Development of Lunar Highland REgolith Simulants, NU-LHT-1M,-2M

As part of a collaborative agreement between the U.S, Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) lunar highland simulants are being produced to support engineers and scientists in developing the technologies required to put a base on the moon by 2024. Two simulants have been produced to date: NU-LHT-1M and -2M (NASA/USGS-Lunar Highlands Type-l & 2 Medium-grained). Using starting material chiefly collected from the Stillwater Mine, Nye, MT, blending protocols were developed based on normative mineralogy calculated from average chemistry, for the Apollo 16 regolith. New technologies using a high temperature remotely coupled plasma melter were developed to generate both high quality and agglutinitic glasses that simulate the glassy components of the regolith. Detailed chemical, mineralogical and physical properties analysis of NU-LHT-1M indicate that it is overall a good surrogate for highlands lunar regolith (our new simulant LHT-2M has not be analyzed yet). The primary difference between 1M and 2M was the inclusion of trace mineralogy (phosphates and sulfide). Plans will also be presented on the future direction of the simulant project

The Wilson-Polchinski Renormalization Group Equation in the Planar Limit

We derive the Wilson-Polchinski RG equation in the planar limit. We explain that the equation necessarily involves also non-planar amplitudes with sphere topology, which represent multi-trace contributions to the effective action. The resulting RG equation turns out to be of the Hamilton-Jacobi type since loop effects manifest themselves through terms which are linear in first order derivatives of the effective action with respect to the sources. We briefly outline applications to renormalization of non-commutative field theories, matrix models with external sources and holography.Comment: 22 pages, Latex, 3 eps figure

Projected impacts of 21st century climate change on diapause in Calanus finmarchicus

Diapause plays a key role in the life cycle of high latitude zooplankton. During diapause animals avoid starving in winter by living in deep waters where metabolism is lower and met by lipid reserves. Global warming is therefore expected to shorten the maximum potential diapause duration by increasing metabolic rates and by reducing body size and lipid reserves. This will alter the phenology of zooplankton, impact higher trophic levels and disrupt biological carbon pumps. Here we project the impacts of climate change on the key North Atlantic copepod Calanus finmarchicus under IPCC RCP 8.5. Potential diapause duration is modelled in relation to body size and overwintering temperature. The projections show pronounced geographic variations. Potential diapause duration reduces by more than 30% in the Western Atlantic, whereas in the key overwintering centre of the Norwegian Sea it changes only marginally. Surface temperature rises, which reduce body size and lipid reserves, will have a similar impact to deep water changes on diapause in many regions. Because deep water warming lags that at the surface, animals in the Labrador Sea could offset warming impacts by diapausing in deeper waters. However, the ability to control diapause depth may be limited

Peatland Energy Options: System Analysis.

A technical supplement to the CURA Peat Policy Project's major report, Energy from Peatlands: Options and Impacts, this 1982 work presents calculations that compare the amount of energy that could be extracted from Minnesota peatlands using three different mining techniques as well as a renewable approach. Cattails are used as the renewable crop to be grown on the peatlands, harvested, and converted to usable energy

A Carbonaceous Chondrite Based Simulant of Phobos

In support of an ESA-funded concept study considering a sample return mission, a simulant of the Martian moon Phobos was needed. There are no samples of the Phobos regolith, therefore none of the four characteristics normally used to design a simulant are explicitly known for Phobos. Because of this, specifications for a Phobos simulant were based on spectroscopy, other remote measurements, and judgment. A composition based on the Tagish Lake meteorite was assumed. The requirement that sterility be achieved, especially given the required organic content, was unusual and problematic. The final design mixed JSC-1A, antigorite, pseudo-agglutinates and gilsonite. Sterility was achieved by radiation in a commercial facility

Connecting the Holographic and Wilsonian Renormalization Groups

Inspired by the AdS/CFT correspondence, we develop an explicit formal duality between the planar limit of a d-dimensional gauge theory and a classical field theory in a (d+1)-dimensional anti-de Sitter space. The key ingredient is the identification of fields in AdS with generalized Hubbard-Stratonovich transforms of single-trace couplings of the QFT. We show that the Wilsonian renormalization group flow of these transformed couplings matches the holographic (Hamilton-Jacobi) flow of bulk fields along the radial direction in AdS. This result allows one to outline an AdS/CFT dictionary that does not rely on string theory.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figure; metadata modified in v2; added references and minor changes in v3; v4 as published in JHE

Renormalization group approach to matrix models via noncommutative space

We develop a new renormalization group approach to the large-N limit of matrix models. It has been proposed that a procedure, in which a matrix model of size (N-1) \times (N-1) is obtained by integrating out one row and column of an N \times N matrix model, can be regarded as a renormalization group and that its fixed point reveals critical behavior in the large-N limit. We instead utilize the fuzzy sphere structure based on which we construct a new map (renormalization group) from N \times N matrix model to that of rank N-1. Our renormalization group has great advantage of being a nice analog of the standard renormalization group in field theory. It is naturally endowed with the concept of high/low energy, and consequently it is in a sense local and admits derivative expansions in the space of matrices. In construction we also find that our renormalization in general generates multi-trace operators, and that nonplanar diagrams yield a nonlocal operation on a matrix, whose action is to transport the matrix to the antipode on the sphere. Furthermore the noncommutativity of the fuzzy sphere is renormalized in our formalism. We then analyze our renormalization group equation, and Gaussian and nontrivial fixed points are found. We further clarify how to read off scaling dimensions from our renormalization group equation. Finally the critical exponent of the model of two-dimensional gravity based on our formalism is examined.Comment: 1+42 pages, 4 figure

The built environment predicts observed physical activity

Background: In order to improve our understanding of the relationship between the built environment and physical activity, it is important to identify associations between specific geographic characteristics and physical activity behaviors. Purpose: Examine relationships between observed physical activity behavior and measures of the built environment collected on 291 street segments in Indianapolis and St. Louis. Methods: Street segments were selected using a stratified geographic sampling design to ensure representation of neighborhoods with different land use and socioeconomic characteristics. Characteristics of the built environment on-street segments were audited using two methods: in-person field audits and audits based on interpretation of Google Street View imagery with each method blinded to results from the other. Segments were dichotomized as having a particular characteristic (e.g., sidewalk present or not) based on the two auditing methods separately. Counts of individuals engaged in different forms of physical activity on each segment were assessed using direct observation. Non-parametric statistics were used to compare counts of physically active individuals on each segment with built environment characteristic. Results: Counts of individuals engaged in physical activity were significantly higher on segments with mixed land use or all non-residential land use, and on segments with pedestrian infrastructure (e.g., crosswalks and sidewalks) and public transit. Conclusion: Several micro-level built environment characteristics were associated with physical activity. These data provide support for theories that suggest changing the built environment and related policies may encourage more physical activity