Characterization of soil heavy metal pools in paddy fields in Taiwan: chemical extraction and solid-solution partitioning

Ongoing industrialization has resulted in an accumulation of metals like Cd, Cu, Cr, Ni, Zn, and Pb in paddy fields across Southeast Asia. Risks of metals in soils depend on soil properties and the availability of metals in soil. At present, however, limited information is available on how to measure or predict the directly available fraction of metals in paddy soils. Here, the distribution of Cd, Cu, Cr, Ni, Zn, and Pb in 19 paddy fields among the total, reactive, and directly available pools was measured using recently developed concepts for aerated soils. Solid-solution partitioning models have been derived to predict the directly available metal pool. Such models are proven to be useful for risk assessment and to derive soil quality standards for aerated soils. Soil samples (0-25 cm) were taken from 19 paddy fields from five different communities in Taiwan in 2005 and 2006. Each field was subdivided into 60 to 108 plots resulting in a database of approximately 3,200 individual soil samples. Total (Aqua Regia (AR)), reactive (0.43 M HNO3, 0.1 M HCl, and 0.05 M EDTA), and directly available metal pools (0.01 M CaCl2) were determined. Solid-solution partitioning models were derived by multiple linear regressions using an extended Freundlich equation using the reactive metal pool, pH, and the cation exchange capacity (CEC). The influence of Zn on metal partitioning and differences between both sampling events (May/November) were evaluated. Total metals contents range from background levels to levels in excess of current soil quality standards for arable land. Between 3% (Cr) and 30% (Cd) of all samples exceed present soil quality standards based on extraction with AR. Total metal levels decreased with an increasing distance from the irrigation water inlet. The reactive metal pool relative to the total metal content is increased in the order C

Hydraulic characteristics of smart reactor for a nominal condition

SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor) is an integral-type reactor being developed, which has major components including core, pumps, steam generators and a pressurizer inside the reactor vessel. In order to analyze the various safety features of the reactor, the quantification for the flow and pressure distributions are very important. A test facility, named “SCOP”, was designed based on the conservation of Euler number which is a ratio of pressure drop to dynamic pressure with a sufficiently high Reynolds number. In order to preserve the flow distribution characteristics, the SCOP is linearly reduced with a scaling ratio of 1/5. For the present work, a total of 9 tests were performed for a nominal SMART flow condition. By using the test results, a statistical final flow distribution for the SMART reactor were presented. The current data could be applied for the validation of a CFD analysis method as well as reactor safety and system performance analysesPaper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012

Hydraulic characteristics of smart reactor for a nominal condition

Paper presented at the 9th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Malta, 16-18 July, 2012.SMART (System-integrated Modular Advanced ReacTor) is an integral-type reactor being developed, which has major components including core, pumps, steam generators and a pressurizer inside the reactor vessel. In order to analyze the various safety features of the reactor, the quantification for the flow and pressure distributions are very important. A test facility, named “SCOP”, was designed based on the conservation of Euler number which is a ratio of pressure drop to dynamic pressure with a sufficiently high Reynolds number. In order to preserve the flow distribution characteristics, the SCOP is linearly reduced with a scaling ratio of 1/5. For the present work, a total of 9 tests were performed for a nominal SMART flow condition. By using the test results, a statistical final flow distribution for the SMART reactor were presented. The current data could be applied for the validation of a CFD analysis method as well as reactor safety and system performance analyses.dc201

Neumann and Neumann-Rosochatius integrable systems from membranes on AdS_4xS^7

It is known that large class of classical string solutions in the type IIB AdS_5xS^5 background is related to the Neumann and Neumann-Rosochatius integrable systems, including spiky strings and giant magnons. It is also interesting if these integrable systems can be associated with some membrane configurations in M-theory. We show here that this is indeed the case by presenting explicitly several types of membrane embedding in AdS_4xS^7 with the searched properties.Comment: LaTeX, 17 pages, no figures;v2: comments and citations added;v3: 20 pages, new subsection, explanations, comments and references added; v4: some typos fixed, to appear in JHE

CMB constraints on noncommutative geometry during inflation

We investigate the primordial power spectrum of the density perturbations based on the assumption that spacetime is noncommutative in the early stage of inflation. Due to the spacetime noncommutativity, the primordial power spectrum can lose rotational invariance. Using the k-inflation model and slow-roll approximation, we show that the deviation from rotational invariance of the primordial power spectrum depends on the size of noncommutative length scale L_s but not on sound speed. We constrain the contributions from the spacetime noncommutativity to the covariance matrix for the harmonic coefficients of the CMB anisotropies using five-year WMAP CMB maps. We find that the upper bound for L_s depends on the product of sound speed and slow-roll parameter. Estimating this product using cosmological parameters from the five-year WMAP results, the upper bound for L_s is estimated to be less than 10^{-27} cm at 99.7% confidence level.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, References added, Accepted for publication in EPJC (submitted version