominate over the Heisenberg interaction in some regions. The change in topology of the Fermi surface leads to some quantitative changes in periods of oscillations of range functions. The anisotropy of Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida interaction in bismuth tellurohalides family BiTe$X$ ($X$ = Br, Cl, and I) originates from both the specific form of Rashba SOC and the anisotropic effective mass. Our work provides some insights into understanding observed spin textures and the application of these materials in spintronics.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, Final Version in PR

Terra and Aqua MODIS TEB Inter-Comparison Using Himawari-8/AHI as Reference

Intercomparison between the two MODIS instruments is very useful for both the instrument calibration and its uncertainty assessment. Terra and Aqua MODIS have almost identical relative spectral response, spatial resolution, and dynamic range for each band, so the site-dependent effect from spectral mismatch for their comparison is negligible. Major challenges in cross-sensor comparison of instruments on different satellites include differences in observation time and view angle over selected pseudoinvariant sites. The simultaneous nadir overpasses (SNO) between the two satellites are mostly applied for comparison and the scene under SNO varies. However, there is a dearth of SNO between the Terra and Aqua. This work focuses on an intercomparison method for MODIS thermal emissive bands using Himawari-8 Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) as a reference. Eleven thermal emissive bands on MODIS are at least to some degree spectrally matched to the AHI bands. The sites selected for the comparison are an ocean area around the Himawari-8 suborbital point and the Strzelecki Desert located south of the Himawari-8 suborbital point. The time difference between the measurements from AHI and MODIS is <5 min. The comparison is performed using 2017 collection 6.1 L1B data for MODIS. The MODISAHI difference is corrected to remove the view angle dependence. The TerraAqua MODIS difference for the selected TEB is up to 0.6 K with the exception of band 30. Band 30 has the largest difference, which is site dependent, most likely due to a crosstalk effect. Over the ocean, the band 30 difference between the two MODIS instruments is around 1.75 K, while over the desert; the difference is around 0.68 K. The MODIS precision is also compared from the Gaussian regression of the double difference. Terra bands 27 to 30 have significant extra noise due to crosstalk effects on these bands. These TerraAqua comparison results are used for MODIS calibration assessments and are beneficial for future calibration algorithm improvement. The impact of daytime measurements and the scene dependence are also discussed

The roles of quantum correlations in quantum cloning

In this paper, we study the entanglement and quantum discord of the output modes in the unified $1\rightarrow 2$ state-dependent cloning and probabilistic quantum cloning. The tripartite entanglement among the output modes and the quantum cloning machine is also considered. We find that the roles of the quantum correlations including the bipartite and tripartite entanglement and quantum discord strongly depend on the quantum cloning machines as well as the cloned state. In particular, it is found that this quantum cloning scheme can be realizable even without any quantum correlation.Comment: Accepted by Eur. Phys. J.