Assessment of the worthwhileness of efficient driving in railway systems with high-receptivity power supplies

Eco-driving is one of the most important strategies for significantly reducing the energy consumption of railways with low investments. It consists of designing a way of driving a train to fulfil a target running time, consuming the minimum amount of energy. Most eco-driving energy savings come from the substitution of some braking periods with coasting periods. Nowadays, modern trains can use regenerative braking to recover the kinetic energy during deceleration phases. Therefore, if the receptivity of the railway system to regenerate energy is high, a question arises: is it worth designing eco-driving speed profiles? This paper assesses the energy benefits that eco-driving can provide in different scenarios to answer this question. Eco-driving is obtained by means of a multi-objective particle swarm optimization algorithm, combined with a detailed train simulator, to obtain realistic results. Eco-driving speed profiles are compared with a standard driving that performs the same running time. Real data from Spanish high-speed lines have been used to analyze the results in two case studies. Stretches fed by 1 × 25 kV and 2 × 25 kV AC power supply systems have been considered, as they present high receptivity to regenerate energy. Furthermore, the variations of the two most important factors that affect the regenerative energy usage have been studied: train motors efficiency ratio and catenary resistance. Results indicate that the greater the catenary resistance, the more advantageous eco-driving is. Similarly, the lower the motor efficiency, the greater the energy savings provided by efficient driving. Despite the differences observed in energy savings, the main conclusion is that eco-driving always provides significant energy savings, even in the case of the most receptive power supply network. Therefore, this paper has demonstrated that efforts in improving regenerated energy usage must not neglect the role of eco-driving in railway efficiency

Saber: window-based hybrid stream processing for heterogeneous architectures

Modern servers have become heterogeneous, often combining multicore CPUs with many-core GPGPUs. Such heterogeneous architectures have the potential to improve the performance of data-intensive stream processing applications, but they are not supported by current relational stream processing engines. For an engine to exploit a heterogeneous architecture, it must execute streaming SQL queries with sufficient data-parallelism to fully utilise all available heterogeneous processors, and decide how to use each in the most effective way. It must do this while respecting the semantics of streaming SQL queries, in particular with regard to window handling. We describe SABER, a hybrid high-performance relational stream processing engine for CPUs and GPGPUs. SABER executes windowbased streaming SQL queries in a data-parallel fashion using all available CPU and GPGPU cores. Instead of statically assigning query operators to heterogeneous processors, SABER employs a new adaptive heterogeneous lookahead scheduling strategy, which increases the share of queries executing on the processor that yields the highest performance. To hide data movement costs, SABER pipelines the transfer of stream data between different memory types and the CPU/GPGPU. Our experimental comparison against state-ofthe-art engines shows that SABER increases processing throughput while maintaining low latency for a wide range of streaming SQL queries with small and large windows sizes

Simultaneous analysis of elastic scattering and transfer/breakup channels for the 6He+208Pb reaction at energies near the Coulomb barrier

The elastic and alpha-production channels for the 6He+208Pb reaction are investigated at energies around the Coulomb barrier (E_{lab}=14, 16, 18, 22, and 27 MeV). The effect of the two-neutron transfer channels on the elastic scattering has been studied within the Coupled-Reaction-Channels (CRC) method. We find that the explicit inclusion of these channels allows a simultaneous description of the elastic data and the inclusive alpha cross sections at backward angles. Three-body Continuum-Discretized Coupled-Channels (CDCC) calculations are found to reproduce the elastic data, but not the transfer/breakup data. The trivially-equivalent local polarization potential (TELP) derived from the CRC and CDCC calculations are found to explain the features found in previous phenomenological optical model calculations for this system.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures (replaced with updated version

Quasi-chemical approximation for polyatomic mixtures

The statistical thermodynamics of binary mixtures of polyatomic species was developed on a generalization in the spirit of the lattice-gas model and the quasi-chemical approximation (QCA). The new theoretical framework is obtained by combining: (i) the exact analytical expression for the partition function of non-interacting mixtures of linear $k$-mers and $l$-mers (species occupying $k$ sites and $l$ sites, respectively) adsorbed in one dimension, and its extension to higher dimensions; and (ii) a generalization of the classical QCA for multicomponent adsorbates and multisite-occupancy adsorption. The process is analyzed through the partial adsorption isotherms corresponding to both species of the mixture. Comparisons with analytical data from Bragg-Williams approximation (BWA) and Monte Carlo simulations are performed in order to test the validity of the theoretical model. Even though a good fitting is obtained from BWA, it is found that QCA provides a more accurate description of the phenomenon of adsorption of interacting polyatomic mixtures.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure

Facing the wind of the pre-FUor V1331 Cyg

The mass outflows in T Tauri stars (TTS) are thought to be an effective mechanism to remove angular momentum during the pre-main-sequence contraction of a low-mass star. The most powerful winds are observed at the FUor stage of stellar evolution. V1331 Cyg has been considered as a TTS at the pre-FUor stage. We analyse high-resolution spectra of V1331 Cyg collected in 1998-2007 and 20-d series of spectra taken in 2012. For the first time the photospheric spectrum of the star is detected and stellar parameters are derived: spectral type G7-K0 IV, mass 2.8 Msun, radius 5 Rsun, vsini < 6 km/s. The photospheric spectrum is highly veiled, but the amount of veiling is not the same in different spectral lines, being lower in weak transitions and much higher in strong transitions. The Fe II 5018, Mg I 5183, K I 7699 and some other lines of metals are accompanied by a `shell' absorption at radial velocity of about -240 km/s. We show that these absorptions form in the post-shock gas in the jet, i.e. the star is seen though its jet. The P Cyg profiles of H-alpha and H-beta indicate the terminal wind velocity of about 500 km/s, which vary on time-scales from several days to years. A model of the stellar wind is developed to interpret the observations. The model is based on calculation of hydrogen spectral lines using the radiative transfer code TORUS. The observed H-alpha and H-beta line profiles and their variability can be well reproduced with a stellar wind model, where the mass-loss rate and collimation (opening angle) of the wind are variable. The changes of the opening angle may be induced by small variability in magetization of the inner disc wind. The mass-loss rate is found to vary within (6-11)x10^{-8} Msun/yr, with the accretion rate of 2.0x10^{-6} Msun/yr.Comment: 11 pages, 12 figures; accepted for publication in MNRAS. Typographical errors have been corrected after the proof stag

Halogen bonding stabilizes a cis-azobenzene derivative in the solid state: A crystallographic study

Crystals of trans- and cis-isomers of a fluorinated azobenzene derivative have been prepared and characterized by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. The presence of F atoms on the aromatic core of the azobenzene increases the lifetime of the metastable cis-isomer, allowing single crystals of the cis-azobenzene to be grown. Structural analysis on the cis-azobenzene, complemented with density functional theory calculations, highlights the active role of the halogen-bond contact (N...I synthon) in promoting the stabilization of the cis-isomer. The presence of a long aliphatic chain on the azobenzene unit induces a phase segregation that stabilizes the molecular arrangement for both the trans- and cis-isomers. Due to the rarity of cis-azobenzene crystal structures in the literature, our paper makes a step towards understanding the role of non-covalent interactions in driving the packing of metastable azobenzene isomers. This is expected to be important in the future rational design of solid-state, photoresponsive materials based on halogen bonding. We show by single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies and computational analysis that halogen bonding can stabilize a metastable cis-azobenzene derivative in the solid state

Nonlinear supersymmetry: from classical to quantum mechanics

Quantization of the nonlinear supersymmetry faces a problem of a quantum anomaly. For some classes of superpotentials, the integrals of motion admit the corrections guaranteeing the preservation of the nonlinear supersymmetry at the quantum level. With an example of the system realizing the nonlinear superconformal symmetry, we discuss the nature of such corrections and speculate on their possible general origin.Comment: 11 page

ϕ\phi meson transparency in nuclei from ϕN\phi N resonant interactions

We investigate the $\phi$ meson nuclear transparency using some recent theoretical developments on the $\phi$ in medium self-energy. The inclusion of direct resonant $\phi N$-scattering and the kaon decay mechanisms leads to a $\phi$ width much larger than in most previous theoretical approaches. The model has been confronted with photoproduction data from CLAS and LEPS and the recent proton induced $\phi$ production from COSY finding an overall good agreement. The results support the need of a quite large direct $\phi N$-scattering contribution to the self-energy