Development of carbon slurry fuels for transportation (hybrid fuels, phase 2)

Slurry fuels of various forms of solids in diesel fuel are developed and evaluated for their relative potential as fuel for diesel engines. Thirteen test fuels with different solids concentrations are formulated using eight different materials. A variety of properties are examined including ash content, sulfur content, particle size distribution, and rheological properties. Attempts are made to determine the effects of these variations on these fuel properties on injection, atomization, and combustion processes. The slurries are also tested in a single cylinder CLR engine in both direct injection and prechamber configurations. The data includes the normal performance parameters as well as heat release rates and emissions. The slurries perform very much like the baseline fuel. The combustion data indicate that a large fraction (90 percent or more) of the solids are burning in the engine. It appears that the prechamber engine configuration is more tolerant of the slurries than the direct injection configuration

Effects of a Dispersed and Undispersed Crude Oil on Mangroves, Seagrasses and Corals

The primary objective of this study was to evaluate the application of dispersant to spilled oil as a means of reducing adverse environmental effects of oil spills in nearshore, tropical waters. The results of numerous laboratory and field studies have suggested that dispersants may play a useful role in reducing adverse impacts on sensitive and valued environments such as mangroves, seagrasses, and corals. However, the use of dispersants has not been allowed thus far in most situations because of a lack of direct experimental data on the various effects of dispersants and the environmental trade-offs presumed to occur as a result of their application to crude oils. To accomplish this objective, a 21/2- year field experiment was designed in which detailed, synoptic measurements and assessments were made of representative intertidal and nearshore subtidal habitats and organisms (man-groves, seagrass beds, and coral reefs) before, during, and after exposure to untreated crude oil and chemically dispersed oil. The results were in-tended to give guidance in minimizing the ecological impacts of oil spills through evaluation of trade-offs in the relative impacts of chemical dispersion to tropical marine intertidal and subtidal habitats

Non-Fermi liquid behavior and scaling of low frequency suppression in optical conductivity spectra of CaRuO3_3

Optical conductivity spectra $\sigma_1(\omega)$ of paramagnetic CaRuO$_3$ are investigated at various temperatures. At T=10 K, it shows a non-Fermi liquid behavior of $\sigma_1(\omega)\sim 1/{\omega}^{\frac 12}$, similar to the case of a ferromagnet SrRuO$_3$. As the temperature ($T$) is increased, on the other hand, $\sigma_1(\omega)$ in the low frequency region is progressively suppressed, deviating from the 1/{\omega}^{\frac 12%}-dependence. Interestingly, the suppression of $\sigma_1(\omega)$ is found to scale with $\omega /T$ at all temperatures. The origin of the $$ scaling behavior coupled with the non-Fermi liquid behavior is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Deviations from Matthiessen's Rule for SrRuO3{\rm SrRuO_3} and CaRuO3{\rm CaRuO_3}

We have measured the change in the resistivity of thin films of ${\rm SrRuO_3}$ and ${\rm CaRuO_3}$ upon introducing point defects by electron irradiation at low temperatures, and we find significant deviations from Matthiessen's rule. For a fixed irradiation dose, the induced change in resistivity {\it decreases} with increasing temperature. Moreover, for a fixed temperature, the increase in resistivity with irradiation is found to be {\it sublinear}. We suggest that the observed behavior is due to the marked anisotropic scattering of the electrons together with their relatively short mean free path (both characteristic of many metallic oxides including cuprates) which amplify effects related to the Pippard ineffectiveness condition

Investigation of the ferromagnetic transition in the correlated 4d perovskites SrRu1−x_{1-x}Rhx_xO3_3

The solid-solution SrRu$_{1-x}$Rh$_x$O$_3$ ($0\le x \le1$) is a variable-electron-configuration system forming in the nearly-cubic-perovskite basis, ranging from the ferromagnetic 4$d^4$ to the enhanced paramagnetic 4$d^5$. Polycrystalline single-phase samples were obtained over the whole composition range by a high-pressure-heating technique, followed by measurements of magnetic susceptibility, magnetization, specific heat, thermopower, and electrical resistivity. The ferromagnetic order in long range is gradually suppressed by the Rh substitution and vanishes at $x \sim 0.6$. The electronic term of specific-heat shows unusual behavior near the critical Rh concentration; the feature does not match even qualitatively with what was reported for the related perovskites (Sr,Ca)RuO$_3$. Furthermore, another anomaly in the specific heat was observed at $x \sim 0.9$.Comment: Accepted for publication in PR

Experimental determination of the evolution of the Bjorken integral at low Q^2

We extract the Bjorken integral Gamma^{p-n}_1 in the range 0.17 < Q^2 < 1.10 GeV^2 from inclusive scattering of polarized electrons by polarized protons, deuterons and 3He, for the region in which the integral is dominated by nucleon resonances. These data bridge the domains of the hadronic and partonic descriptions of the nucleon. In combination with earlier measurements at higher Q^2, we extract the non-singlet twist-4 matrix element f_2.Comment: Quoted world data updated. Minor change in some results, Minor rephrasin

lp-Recovery of the Most Significant Subspace among Multiple Subspaces with Outliers

We assume data sampled from a mixture of d-dimensional linear subspaces with spherically symmetric distributions within each subspace and an additional outlier component with spherically symmetric distribution within the ambient space (for simplicity we may assume that all distributions are uniform on their corresponding unit spheres). We also assume mixture weights for the different components. We say that one of the underlying subspaces of the model is most significant if its mixture weight is higher than the sum of the mixture weights of all other subspaces. We study the recovery of the most significant subspace by minimizing the lp-averaged distances of data points from d-dimensional subspaces, where p>0. Unlike other lp minimization problems, this minimization is non-convex for all p>0 and thus requires different methods for its analysis. We show that if 0<p<=1, then for any fraction of outliers the most significant subspace can be recovered by lp minimization with overwhelming probability (which depends on the generating distribution and its parameters). We show that when adding small noise around the underlying subspaces the most significant subspace can be nearly recovered by lp minimization for any 0<p<=1 with an error proportional to the noise level. On the other hand, if p>1 and there is more than one underlying subspace, then with overwhelming probability the most significant subspace cannot be recovered or nearly recovered. This last result does not require spherically symmetric outliers.Comment: This is a revised version of the part of 1002.1994 that deals with single subspace recovery. V3: Improved estimates (in particular for Lemma 3.1 and for estimates relying on it), asymptotic dependence of probabilities and constants on D and d and further clarifications; for simplicity it assumes uniform distributions on spheres. V4: minor revision for the published versio