Additive for zinc electrodes

A zinc electrode for alkaline cells includes up to about ten percent by weight of Ba(OH)2.8H2O with about five percent being preferred. The zinc electrode may or may not be amalgamated with mercury

Wildfire Risk Perception and Homeowner Mitigation: Evidence from Montana

Fire prevention managers find that homeowners often do not perform mitigation actions that could reduce the damage and spread of wildfire. There is widespread belief among these fire professionals that one of the primary reasons that homeowners do not perform mitigation actions is that homeowners misperceive the risk that wildfire poses. Thus, a significant component of fire prevention programs’ focus on increasing homeowner awareness of the risk. However, it is possible that homeowners are aware of the fire risk but choose not to mitigate because of a variety of reasons, to include the costs of mitigation, limited monetary liability that they have after they insure the property, or doubts about the benefits of mitigation. I combine survey data obtained from Montana property owners with simulated fire probabilities for their parcels to test whether homeowners who report greater concern about the risk of fire conduct more mitigation activities. Using an instrumental variable approach, I find that increased homeowner concern about the risk of wildfire causes them to conduct significantly more mitigation activities

Exact entropy of dimer coverings for a class of lattices in three or more dimensions

We construct a class of lattices in three and higher dimensions for which the number of dimer coverings can be determined exactly using elementary arguments. These lattices are a generalization of the two-dimensional kagome lattice, and the method also works for graphs without translational symmetry. The partition function for dimer coverings on these lattices can be determined also for a class of assignments of different activities to different edges.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures; added results on partition function when different edges have different weights; modified abstract; added reference

Quasi-Particle Degrees of Freedom versus the Perfect Fluid as Descriptors of the Quark-Gluon Plasma

The hot nuclear matter created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has been characterized by near-perfect fluid behavior. We demonstrate that this stands in contradiction to the identification of QCD quasi-particles with the thermodynamic degrees of freedom in the early (fluid) stage of heavy ion collisions. The empirical observation of constituent quark ``$n_q$'' scaling of elliptic flow is juxtaposed with the lack of such scaling behavior in hydrodynamic fluid calculations followed by Cooper-Frye freeze-out to hadrons. A ``quasi-particle transport'' time stage after viscous effects break down the hydrodynamic fluid stage, but prior to hadronization, is proposed to reconcile these apparent contradictions. However, without a detailed understanding of the transitions between these stages, the ``$n_q$'' scaling is not a necessary consequence of this prescription. Also, if the duration of this stage is too short, it may not support well defined quasi-particles. By comparing and contrasting the coalescence of quarks into hadrons with the similar process of producing light nuclei from nucleons, it is shown that the observation of ``$n_{q}$'' scaling in the final state does not necessarily imply that the constituent degrees of freedom were the relevant ones in the initial state.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, Updated text and figure

Asymptotic behavior of the entropy of chains placed on stripes

By using the transfer matrix approach, we investigate the asymptotic behavior of the entropy of flexible chains with $M$ monomers each placed on stripes. In the limit of high density of monomers, we study the behavior of the entropy as a function of the density of monomers and the width of the stripe, inspired by recent analytical studies of this problem for the particular case of dimers (M=2). We obtain the entropy in the asymptotic regime of high densities for chains with $M=2,..,9$ monomers, as well as for the special case of polymers, where $M\to\infty$, and find that the results show a regular behavior similar to the one found analytically for dimers. We also verify that in the low-density limit the mean-field expression for the entropy is followed by the results from our transfer matrix calculations

Pioneers of Environmental Law

This book is intended to introduce the reader to examples of some of the persons who helped to invent and develop the field of environmental law. Some of these pioneers are well known; some are more obscure, but still have played critical roles in field of environmental law. A “pioneer” is among the first to explore a new area. And a pioneer of environmental law may be one who (1) first recognized the importance of the natural environment, (2) helped to invent the relatively new doctrine of environmental law and then ensured that it would survive, or (3) once the new law was accepted, took new and creative approaches to established principles and applied these ideas to environmental law. The pioneers discussed in this book represent these three types, or classes, of pioneers—“True Pioneers,” “Creators and Saviors,” and “Innovators.

The boundary element approach to Van der Waals interactions

We develop a boundary element method to calculate Van der Waals interactions for systems composed of domains of spatially constant dielectric response. We achieve this by rewriting the interaction energy expression exclusively in terms of surface integrals of surface operators. We validate this approach in the Lifshitz case and give numerical results for the interaction of two spheres as well as the van der Waals self-interaction of a uniaxial ellipsoid. Our method is simple to implement and is particularly suitable for a full, non-perturbative numerical evaluation of non-retarded van der Waals interactions between objects of a completely general shape.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, RevTe

Conicoid Mirrors

The first order equation relating object and image location for a mirror of arbitrary conic-sectional shape is derived. It is also shown that the parabolic reflecting surface is the only one free of aberration and only in the limiting case of distant sources.Comment: 9 page

Magnetization dynamics in dysprosium orthoferrites via inverse Faraday effect

The ultrafast non-thermal control of magnetization has recently become feasible in canted antiferromagnets through photomagnetic instantaneous pulses [A.V. Kimel {\it et al.}, Nature {\bf 435}, 655 (2005)]. In this experiment circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses set up a strong magnetic field along the wave vector of the radiation through the inverse Faraday effect, thereby exciting non-thermally the spin dynamics of dysprosium orthoferrites. A theoretical study is performed by using a model for orthoferrites based on a general form of free energy whose parameters are extracted from experimental measurements. The magnetization dynamics is described by solving coupled sublattice Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equations whose damping term is associated with the scattering rate due to magnon-magnon interaction. Due to the inverse Faraday effect and the non-thermal excitation, the effect of the laser is simulated by magnetic field Gaussian pulses with temporal width of the order of hundred femtoseconds. When the field is along the z-axis, a single resonance mode of the magnetization is excited. The amplitude of the magnetization and out-of-phase behavior of the oscillations for fields in z and -z directions are in good agreement with the cited experiment. The analysis of the effect of the temperature shows that magnon-magnon scattering mechanism affects the decay of the oscillations on the picosecond scale. Finally, when the field pulse is along the x-axis, another mode is excited, as observed in experiments. In this case the comparison between theoretical and experimental results shows some discrepancies whose origin is related to the role played by anisotropies in orthoferrites.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure

Families of Graphs with W_r({G},q) Functions That Are Nonanalytic at 1/q=0

Denoting $P(G,q)$ as the chromatic polynomial for coloring an $n$-vertex graph $G$ with $q$ colors, and considering the limiting function $W(\{G\},q) = \lim_{n \to \infty}P(G,q)^{1/n}$, a fundamental question in graph theory is the following: is $W_r(\{G\},q) = q^{-1}W(\{G\},q)$ analytic or not at the origin of the $1/q$ plane? (where the complex generalization of $q$ is assumed). This question is also relevant in statistical mechanics because $W(\{G\},q)=\exp(S_0/k_B)$, where $S_0$ is the ground state entropy of the $q$-state Potts antiferromagnet on the lattice graph $\{G\}$, and the analyticity of $W_r(\{G\},q)$ at $1/q=0$ is necessary for the large-$q$ series expansions of $W_r(\{G\},q)$. Although $W_r$ is analytic at $1/q=0$ for many $\{G\}$, there are some $\{G\}$ for which it is not; for these, $W_r$ has no large-$q$ series expansion. It is important to understand the reason for this nonanalyticity. Here we give a general condition that determines whether or not a particular $W_r(\{G\},q)$ is analytic at $1/q=0$ and explains the nonanalyticity where it occurs. We also construct infinite families of graphs with $W_r$ functions that are non-analytic at $1/q=0$ and investigate the properties of these functions. Our results are consistent with the conjecture that a sufficient condition for $W_r(\{G\},q)$ to be analytic at $1/q=0$ is that $\{G\}$ is a regular lattice graph $\Lambda$. (This is known not to be a necessary condition).Comment: 22 pages, Revtex, 4 encapsulated postscript figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.