268 research outputs found
New battery model and state-of-health determination through subspace parameter estimation and state-observer techniques
This paper describes a novel adaptive battery model based on a remapped variant of the well-known Randles' lead-acid model. Remapping of the model is shown to allow improved modeling capabilities and accurate estimates of dynamic circuit parameters when used with subspace parameter-estimation techniques. The performance of the proposed methodology is demonstrated by application to batteries for an all-electric personal rapid transit vehicle from the Urban Light TRAnsport (ULTRA) program, which is designated for use at Heathrow Airport, U. K. The advantages of the proposed model over the Randles' circuit are demonstrated by comparisons with alternative observer/estimator techniques, such as the basic Utkin observer and the Kalman estimator. These techniques correctly identify and converge on voltages associated with the battery state-of-charge (SoC), despite erroneous initial conditions, thereby overcoming problems attributed to SoC drift (incurred by Coulomb-counting methods due to overcharging or ambient temperature fluctuations). Observation of these voltages, as well as online monitoring of the degradation of the estimated dynamic model parameters, allows battery aging (state-of-health) to also be assessed and, thereby, cell failure to be predicted. Due to the adaptive nature of the proposed algorithms, the techniques are suitable for applications over a wide range of operating environments, including large ambient temperature variations. Moreover, alternative battery topologies may also be accommodated by the automatic adjustment of the underlying state-space models used in both the parameter-estimation and observer/estimator stages
Extraction of bounds on time-reversal non-invariance from neutron reactions
Ratios involving on-resonance measurements of the three-fold and five-fold
correlation cross sections for which the dependence on some of the unknown
spectroscopic data is eliminated are considered. Closed form expressions are
derived for the statistical distributions of these ratios. Implications for
bounds on the variance of matrix elements of time reversal non-invariant
nucleon-nucleon interactions are considered within a Bayesian framework and the
competitiveness with bounds from other experiments is evaluated. The prospects
for null five-fold correlation measurements improving by an order of magnitude
or more upon the current bound on a parity-conserving T-odd interaction are
good.Comment: 14 pages, to be published in Physics Letters
What do young athletes implicitly understand about psychological skills?
One reason sport psychologists teach psychological skills is to enhance performance in sport; but the value of psychological skills for young athletes is questionable because of the qualitative and quantitative differences between children and adults in their understanding of abstract concepts such as mental skills. To teach these skills effectively to young athletes, sport psychologists need to appreciate what young athletes implicitly understand about such skills because maturational (e.g., cognitive, social) and environmental (e.g., coaches) factors can influence the progressive development of children and youth. In the present qualitative study, we explored young athletes’ (aged 10–15 years) understanding of four basic psychological skills: goal setting, mental imagery, self-talk, and relaxation. Young athletes (n = 118: 75 males and 43 females) completed an open-ended questionnaire to report their understanding of these four basic psychological skills. Compared with the older youth athletes, the younger youth athletes were less able to explain the meaning of each psychological skill. Goal setting and mental imagery were better understood than self-talk and relaxation. Based on these findings, sport psychologists should consider adapting interventions and psychoeducational programs to match young athletes’ age and developmental level
Cosmic Rays during BBN as Origin of Lithium Problem
There may be non-thermal cosmic rays during big-bang nucleosynthesis (BBN)
epoch (dubbed as BBNCRs). This paper investigated whether such BBNCRs can be
the origin of Lithium problem or not. It can be expected that BBNCRs flux will
be small in order to keep the success of standard BBN (SBBN). With favorable
assumptions on the BBNCR spectrum between 0.09 -- 4 MeV, our numerical
calculation showed that extra contributions from BBNCRs can account for the
Li abundance successfully. However Li abundance is only lifted an order
of magnitude, which is still much lower than the observed value. As the
deuteron abundance is very sensitive to the spectrum choice of BBNCRs, the
allowed parameter space for the spectrum is strictly constrained. We should
emphasize that the acceleration mechanism for BBNCRs in the early universe is
still an open question. For example, strong turbulent magnetic field is
probably the solution to the problem. Whether such a mechanism can provide the
required spectrum deserves further studies.Comment: 34 pages, 21 figures, published versio
Weak capture of protons by protons
The cross section for the proton weak capture reaction
is calculated with wave functions obtained from a number of modern, realistic
high-precision interactions. To minimize the uncertainty in the axial two-body
current operator, its matrix element has been adjusted to reproduce the
measured Gamow-Teller matrix element of tritium decay in model
calculations using trinucleon wave functions from these interactions. A
thorough analysis of the ambiguities that this procedure introduces in
evaluating the two-body current contribution to the pp capture is given. Its
inherent model dependence is in fact found to be very weak. The overlap
integral for the pp capture is predicted to be in the range
7.05--7.06, including the axial two-body current contribution, for all
interactions considered.Comment: 17 pages RevTeX (twocolumn), 5 postscript figure
Experimental evidence for 56Ni-core breaking from the low-spin structure of the N=Z nucleus 58Cu
Low-spin states in the odd-odd N=Z nucleus 58Cu were investigated with the
58Ni(p,n gamma)58Cu fusion evaporation reaction at the FN-tandem accelerator in
Cologne. Seventeen low spin states below 3.6 MeV and 17 new transitions were
observed. Ten multipole mixing ratios and 17 gamma-branching ratios were
determined for the first time. New detailed spectroscopic information on the
2+,2 state, the Isobaric Analogue State (IAS) of the 2+,1,T=1 state of 58Ni,
makes 58Cu the heaviest odd-odd N=Z nucleus with known B(E2;2+,T=1 --> 0+,T=1)
value. The 4^+ state at 2.751 MeV, observed here for the first time, is
identified as the IAS of the 4+,1,T=1 state in 58Ni. The new data are compared
to full pf-shell model calculations with the novel GXPF1 residual interaction
and to calculations within a pf5/2 configurational space with a residual
surface delta interaction. The role of the 56Ni core excitations for the
low-spin structure in 58Cu is discussed.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Spectral flow of chiral fermions in nondissipative Yang-Mills gauge field backgrounds
Real-time anomalous fermion number violation is investigated for massless
chiral fermions in spherically symmetric SU(2) Yang-Mills gauge field
backgrounds which can be weakly dissipative or even nondissipative. Restricting
consideration to spherically symmetric fermion fields, the zero-eigenvalue
equation of the time-dependent effective Dirac Hamiltonian is studied in
detail. For generic spherically symmetric SU(2) gauge fields in Minkowski
spacetime, a relation is presented between the spectral flow and two
characteristics of the background gauge field. These characteristics are the
well-known ``winding factor,'' which is defined to be the change of the
Chern-Simons number of the associated vacuum sector of the background gauge
field, and a new ``twist factor,'' which can be obtained from the
zero-eigenvalue equation of the effective Dirac Hamiltonian but is entirely
determined by the background gauge field. For a particular class of (weakly
dissipative) Luscher-Schechter gauge field solutions, the level crossings are
calculated directly and nontrivial contributions to the spectral flow from both
the winding factor and the twist factor are observed. The general result for
the spectral flow may be relevant to electroweak baryon number violation in the
early universe.Comment: REVTeX, 43 pages, v4: final versio
Updated Nucleosynthesis Constraints on Unstable Relic Particles
We revisit the upper limits on the abundance of unstable massive relic
particles provided by the success of Big-Bang Nucleosynthesis calculations. We
use the cosmic microwave background data to constrain the baryon-to-photon
ratio, and incorporate an extensively updated compilation of cross sections
into a new calculation of the network of reactions induced by electromagnetic
showers that create and destroy the light elements deuterium, he3, he4, li6 and
li7. We derive analytic approximations that complement and check the full
numerical calculations. Considerations of the abundances of he4 and li6 exclude
exceptional regions of parameter space that would otherwise have been permitted
by deuterium alone. We illustrate our results by applying them to massive
gravitinos. If they weigh ~100 GeV, their primordial abundance should have been
below about 10^{-13} of the total entropy. This would imply an upper limit on
the reheating temperature of a few times 10^7 GeV, which could be a potential
difficulty for some models of inflation. We discuss possible ways of evading
this problem.Comment: 40 pages LaTeX, 18 eps figure
Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology
notes: As the primary author, O’Malley drafted the paper, and gathered and analysed data (scientific papers and talks). Conceptual analysis was conducted by both authors.publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticlePhilosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations
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