Earthquake-Resistant Design of Earth Dams

Lessons gained from observations of the field performance of earth darns during earthquakes are reviewed and used to illustrate the primary problems of concern. Defensive design measures which may be taken to mitigate the various hazards are reviewed and illustrated. Analytical approaches for evaluating seismic stability and the deformations of earth darns during earthquakes are discussed, together with recent developments which facilitate their implementation in special cases; situations which require careful consideration of special effects such as the three-dimensionality of the dam-valley system and pore pressure re-distribution following an earthquake are discussed and illustrated

Seaweed species diversity in South Africa

A dataset is presented on the diversity of South African seaweed species and their distribution in contiguous 50-km coastal sections, to demonstrate current knowledge of the flora in various coastal regions. The coastline has a rich flora, consisting of some 800 species. The South Coast has the highest species diversity (between 250 and 300 species in each section) relative to the West Coast (about 140 species per section) or the East Coast (about 200 species per section). There is a considerable increase in the number of species (>240 species per section), particularly in the green algae, in the easternmost regions that border the tropics. An analysis of seaweeds present in six small stretches of coastline shows that these sites contain 80–90% of the species in the West and South coastal sections, but only 60% of species over the entire coastline. Therefore, successful conservation of relatively few sites could theoretically preserve the majority of the seaweed flora. Many of the species missing from these detailed collections are subtidal, a habitat that is generally undersampled, particularly on the South and East coasts. Although species diversity is becoming relatively well known, systematic studies on many groups, using modern techniques, are needed. Detailed core distribution data for many species are lacking, and there is no national plan for seaweed systematics or herbarium collections. The distributions of green algae are particularly poorly known. Detailed systematic and biogeographic investigations on the overlap between the seaweeds of the temperate South Coast and those of the tropical Indian Ocean are necessary, and these should include subtidal collections and vegetation descriptions.Keywords: algae, conservation, seaweeds, South Africa, species diversityAfrican Journal of Marine Science 2002, 24: 9–1

Neural processes of proactive and reactive controls modulated by motor-skill experiences

This study investigated the experience of open and closed motor skills on modulating proactive and reactive control processes in task switching. Fifty-four participants who were open-skilled

Phase Transitions in Quantum Dots

We perform Hartree-Fock calculations to show that quantum dots (i.e. two dimensional systems of up to twenty interacting electrons in an external parabolic potential) undergo a gradual transition to a spin-polarized Wigner crystal with increasing magnetic field strength. The phase diagram and ground state energies have been determined. We tried to improve the ground state of the Wigner crystal by introducing a Jastrow ansatz for the wavefunction and performing a variational Monte Carlo calculation. The existence of so called magic numbers was also investigated. Finally, we also calculated the heat capacity associated with the rotational degree of freedom of deformed many-body states.Comment: 14 pages, 7 postscript figure

Multilevel blocking approach to the fermion sign problem in path-integral Monte Carlo simulations

A general algorithm toward the solution of the fermion sign problem in finite-temperature quantum Monte Carlo simulations has been formulated for discretized fermion path integrals with nearest-neighbor interactions in the Trotter direction. This multilevel approach systematically implements a simple blocking strategy in a recursive manner to synthesize the sign cancellations among different fermionic paths throughout the whole configuration space. The practical usefulness of the method is demonstrated for interacting electrons in a quantum dot.Comment: 4 pages RevTeX, incl. two figure

Ultraviolet observations of the X-ray photoionized wind of Cygnus X-1 during X-ray soft/high state

(Shortened) Ultraviolet observations of the black hole X-ray binary Cygnus X-1 were obtained using the STIS on HSTubble. We detect P Cygni line features show strong, broad absorption components when the X-ray source is behind the companion star and noticeably weaker absorption when the X-ray source is between us and the companion star. We fit the P Cygni profiles using the SEI method applied to a spherically symmetric stellar wind subject to X-ray photoionization from the black hole. The Si IV doublet provides the most reliable estimates of the parameters of the wind and X-ray illumination. The velocity $v$ increases with radius $r$ according to $v=v_\infty(1-r_\star/r)^\beta$, with$\beta\approx0.75$ and $v_\infty\approx1420$ km s$^{-1}$.The microturbulent velocity was $\approx160$ km s$^{-1}$. Our fit implies a ratio of X-ray luminosity to wind mass-loss rate of L$_{X,38}/\dot M_{-6} \approx 0.33$, measured at $\dot M_{-6}$ = 4.8. Our models determine parameters that may be used to estimate the accretion rate onto the black hole and independently predict the X-ray luminosity. Our predicted L$_x$ matches that determined by contemporaneous RXTE ASM remarkably well, but is a factor of 3 lower than the rate according to Bondi-Hoyle-Littleton spherical wind accretion. We suggest that some of the energy of accretion may go into powering a jet.Comment: 34 pages, 21 figures, 4 tables, accepted for publication in Ap