872 research outputs found
Indoor Air Quality Through the Lens of Outdoor Atmospheric Chemistry
Outdoor atmospheric chemistry and air quality have been the topic of research that intensified in earnest around the mid-20th century, while indoor air quality research has only been a key focus of chemical researchers over the last 30 years. Examining practices and approaches employed in the outdoor atmospheric chemistry research enterprise provides an additional viewpoint from which we can chart new paths to increase scientific understanding of indoor chemistry. This chapter explores our understanding of primary chemical sources, homogeneous and multiphase reactivity, gas-surface partitioning, and the coupling between the chemistry and dynamics of indoor air through the lens of outdoor atmospheric chemistry. The means to mitigate degraded air quality outdoors are heavily rooted in public policy actions, while the commercial sector mainly promulgates solutions for indoor air quality, making practical and actionable outcomes to research essential for prompt improvements to indoor environments. Indoor and outdoor environments have many important scientific distinctions, but a shared vision for healthy environments motivates both research communities in the same way
Unitary designs and codes
A unitary design is a collection of unitary matrices that approximate the
entire unitary group, much like a spherical design approximates the entire unit
sphere. In this paper, we use irreducible representations of the unitary group
to find a general lower bound on the size of a unitary t-design in U(d), for
any d and t. We also introduce the notion of a unitary code - a subset of U(d)
in which the trace inner product of any pair of matrices is restricted to only
a small number of distinct values - and give an upper bound for the size of a
code of degree s in U(d) for any d and s. These bounds can be strengthened when
the particular inner product values that occur in the code or design are known.
Finally, we describe some constructions of designs: we give an upper bound on
the size of the smallest weighted unitary t-design in U(d), and we catalogue
some t-designs that arise from finite groups.Comment: 25 pages, no figure
Renormalization Group Analysis of \rho-Meson Properties at Finite Density
We calculate the density dependence of the -meson mass and coupling
constant() for -nucleon-nucleon vertex at one loop using the
lagrangian where the -meson is included as a dynamical gauge boson of a
hidden local symmetry. From the condition that thermodynamic potential should
not depend on the arbitrary energy scale, renormalization scale, one can
construct a renormalization group equation for the thermodynamic potential and
argue that the various renormalization group coefficients are functions of the
density or temperature. We calculate the -function for
-nucleon-nucleon coupling constant () and -function
for -meson mass (). We found that the -meson mass
and the coupling constant for drop as density increases in the
low energy limit.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, revised versio
Spherically Symmetric Braneworld Solutions with R_{4} term in the Bulk
An analysis of a spherically symmetric braneworld configuration is performed
when the intrinsic curvature scalar is included in the bulk action; the
vanishing of the electric part of the Weyl tensor is used as the boundary
condition for the embedding of the brane in the bulk. All the solutions outside
a static localized matter distribution are found; some of them are of the
Schwarzschild-(A)dS_{4} form. Two modified Oppenheimer-Volkoff interior
solutions are also found; one is matched to a Schwarzschild-(A)dS_{4} exterior,
while the other does not. A non-universal gravitational constant arises,
depending on the density of the considered object; however, the conventional
limits of the Newton's constant are recovered. An upper bound of the order of
TeV for the energy string scale is extracted from the known solar system
measurements (experiments). On the contrary, in usual brane dynamics, this
string scale is calculated to be larger than TeV.Comment: 23 pages, 1 figure, one minor chang
The importance of animal welfare science and ethics to veterinary students in Australia and New Zealand
The study of animal welfare and ethics (AWE) as part of veterinary education is important due to increasing community concerns and expectations about this topic, global pressures regarding food security, and the requirements of veterinary accreditation, especially with respect to Day One Competences. To address several key questions regarding the attitudes to AWE of veterinary students in Australia and New Zealand (NZ), the authors surveyed the 2014 cohort of these students. The survey aimed (1) to reveal what AWE topics veterinary students in Australia and NZ consider important as Day One Competences, and (2) to ascertain how these priorities align with existing research on how concern for AWE relates to gender and stage of study. Students identified triage and professional ethics as the most important Day One Competences in AWE. Students ranked an understanding of triage as increasingly important as they progressed through their program. Professional ethics was rated more important by early and mid-stage students than by senior students. Understanding the development of animal welfare science and perspectives on animal welfare were rated as being of little importance to veterinary graduates as Day One Competences, and an understanding of âwhy animal welfare mattersâ declined as the students progressed through the program. Combined, these findings suggest that veterinary students consider it more important to have the necessary practical skills and knowledge to function as a veterinarian on their first day in practic
Thinking about growth : a cognitive mapping approach to understanding small business development
School of Managemen
Surface reservoirs dominate dynamic gas-surface partitioning of many indoor air constituents
Human health is affected by indoor air quality. One distinctive aspect of the indoor environment is its very large surface area that acts as a poorly characterized sink and source of gas-phase chemicals. In this work, air-surface interactions of 19 common indoor air contaminants with diverse properties and sources were monitored in a house using fast-response, on-line mass spectrometric and spectroscopic methods. Enhanced-ventilation experiments demonstrate that most of the contaminants reside in the surface reservoirs and not, as expected, in the gas phase. They participate in rapid air-surface partitioning that is much faster than air exchange. Phase distribution calculations are consistent with the observations when assuming simultaneous equilibria between air and large weakly polar and polar absorptive surface reservoirs, with acid-base dissociation in the polar reservoir. Chemical exposure assessments must account for the finding that contaminants that are fully volatile under outdoor air conditions instead behave as semivolatile compounds indoors
ALPGEN, a generator for hard multiparton processes in hadronic collisions
This paper presents a new event generator, ALPGEN, dedicated to the study of
multiparton hard processes in hadronic collisions. The code performs, at the
leading order in QCD and EW interactions, the calculation of the exact matrix
elements for a large set of parton-level processes of interest in the study of
the Tevatron and LHC data. The current version of the code describes the
following final states: (W -> ffbar') QQbar+ N jets (Q being a heavy quark, and
f=l,q), with N f fbar)+QQbar+Njets (f=l,nu), with N
ffbar') + charm + N jets (f=l,q), N f fbar') + N jets (f=l,q) and
(Z/gamma* -> f fbar)+ N jets (f=l,nu), with N<=6; nW+mZ+lH+N jets, with
n+m+l+N<=8 and N<=3 including all 2-fermion decay modes of W and Z bosons, with
spin correlations; Q Qbar+N jets (N b f fbar' decays and relative
spin correlations included if Q=t; Q Qbar Q' Qbar'+N jets, with Q and Q' heavy
quarks (possibly equal) and N b f fbar'
decays and relative spin correlations included if Q=t; N jets, with N<=6.
Parton-level events are generated, providing full information on their colour
and flavour structure, enabling the evolution of the partons into fully
hadronised final states.Comment: 1+38 pages, uses JHEP.cls. Documents code version 1.2: extended list
of processes, updated documentation and bibliograph
Saturn's icy satellites and rings investigated by Cassini - VIMS. III. Radial compositional variability
In the last few years Cassini-VIMS, the Visible and Infared Mapping
Spectrometer, returned to us a comprehensive view of the Saturn's icy
satellites and rings. After having analyzed the satellites' spectral properties
(Filacchione et al. (2007a)) and their distribution across the satellites'
hemispheres (Filacchione et al. (2010)), we proceed in this paper to
investigate the radial variability of icy satellites (principal and minor) and
main rings average spectral properties. This analysis is done by using 2,264
disk-integrated observations of the satellites and a 12x700 pixels-wide rings
radial mosaic acquired with a spatial resolution of about 125 km/pixel. The
comparative analysis of these data allows us to retrieve the amount of both
water ice and red contaminant materials distributed across Saturn's system and
the typical surface regolith grain sizes. These measurements highlight very
striking differences in the population here analyzed, which vary from the
almost uncontaminated and water ice-rich surfaces of Enceladus and Calypso to
the metal/organic-rich and red surfaces of Iapetus' leading hemisphere and
Phoebe. Rings spectra appear more red than the icy satellites in the visible
range but show more intense 1.5-2.0 micron band depths. The correlations among
spectral slopes, band depths, visual albedo and phase permit us to cluster the
saturnian population in different spectral classes which are detected not only
among the principal satellites and rings but among co-orbital minor moons as
well. Finally, we have applied Hapke's theory to retrieve the best spectral
fits to Saturn's inner regular satellites using the same methodology applied
previously for Rhea data discussed in Ciarniello et al. (2011).Comment: 44 pages, 27 figures, 7 tables. Submitted to Icaru
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