121,201 research outputs found
Long duration thermal hard X-ray sources observed in two eruptive flares
We present observations of two eruptive flares on 17 of December 2006 (C1.9) and 19 of May 2007 (B9.7) which had good coverage with both Hinode and RHESSI. In these flares we see a long lived, gradual thermal hard X-ray source of low emission measure and, relative to the loops observed with GOES and XRT, high temperature. The lack of a non-thermal hard X-ray component and impulsive behaviour is inconsistent with electron beam driven chromospheric evaporation
A Fresh Look at Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
This paper is a non-technical, informal presentation of our theory of the
second law of thermodynamics as a law that is independent of statistical
mechanics and that is derivable solely from certain simple assumptions about
adiabatic processes for macroscopic systems. It is not necessary to assume
a-priori concepts such as "heat", "hot and cold", "temperature". These are
derivable from entropy, whose existence we derive from the basic assumptions.
See cond-mat/9708200 and math-ph/9805005.Comment: LaTex file. To appear in the April 2000 issue of PHYSICS TODA
Benefits of current percolation in superconducting coated conductors
The critical currents of MOD/RABiTS and PLD/IBAD coated conductors have been
measured as a function of magnetic field orientation and compared to films
grown on single crystal substrates. By varying the orientation of magnetic
field applied in the plane of the film, we are able to determine the extent to
which current flow in each type of conductor is percolative. Standard
MOD/RABiTS conductors have also been compared to samples whose grain boundaries
have been doped by diffusing Ca from an overlayer. We find that undoped
MOD/RABiTS tapes have a less anisotropic in-plane field dependence than
PLD/IBAD tapes and that the uniformity of critical current as a function of
in-plane field angle is greater for MOD/RABiTS samples doped with Ca.EPSRC
US Department of Energ
Distances from Surface Brightness Fluctuations
The practice of measuring galaxy distances from their spatial fluctuations in
surface brightness is now a decade old. While several past articles have
included some review material, this is the first intended as a comprehensive
review of the surface brightness fluctuation (SBF) method. The method is
conceptually quite simple, the basic idea being that nearby (but unresolved)
star clusters and galaxies appear "bumpy", while more distant ones appear
smooth. This is quantified via a measurement of the amplitude of the Poisson
fluctuations in the number of unresolved stars encompassed by a CCD pixel
(usually in an image of an elliptical galaxy). Here, we describe the technical
details and difficulties involved in making SBF measurements, discuss
theoretical and empirical calibrations of the method, and review the numerous
applications of the method from the ground and space, in the optical and
near-infrared. We include discussions of stellar population effects and the
"universality" of the SBF standard candle. A final section considers the future
of the method.Comment: Invited review article to appear in: `Post-Hipparcos Cosmic Candles',
A. Heck & F. Caputo (Eds), Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht, in press. 22
pages, including 3 postscript figures; uses Kluwer's crckapb.sty LaTex macro
file, enclose
Survival and development of Bactrocera oleae Gmelin (Diptera:Tephritidae) immature stages at four temperatures in the laboratory
Bactrocera oleae Gmelin (Diptera:Tephritidae) is the most important and widespread pest in the olive growing countries in the Mediterranean basin. The development and survival of olive fruit fly, B. oleaefrom egg to adult stage was studied in the laboratory at 16, 22, 27 and 35°C. The objective of the study was to get information on the influence of temperature on immature stages as a prerequisite to optimizerearing procedures and to understand geographical pattern of fruit fly occurrence. Embryonic development was fastest at 35°C but there was no pupal development and, of course, no adults at 35°C. The slowest development of immature stages was at 16°C. The highest percentage of adults obtained from an initial set of 100 eggs was 74% at 27°C. The lower development thresholds for the egg, larval and pupal stages were 9.19, 13.94 and 12.36°C, respectively. The optimum temperature for development and survival of immature stages was 27°C
On the Growth of Al_2 O_3 Scales
Understanding the growth of Al2O3 scales requires knowledge of the details of the chemical reactions at the scale–gas and scale–metal interfaces, which in turn requires specifying how the creation/annihilation of O and Al vacancies occurs at these interfaces. The availability of the necessary electrons and holes to allow for such creation/annihilation is a crucial aspect of the scaling reaction. The electronic band structure of polycrystalline Al2O3 thus plays a decisive role in scale formation and is considered in detail, including the implications of a density functional theory (DFT) calculation of the band structure of a Σ7 View the MathML source bicrystal boundary, for which the atomic structure of the boundary was known from an independent DFT energy-minimization calculation and comparisons with an atomic-resolution transmission electron micrograph of the same boundary. DFT calculations of the formation energy of O and Al vacancies in bulk Al2O3 in various charge states as a function of the Fermi energy suggested that electronic conduction in Al2O3 scales most likely involves excitation of both electrons and holes, which are localized on singly charged O vacancies, View the MathML source and doubly charged Al vacancies, View the MathML source, respectively. We also consider the variation of the Fermi level across the scale and bending (“tilting”) of the conduction band minimum and valence band maximum due to the electric field developed during the scaling reaction. The band structure calculations suggest a new mechanism for the “reactive element” effect—a consequence of segregation of Y, Hf, etc., to grain boundaries in Al2O3 scales, which results in improved oxidation resistance—namely, that the effect is due to the modification of the near-band edge grain-boundary defect states rather than any blocking of diffusion pathways, as previously postulated. Secondly, Al2O3 scale formation is dominated by grain boundary as opposed to lattice diffusion, and there is unambiguous evidence for both O and Al countercurrent transport in Al2O3 scale-forming alloys. We postulate that such transport is mediated by migration of grain boundary disconnections containing charged jogs, rather than by jumping of isolated point defects in random high-angle grain boundaries
Enhanced Parallel Generation of Tree Structures for the Recognition of 3D Images
Segmentations of a digital object based on a connectivity
criterion at n-xel or sub-n-xel level are useful tools in image topological
analysis and recognition. Working with cell complex analogous of digital
objects, an example of this kind of segmentation is that obtained from
the combinatorial representation so called Homological Spanning Forest
(HSF, for short) which, informally, classifies the cells of the complex as
belonging to regions containing the maximal number of cells sharing the
same homological (algebraic homology with coefficient in a field) information.
We design here a parallel method for computing a HSF (using
homology with coefficients in Z/2Z) of a 3D digital object. If this object
is included in a 3D image of m1 Ă— m2 Ă— m3 voxels, its theoretical time
complexity order is near O(log(m1 + m2 + m3)), under the assumption
that a processing element is available for each voxel. A prototype implementation
validating our results has been written and several synthetic,
random and medical tridimensional images have been used for testing.
The experiments allow us to assert that the number of iterations in which
the homological information is found varies only to a small extent from
the theoretical computational time.Ministerio de EconomĂa y Competitividad MTM2016-81030-
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