High reliability sheathed, beryllia insulated, tungsten-rhenium alloy thermocouple assemblies; their fabrication and EMF stability

Tantalum sheathed, BeO insulated, W-3% Re/W-25% Re thermocouple assemblies were fabricated and their emf drift determined during 2059 hours of exposure at 2073 K in a gaseous helium environment. The sheathed thermocouple assemblies were constructed from aged thermoelements, specially heat-treated BeO insulators, and specially cleaned and etched tantalum sheaths. Their thermal emf drifts ranged from the equivalent of only -0.3 to -0.8 K drift per 1000 hours of exposure at 2073 K. No evidence of any gross chemical attack or degradation of the component materials was found. The emf drift and material behavior of some unsheathed, BeO insulated, W-3% Re/W-25% Re thermocouples at 2250 and 2400 K were also determined. Unsheathed thermocouples tested in an argon environment at 2250 K for 1100 hours and at 2400 K for 307 hours exhibited changes in thermal emf that typically ranged from the equivalent of a few degrees K to as much as +11 K. Post-test examinations of these thermocouples revealed some undesirable material degradation and interaction which included erosion of the BeO insulators and contamination of the thermoelements by tantalum from the tantalum blackbody enclosure in which the thermocouples were contained

Hillslopes record the growth and decay of landscapes

Earth's surface archives the combined history of tectonics and erosion, which tend to roughen landscapes, and sediment transport and deposition, which smooth them. We analyzed hillslope morphology in the tectonically active Dragon’s Back Pressure Ridge in California, United States, to assess whether tectonic uplift history can be reconstructed using measurable attributes of hillslope features within landscapes. Hilltop curvature and hillslope relief mirror measured rates of vertical displacement caused by tectonic forcing, and their relationships are consistent with those expected when idealizing hillslope transport as a nonlinear diffusion process. Hilltop curvature lags behind relief in its response to changing erosion rates, allowing growing landscapes to be distinguished from decaying landscapes. Numerical modeling demonstrates that hillslope morphology may be used to infer changes in tectonic rates

Long-distance Spore Transport: Vertical Sections of Spore Clouds over the Sea

RESP-566

Cellular automaton rules conserving the number of active sites

This paper shows how to determine all the unidimensional two-state cellular automaton rules of a given number of inputs which conserve the number of active sites. These rules have to satisfy a necessary and sufficient condition. If the active sites are viewed as cells occupied by identical particles, these cellular automaton rules represent evolution operators of systems of identical interacting particles whose total number is conserved. Some of these rules, which allow motion in both directions, mimic ensembles of one-dimensional pseudo-random walkers. Numerical evidence indicates that the corresponding stochastic processes might be non-Gaussian.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Stochastic models which separate fractal dimension and Hurst effect

Fractal behavior and long-range dependence have been observed in an astonishing number of physical systems. Either phenomenon has been modeled by self-similar random functions, thereby implying a linear relationship between fractal dimension, a measure of roughness, and Hurst coefficient, a measure of long-memory dependence. This letter introduces simple stochastic models which allow for any combination of fractal dimension and Hurst exponent. We synthesize images from these models, with arbitrary fractal properties and power-law correlations, and propose a test for self-similarity.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

A Complexity View of Rainfall

We show that rain events are analogous to a variety of nonequilibrium relaxation processes in Nature such as earthquakes and avalanches. Analysis of high-resolution rain data reveals that power laws describe the number of rain events versus size and number of droughts versus duration. In addition, the accumulated water column displays scale-less fluctuations. These statistical properties are the fingerprints of a self-organized critical process and may serve as a benchmark for models of precipitation and atmospheric processes.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Scaling Analysis and Evolution Equation of the North Atlantic Oscillation Index Fluctuations

The North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) monthly index is studied from 1825 till 2002 in order to identify the scaling ranges of its fluctuations upon different delay times and to find out whether or not it can be regarded as a Markov process. A Hurst rescaled range analysis and a detrended fluctuation analysis both indicate the existence of weakly persistent long range time correlations for the whole scaling range and time span hereby studied. Such correlations are similar to Brownian fluctuations. The Fokker-Planck equation is derived and Kramers-Moyal coefficients estimated from the data. They are interpreted in terms of a drift and a diffusion coefficient as in fluid mechanics. All partial distribution functions of the NAO monthly index fluctuations have a form close to a Gaussian, for all time lags, in agreement with the findings of the scaling analyses. This indicates the lack of predictive power of the present NAO monthly index. Yet there are some deviations for large (and thus rare) events. Whence suggestions for other measurements are made if some improved predictability of the weather/climate in the North Atlantic is of interest. The subsequent Langevin equation of the NAO signal fluctuations is explicitly written in terms of the diffusion and drift parameters, and a characteristic time scale for these is given in appendix.Comment: 6 figures, 54 refs., 16 pages; submitted to Int. J. Mod. Phys. C: Comput. Phy

Draft Genome Sequence of Photorhabdus luminescens Strain BA1, an Entomopathogenic Bacterium Isolated from Nematodes Found in Egypt

Photorhabdus luminescens strain BA1 is an entomopathogenic bacterium that forms a symbiotic association with Heterorhabditis nematodes. We report here a 5.0-Mbp draft genome sequence for P. luminscens strain BA1, with a G+C content of 42.46% and 4,250 candidate protein-coding genes