Paradox of Peroxy Defects and Positive Holes in Rocks Part II: Outflow of Electric Currents from Stressed Rocks

Understanding the electrical properties of rocks is of fundamental interest. We report on currents generated when stresses are applied. Loading the center of gabbro tiles, 30x30x0.9 cm$^3$, across a 5 cm diameter piston, leads to positive currents flowing from the center to the unstressed edges. Changing the constant rate of loading over 5 orders of magnitude from 0.2 kPa/s to 20 MPa/s produces positive currents, which start to flow already at low stress levels, <5 MPa. The currents increase as long as stresses increase. At constant load they flow for hours, days, even weeks and months, slowly decreasing with time. When stresses are removed, they rapidly disappear but can be made to reappear upon reloading. These currents are consistent with the stress-activation of peroxy defects, such as O$_3$Si-OO-SiO$_3$, in the matrix of rock-forming minerals. The peroxy break-up leads to positive holes h$^{\bullet}$, i.e. electronic states associated with O$^-$ in a matrix of O$^{2-}$, plus electrons, e'. Propagating along the upper edge of the valence band, the holes are able to flow from stressed to unstressed rock, traveling fast and far by way of a phonon-assisted electron hopping mechanism using energy levels at the upper edge of the valence band. Impacting the tile center leads to h$^{\bullet}$ pulses, 4-6 ms long, flowing outward at ~100 m/sec at a current equivalent to 1-2 x 10$^9$ A/km$^3$. Electrons, trapped in the broken peroxy bonds, are also mobile, but only within the stressed volume.Comment: 33 pages, 19 figure

Marguerite Naseau—Pointing to Cyberspace?

Margeurite Naseau, one of the first Daughters of Charity, taught herself and other village girls like her to read. John Freund uses her life to illustrate the importance of Internet literacy in the service of persons who are poor. With specific examples, he explains how members of the Vincentian Family can use the Internet to unite themselves and to serve the poor, and how they are already doing so. He also emphasizes how vital it is to empower poor persons with the tools and the skills to exist in the information age. The widening gap between the rich and the poor has a direct correlation to access to information. Finally, he points out how the Internet can be used in Vincentian formation, evangelization, and vocational outreach, particularly among youth and senior citizens

Autonomous Inspections of Utility Networks

Field inspections of utility network assets are a critical aspect of maintaining the quality and integrity of services provided by a utility. Currently, such inspections are performed largely by human inspectors. Such manual inspections are time-consuming, expensive, potentially dangerous to the inspectors and the surrounding public, subject to human error, disruptive to neighboring communities, and lack the speedy response needed in a disaster scenario. This disclosure describes a machine-based inspection mechanism for utility networks, based on, for example, autonomous or remotely-operated drones with the capability to perform intricate inspections at difficult-to-reach regions and heights. The inspection tasks including, for example, navigation routes, assets and parameters to be inspected, etc. are determined, for example, by a machine learner that has access to real-time and historical data from a variety of relevant sources

Prior Reduced Fill-In in Solving Equations in Interior Point Algorithms

The efficiency of interior-point algorithms for linear programming is related to the effort required to factorize the matrix used to solve for the search direction at each iteration. When the linear program is in symmetric form (i.e., the constraints are Ax b, x > 0 ), then there are two mathematically equivalent forms of the search direction, involving different matrices. One form necessitates factoring a matrix whose sparsity pattern has the same form as that of (A AT). The other form necessitates factoring a matrix whose sparsity pattern has the same form as that of (ATA). Depending on the structure of the matrix A, one of these two forms may produce significantly less fill-in than the other. Furthermore, by analyzing the fill-in of both forms prior to starting the iterative phase of the algorithm, the form with the least fill-in can be computed and used throughout the algorithm. Finally, this methodology can be applied to linear programs that are not in symmetric form, that contain both equality and inequality constraints

Constructing a Community Response Grid (CRG): The Dublin, Ohio Case Study

During an emergency, information availability is critical to preserving life and minimizing damages. During the emergency response, however, information may not be available to those who need it. A community response grid (CRG) can help ameliorate this lack of availability by allowing people to document and distribute emergency information to professional emergency responders (PERs). A CRG combines mobile communications services, Internet technologies, e-government applications, and social network concepts with traditional emergency response systems. The problem that this case study investigated was how to construct a CRG for the City of Dublin, Ohio, Division of Police that works in conjunction with an in-place emergency management system (EMS). The goal was to create a process that is replicable by similarly sized cities that wished to implement a CRG. In this investigation, the author examined CRG design and implementation issues such as message origin, training needs, policy design, security issues, and funding. The results of this investigation were organized in terms of Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) phases. Throughout these phases, the author identified information that can aid PERs in to better implement a CRG. Based on the results, the author developed a paradigm for constructing a CRG that meets the requirements of residents of the City of Dublin, Ohio, Division of Police and of similarly sized municipalities

Direct Estimation of Sizes of Higher-Order Graphs

With the aid of simple examples we show how to make simple estimates of the sizes of higher-order Feynman graphs. Our methods enable appropriate values of renormalization and factorization scales to be made. They allow the diagnosis of the source of unusually large corrections that are in need of resummation.Comment: 22 pages Revtex with epsf, postscript figures. Replacement is due to author error. Version is same as origina