258 research outputs found
Biological activated carbon and advanced oxidation processes for the removal of cyanobacterial metabolites in drinking water treatment
Biological activated carbon (BAC) and advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) are often used in conjunction during drinking water treatment for the removal of trace organic compounds that are not effectively removed during traditional treatment processes such as coagulation, flocculation and sand filtration. These trace organic compounds include toxic cyanobacterial metabolites such as saxitoxins and taste and odour (T&O) causing compounds like geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol (2-MIB) which are produced by a number of bacterial species including cyanobacteria. At present, the Hamilton Drinking Water Treatment Plant (HDWTP) employs the use of BAC as part of the final stage of drinking water treatment for its municipal water supply. This article provides a general overview of the chemical and physical processes involved and a review of the current state of AOP technology
Strong Gravitational Lensing and Dark Energy Complementarity
In the search for the nature of dark energy most cosmological probes measure
simple functions of the expansion rate. While powerful, these all involve
roughly the same dependence on the dark energy equation of state parameters,
with anticorrelation between its present value w_0 and time variation w_a.
Quantities that have instead positive correlation and so a sensitivity
direction largely orthogonal to, e.g., distance probes offer the hope of
achieving tight constraints through complementarity. Such quantities are found
in strong gravitational lensing observations of image separations and time
delays. While degeneracy between cosmological parameters prevents full
complementarity, strong lensing measurements to 1% accuracy can improve
equation of state characterization by 15-50%. Next generation surveys should
provide data on roughly 10^5 lens systems, though systematic errors will remain
challenging.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
Weak lensing, dark matter and dark energy
Weak gravitational lensing is rapidly becoming one of the principal probes of
dark matter and dark energy in the universe. In this brief review we outline
how weak lensing helps determine the structure of dark matter halos, measure
the expansion rate of the universe, and distinguish between modified gravity
and dark energy explanations for the acceleration of the universe. We also
discuss requirements on the control of systematic errors so that the
systematics do not appreciably degrade the power of weak lensing as a
cosmological probe.Comment: Invited review article for the GRG special issue on gravitational
lensing (P. Jetzer, Y. Mellier and V. Perlick Eds.). V3: subsection on
three-point function and some references added. Matches the published versio
A New Relativistic High Temperature Bose-Einstein Condensation
We discuss the properties of an ideal relativistic gas of events possessing
Bose-Einstein statistics. We find that the mass spectrum of such a system is
bounded by where is the usual chemical
potential, is an intrinsic dimensional scale parameter for the motion of an
event in space-time, and is an additional mass potential of the
ensemble. For the system including both particles and antiparticles, with
nonzero chemical potential the mass spectrum is shown to be bounded by
and a special type of high-temperature
Bose-Einstein condensation can occur. We study this Bose-Einstein condensation,
and show that it corresponds to a phase transition from the sector of
continuous relativistic mass distributions to a sector in which the boson mass
distribution becomes sharp at a definite mass This phenomenon
provides a mechanism for the mass distribution of the particles to be sharp at
some definite value.Comment: Latex, 22 page
Fast Bounds on the Distribution of Smooth Numbers
In this paper we present improvements to Bernsteinâs algorithm, which finds rigorous upper and lower bounds for (x, y)
Electromagnetic and Hadron Calorimeters in the MIPP Experiment
The purpose of the MIPP experiment is to study the inclusive production of
photons, pions, kaons and nucleons in pi, K and p interactions on various
targets using beams from the Main Injector at Fermilab. The function of the
calorimeters is to measure the production of forward-going neutrons and
photons. The electromagnetic calorimeter consist of 10 lead plates interspersed
with proportional chambers. It was followed by the hadron calorimeter with 64
steel plates interspersed with scintillator. The data presented were collected
with a variety of targets and beam momenta from 5 GeV/c to 120 GeV/c. The
energy calibration of both calorimeters with electrons, pions, kaons, and
protons is discussed. The resolution for electrons was found to be
0.27/sqrt(E), and for hadrons the resolution was 0.554/sqrt(E) with a constant
term of 2.6%. The performance of the calorimeters was tested on a neutron
sample
Alteration in the plasma concentration of a DAAO inhibitor, 3-methylpyrazole-5-carboxylic acid, in the ketamine-treated rats and the influence on the pharmacokinetics of plasma d-tryptophan
A determination method for 3-methylpyrazole-5-carboxylic acid (MPC), an inhibitor of d-amino acid oxidase (DAAO), in rat plasma was developed by using high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). The structural isomer of MPC, 3-methylpyrazole-4-carboxylic acid, was used as an internal standard, and the intra- and inter-day accuracies and precisions were satisfactory for the determination of plasma MPC
Crystallographic structure reveals phosphorylated pilin from Neisseria : phosphoserine sites modify type IV pilus surface chemistry and fibre morphology
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72468/1/j.1365-2958.1999.01184.x.pd
Constraining Strong Baryon-Dark Matter Interactions with Primordial Nucleosynthesis and Cosmic Rays
Self-interacting dark matter (SIDM) was introduced by Spergel & Steinhardt to
address possible discrepancies between collisionless dark matter simulations
and observations on scales of less than 1 Mpc. We examine the case in which
dark matter particles not only have strong self-interactions but also have
strong interactions with baryons. The presence of such interactions will have
direct implications for nuclear and particle astrophysics. Among these are a
change in the predicted abundances from big bang nucleosynthesis (BBN) and the
flux of gamma-rays produced by the decay of neutral pions which originate in
collisions between dark matter and Galactic cosmic rays (CR). From these
effects we constrain the strength of the baryon--dark matter interactions
through the ratio of baryon - dark matter interaction cross section to dark
matter mass, . We find that BBN places a weak upper limit to this ratio . CR-SIDM interactions, however, limit the possible DM-baryon cross
section to ; this rules out an energy-independent
interaction, but not one which falls with center-of-mass velocity as or steeper.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figures; plain LaTeX. To appear in PR
Cosmic Microwave Background constraint on residual annihilations of relic particles
Energy injected into the Cosmic Microwave Background at redshifts z<10^6 will
distort its spectrum permanently. In this paper we discuss the distortion
caused by annihilations of relic particles. We use the observational bounds on
deviations from a Planck spectrum to constrain a combination of annihilation
cross section, mass, and abundance. For particles with (s-wave) annihilation
cross section, =\sigma_0, the bound is
f[(\sigma_0/6e-27cm^3/s)(\Omega_{X\bar{X}}h^2)^2]/(m_X/MeV)<0.2, where m_X is
the particle mass, \Omega_{X\bar{X}} is the fraction of the critical density
the particle and its antiparticle contribute if they survive to the present
time, h=H_0/(100km/s/Mpc), H_0 is the Hubble constant, and f is the fraction of
the annihilation energy that interacts electromagnetically. We also compute the
less stringent limits for p-wave annihilation. We update other bounds on
residual annihilations and compare them to our CMB bound.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.
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