2,048 research outputs found
An inexpensive open-source ultrasonic sensing system for monitoring liquid levels
Liquid levels are measured in a variety of agricultural applications, and are often measured manually, which can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Rapid advances in electronic technologies have made a variety of inexpensive sensing, monitoring, and control capabilities available. A monitoring system was developed and evaluated for automatic measurement of liquid levels, and demonstrated by monitoring water levels in evaporation pans used in evaporation studies and irrigation scheduling. The system is composed of an ultrasonic sensor, a microcontroller-based data logger, and a temperature sensor. The ultrasonic sensor measures the distance from the sensor to the liquid surface. Air temperature is measured by the temperature sensor, and is used to compensate for changes in the speed of sound due to air-temperature variations to improve accuracy of ultrasonic distance measurements. The datalogger is programmed to take measurements and to store data on a memory card which can be downloaded for processing and analysis. All components of the system were assembled in a PVC housing. The system was tested in the field, and resulted in water levels measured by the system corresponding very closely to those measured manually (R2 > 0.98). This system is inexpensive, with total cost of US$85, and easy to build, install, and maintain. In addition to monitoring liquid levels, the system could be adapted to a variety of other measurements. Keywords: Ultrasonic sensor, liquid level, microcontroller, open-source hardware, datalogger, USA
The Effects of PC-Based Training on Novice Drivers\u27 Risk Awareness in a Driving Simulator
Novice drivers are almost nine times more likely to die in a crash thanmore experienced drivers. This increased risk has been found to be largely due tonovice drivers’ inability to predict the risks in the roadway ahead. A PC-basedRisk Awareness and Perception Training Program (RAPT) was developed toteach novice drivers about different categories of risky situations likely to beencountered while driving. The format was an interactive multimedia presentationwith both plan (i.e., top down) views and perspective views of roadway geometrythat illustrated generally risky scenarios along with information about the type ofrisks and the relevant areas that attention should be allocated to in order to detectthe risks. A set of novice drivers was trained with this program. The eyemovementsof the participants were then evaluated in a driving simulator todetermine whether areas of potential risk were fixated, and their performance wascompared to a separate set of untrained novice drivers. The ability of the novicedrivers to identify risks in static views improved after they completed the trainingprogram. More importantly, the trained novice drivers were significantly morelikely to correctly fixate on risk relevant areas in the simulated drivingenvironment than the untrained drivers 3-5 days after training
Spin Reduction Transition in Spin-3/2 Random Heisenberg Chains
Random spin-3/2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chains are investigated using an
asymptotically exact renormalization group. Randomness is found to induce a
quantum phase transition between two random-singlet phases. In the strong
randomness phase the effective spins at low energies are S_eff=3/2, while in
the weak randomness phase the effective spins are S_eff=1/2. Separating them is
a quantum critical point near which there is a non-trivial mixture of S=1/2,
S=1, and S=3/2 effective spins at low temperatures.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Typos correcte
USCID fourth international conference
Presented at the Role of irrigation and drainage in a sustainable future: USCID fourth international conference on irrigation and drainage on October 3-6, 2007 in Sacramento, California.Includes bibliographical references.While rice is produced in some parts of the world in an upland, rainfed culture, almost all US-produced rice is grown with flood irrigation. In the dry-seeding system commonly used in the midsouthern US, the crop is usually flooded at approximately the V-4 (early tillering) growth stage and a continuous flood is maintained until after heading. The total amount of water used in rice production is quite large, and soil, fertilizers, and pesticides can be carried in the runoff from agricultural fields. Flood depth affects most aspects of flooded rice production, and remote monitoring of the flood depth could be quite valuable to many producers. The objective of this research is to develop and test a system for monitoring water depths in rice fields and alerting the producer so that less labor and energy is required to efficiently manage flood-irrigated rice. A prototype monitoring station was designed to measure water depth in a flooded rice field and transmit the information over a wireless link. A similar sensor and circuit performed satisfactorily in a raingage in 2006. In 2007, prototype monitoring stations will be installed in production rice fields. Concurrently with sensor durability testing, tests will be conducted to determine the limits of the wireless communication system. With daily reports of the water status in each paddy, field visits can be reduced. Over-pumping should be minimized by allowing better scheduling of field visits to stop the pump, and future systems should work with automatic pump control systems to stop the pump before runoff occurs
Thermodynamic Casimir effects involving interacting field theories with zero modes
Systems with an O(n) symmetrical Hamiltonian are considered in a
-dimensional slab geometry of macroscopic lateral extension and finite
thickness that undergo a continuous bulk phase transition in the limit
. The effective forces induced by thermal fluctuations at and above
the bulk critical temperature (thermodynamic Casimir effect) are
investigated below the upper critical dimension by means of
field-theoretic renormalization group methods for the case of periodic and
special-special boundary conditions, where the latter correspond to the
critical enhancement of the surface interactions on both boundary planes. As
shown previously [\textit{Europhys. Lett.} \textbf{75}, 241 (2006)], the zero
modes that are present in Landau theory at make conventional
RG-improved perturbation theory in dimensions ill-defined. The
revised expansion introduced there is utilized to compute the scaling functions
of the excess free energy and the Casimir force for temperatures
T\geqT_{c,\infty} as functions of , where
is the bulk correlation length. Scaling functions of the
-dependent residual free energy per area are obtained whose
limits are in conformity with previous results for the Casimir amplitudes
to and display a more reasonable
small- behavior inasmuch as they approach the critical value
monotonically as .Comment: 23 pages, 10 figure
Perinatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Brain Injury Enhances Quisqualic Acid-Stimulated Phosphoinositide Turnover
In an experimental model of perinatal hypoxic-ischemic brain injury, we examined quisqualic acid (Quis)-stimulated phosphoinositide (PPI) turnover in hippocampus and striatum. To produce a unilateral forebrain lesion in 7-day-old rat pups, the right carotid artery was ligated and animals were then exposed to moderate hypoxia (8% oxygen) for 2.5 h. Pups were killed 24 h later and Quis-stimulated PPI turnover was assayed in tissue slices obtained from hippocampus and striatum, target regions for hypoxic-ischemic injury. The glutamate agonist Quis (10 -4 M ) preferentially stimulated PPI hydrolysis in injured brain. In hippocampal slices of tissue derived from the right cerebral hemisphere, the addition of Quis stimulated accumulation of inositol phosphates by more than ninefold (1,053 ± 237% of basal, mean ± SEM, n = 9). In contrast, the addition of Quis stimulated accumulation of inositol phosphates by about fivefold in the contralateral hemisphere (588 ± 134%) and by about sixfold in controls (631 ± 177%, p < 0.005, comparison of ischemic tissue with control). In striatal tissue, the corresponding values were 801 ± 157%, 474 ± 89%, and 506 ± 115% (p < 0.05). In contrast, stimulation of PPI turnover elicited by the cho-linergic agonist carbamoylcholine, (10 -4 or 10 -2 M ) was unaffected by hypoxia-ischemia. The results suggest that prior exposure to hypoxia-ischemia enhances coupling of excitatory amino acid receptors to phospholipase C activity. This activation may contribute to the pathogenesis of irreversible brain injury and/or to mechanisms of recovery.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66017/1/j.1471-4159.1988.tb01046.x.pd
Excess free energy and Casimir forces in systems with long-range interactions of van-der-Waals type: General considerations and exact spherical-model results
We consider systems confined to a -dimensional slab of macroscopic lateral
extension and finite thickness that undergo a continuous bulk phase
transition in the limit and are describable by an O(n) symmetrical
Hamiltonian. Periodic boundary conditions are applied across the slab. We study
the effects of long-range pair interactions whose potential decays as as , with and , on
the Casimir effect at and near the bulk critical temperature ,
for . For the scaled reduced Casimir force per unit cross-sectional
area, we obtain the form L^{d} {\mathcal F}_C/k_BT \approx \Xi_0(L/\xi_\infty)
+ g_\omega L^{-\omega}\Xi\omega(L/\xi_\infty) + g_\sigma L^{-\omega_\sigm a}
\Xi_\sigma(L \xi_\infty). The contribution decays for
algebraically in rather than exponentially, and hence
becomes dominant in an appropriate regime of temperatures and . We derive
exact results for spherical and Gaussian models which confirm these findings.
In the case , which includes that of nonretarded van-der-Waals
interactions in dimensions, the power laws of the corrections to scaling
of the spherical model are found to get modified by logarithms.
Using general RG ideas, we show that these logarithmic singularities originate
from the degeneracy that occurs for the spherical
model when , in conjunction with the dependence of .Comment: 28 RevTeX pages, 12 eps figures, submitted to PR
On the finite-size behavior of systems with asymptotically large critical shift
Exact results of the finite-size behavior of the susceptibility in
three-dimensional mean spherical model films under Dirichlet-Dirichlet,
Dirichlet-Neumann and Neumann-Neumann boundary conditions are presented. The
corresponding scaling functions are explicitly derived and their asymptotics
close to, above and below the bulk critical temperature are obtained. The
results can be incorporated in the framework of the finite-size scaling theory
where the exponent characterizing the shift of the finite-size
critical temperature with respect to is smaller than , with
being the critical exponent of the bulk correlation length.Comment: 24 pages, late
Asymmetric Primitive-Model Electrolytes: Debye-Huckel Theory, Criticality and Energy Bounds
Debye-Huckel (DH) theory is extended to treat two-component size- and
charge-asymmetric primitive models, focussing primarily on the 1:1 additive
hard-sphere electrolyte with, say, negative ion diameters, a--, larger than the
positive ion diameters, a++. The treatment highlights the crucial importance of
the charge-unbalanced ``border zones'' around each ion into which other ions of
only one species may penetrate. Extensions of the DH approach which describe
the border zones in a physically reasonable way are exact at high and low
density, , and, furthermore, are also in substantial agreement with
recent simulation predictions for \emph{trends} in the critical parameters,
and , with increasing size asymmetry. Conversely, the simplest
linear asymmetric DH description, which fails to account for physically
expected behavior in the border zones at low , can violate a new lower bound
on the energy (which applies generally to models asymmetric in both charge and
size). Other recent theories, including those based on the mean spherical
approximation, have predicted trends in the critical parameters quite opposite
to those established by the simulations.Comment: to appear in Physical Review
Transport Properties near the z=2 Insulator-Superconductor Transition
We consider here the fluctuation conductivity near the point of the
insulator-superconductor transition in a system of regular Josephson junction
arrays in the presence of particle-hole asymmetry or equivalently homogeneous
charge frustration. The transition is characterised by the dynamic critical
exponent , opening the possibility of the perturbative
renormalization-group (RG) treatment. The quartic interaction in the
Ginzburg-Landau action and the coupling to the Ohmic heat bath, giving the
finite quasiparticle life-time, lead to the non-monotonic behavior of the dc
conductivity as a function of temperature in the leading logarithmic
approximation.Comment: Revised version for publication. To appear in PR
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