Calibration of dimensional change in finite element models using AGR moderator brick measurements

AbstractPhysically based models, resolved using the finite element (FE) method, are often used to model changes in geometry and the associated stress fields of graphite moderator bricks within a reactor. These models require inputs that describe the loading conditions (field variables), and coded relationships describing the behaviour of material properties. Historically, behaviour on material properties have been obtained from Materials Test Reactor (MTR) experiments, however data relating to samples trepanned from operating reactors are increasingly being used to improve models. Geometry measurements from operating reactors offer the potential for improving the coded relationship for dimensional change in FE models. A non-linear mixed-effect model is presented for calibrating the parameters of FE models that are sensitive to mid-brick diameter, using channel geometry measurements obtained from inspection campaigns. The work makes use of a novel technique: the development of a Bayesian emulator, which is a surrogate for the FE model. The use of an emulator allows the influence of the inputs to the finite element model to be evaluated, and delivers a substantial reduction in the computational burden of calibration

Field deployments of a self-contained subsea platform for acoustic monitoring of the environment around marine renewable energy structurea

The drive towards sustainable energy has seen rapid development of marine renewable energy devices, and current efforts are focusing on wave and tidal stream energy. The NERC/DEFRA collaboration FLOWBEC-4D (Flow, Water column & Benthic Ecology 4D) is addressing the lack of knowledge of the environmental and ecological effects of installing and operating large arrays of wave and tidal energy devices. The FLOWBEC sonar platform combines a number of instruments to record information at a range of physical and multi-trophic levels. Data are recorded at a resolution of several measurements per second, for durations of 2 weeks to capture an entire spring-neap tidal cycle. An upward-facing multifrequency Simrad EK60 echosounder (38, 120 and 200 kHz) is synchronized with an upward-facing Imagenex 837B Delta T multibeam sonar (120° × 20° beamwidth, 260 kHz) aligned with the tidal flow. An ADV is used for local current measurements and a fluorometer is used to measure chlorophyll (as a proxy for plankton) and turbidity. The platform is self-contained with no cables or anchors, facilitating rapid deployment and recovery in high-energy sites and flexibility in allowing baseline data to be gathered. Five 2-week deployments were completed in 2012 and 2013 at wave and tidal energy sites, both in the presence and absence of renewable energy structures. These surveys were conducted at the European Marine Energy Centre, Orkney, UK. Algorithms for noise removal, target detection and target tracking have been written using a combination of LabVIEW, MATLAB and Echoview. Target morphology, behavior and frequency response are used to aid target classification, with concurrent shore-based seabird observations used to ground truth the acoustic data. Using this information, the depth preference and interactions of birds, fish schools and marine mammals with renewable energy structures can be tracked. Seabird and mammal dive profiles, predator-prey interactions a- d the effect of hydrodynamic processes during foraging events throughout the water column can also be analyzed. These datasets offer insights into how fish, seabirds and marine mammals successfully forage within dynamic marine habitats and also whether individuals face collision risks with tidal stream turbines. Measurements from the subsea platform are complemented by 3D hydrodynamic model data and concurrent shore-based marine X-band radar. This range of concurrent fine-scale information across physical and trophic levels will improve our understanding of how the fine-scale physical influence of currents, waves and turbulence at tidal and wave energy sites affect the behavior of marine wildlife, and how tidal and wave energy devices might alter the behavior of such wildlife. Together, the results from these deployments increase our environmental understanding of the physical and ecological effects of installing and operating marine renewable energy devices. These results can be used to guide marine spatial planning, device design, licensing and operation, as individual devices are scaled up to arrays and new sites are considered. The combination of our current technology and analytical approach can help to de-risk the licensing process by providing a higher level of certainty about the behavior of a range of mobile marine species in high energy environments. It is likely that this approach will lead to greater mechanistic understanding of how and why mobile predators use these high energy areas for foraging. If a fuller understanding and quantification can be achieved at single demonstration scales, and these are found to be similar, then the predictive power of the outcomes might lead to a wider strategic approach to monitoring and possibly lead to a reduction in the level of monitoring required at each commercial site

Urban Renewal and Industry Analysis

22 pagesThe overall goal of this course was to enhance the attractiveness of La Pine for its citizens, visitors, and businesses. This goal was broken into three primary projects focusing on Urban Renewal, industry viability, and workforce evaluation. The overall objective for the first project was to provide best practices for Urban Renewal processes in the short and long term. Short term recommendations include implementing a twelve-step Storefront Loan Program process and a two-phase minor enhancement project. Long term recommendations focus on implementing four best practices for large scale property transformation as well as creating a public art fund. Applying these recommendations to La Pine’s Urban Renewal plans can provide guidance and sustainability for future downtown development. The overall objective of the second project was to provide detailed industry benchmarking and rank the attractiveness of each industrial sector within La Pine. The teams recommend pursuing moderate- to high-potential industries including Wood Products Manufacturing, Food Processing, and Outdoor Gear and Apparel Manufacturing. The objective of the third project was to conduct a workforce asset analysis and recommend a ranking of industries where La Pine should focus its workforce development efforts. Based on their industry workforce assessment, the team recommends pursuing Specialty Foods Processing, Cross-Laminated Timber, and Cabinet Manufacturing. Both the second and third projects propose that La Pine pursue viable industries in alignment with the city’s workforce goals to ensure sustainable economic development

Network analysis of depressive symptoms in Hong Kong residents during the COVID-19 pandemic

In network theory depression is conceptualized as a complex network of individual symptoms that influence each other, and central symptoms in the network have the greatest impact on other symptoms. Clinical features of depression are largely determined by sociocultural context. No previous study examined the network structure of depressive symptoms in Hong Kong residents. The aim of this study was to characterize the depressive symptom network structure in a community adult sample in Hong Kong during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 11,072 participants were recruited between 24 March and 20 April 2020. Depressive symptoms were measured using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. The network structure of depressive symptoms was characterized, and indices of “strength”, “betweenness”, and “closeness” were used to identify symptoms central to the network. Network stability was examined using a case-dropping bootstrap procedure. Guilt, Sad Mood, and Energy symptoms had the highest centrality values. In contrast, Concentration, Suicide, and Sleep had lower centrality values. There were no significant differences in network global strength (p = 0.259), distribution of edge weights (p = 0.73) and individual edge weights (all p values > 0.05 after Holm–Bonferroni corrections) between males and females. Guilt, Sad Mood, and Energy symptoms were central in the depressive symptom network. These central symptoms may be targets for focused treatments and future psychological and neurobiological research to gain novel insight into depression.</p

Changing hearts and minds: theorizing how, when, and under what conditions three social influence implementation strategies work

Background: Opinion leadership, educational outreach visiting, and innovation championing are commonly used strategies to address barriers to implementing innovations and evidence-based practices in healthcare settings. Despite voluminous research, ambiguities persist in how these strategies work and under what conditions they work well, work poorly, or work at all. The current paper develops middle-range theories to address this gap. Methods: Conceptual articles, systematic reviews, and empirical studies informed the development of causal pathway diagrams (CPDs). CPDs are visualization tools for depicting and theorizing about the causal process through which strategies operate, including the mechanisms they activate, the barriers they address, and the proximal and distal outcomes they produce. CPDs also clarify the contextual conditions (i.e., preconditions and moderators) that influence whether, and to what extent, the strategy's causal process unfolds successfully. Expert panels of implementation scientists and health professionals rated the plausibility of these preliminary CPDs and offered comments and suggestions on them. Findings: Theoretically, opinion leadership addresses potential adopters' uncertainty about likely consequences of innovation use (determinant) by promoting positive attitude formation about the innovation (mechanism), which results in an adoption decision (proximal outcome), which leads to innovation use (intermediate outcome). As this causal process repeats, penetration, or spread of innovation use, occurs (distal outcome). Educational outreach visiting addresses knowledge barriers, attitudinal barriers, and behavioral barriers (determinants) by promoting critical thinking and reflection about evidence and practice (mechanism), which results in behavioral intention (proximal outcome), behavior change (intermediate outcome), and fidelity, or guideline adherence (distal outcome). Innovation championing addresses organizational inertia, indifference, and resistance (determinants) by promoting buy-in to the vision, fostering a positive implementation climate, and increasing collective efficacy (mechanisms), which leads to participation in implementation activities (proximal outcome), initial use of the innovation with increasing skill (intermediate outcome) and, ultimately, greater penetration and fidelity (distal outcomes). Experts found the preliminary CPDs plausible or highly plausible and suggested additional mechanisms, moderators, and preconditions, which were used to amend the initial CPD. Discussion: The middle-range theories depicted in the CPDs furnish testable propositions for implementation research and offer guidance for selecting, designing, and evaluating these social influence implementation strategies in both research studies and practice settings

Collective dynamics of internal states in a Bose gas

Theory for the Rabi and internal Josephson effects in an interacting Bose gas in the cold collision regime is presented. By using microscopic transport equation for the density matrix the problem is mapped onto a problem of precession of two coupled classical spins. In the absence of an external excitation field our results agree with the theory for the density induced frequency shifts in atomic clocks. In the presence of the external field, the internal Josephson effect takes place in a condensed Bose gas as well as in a non-condensed gas. The crossover from Rabi oscillations to the Josephson oscillations as a function of interaction strength is studied in detail.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figure

Dynamics of a large extra dimension inspired hybrid inflation model

In low scale quantum gravity scenarios the fundamental scale of nature can be as low as TeV, in order to address the naturalness of the electroweak scale. A number of difficulties arise in constructing specific models; stabilisation of the radius of the extra dimensions, avoidance of overproduction of Kaluza Klein modes, achieving successful baryogenesis and production of a close to scale-invariant spectrum of density perturbations with the correct amplitude. We examine in detail the dynamics, including radion stabilisation, of a hybrid inflation model that has been proposed in order to address these difficulties, where the inflaton is a gauge singlet residing in the bulk. We find that for a low fundamental scale the phase transition, which in standard four dimensional hybrid models usually ends inflation, is slow and there is second phase of inflation lasting for a large number of e-foldings. The density perturbations on cosmologically interesting scales exit the Hubble radius during this second phase of inflation, and we find that their amplitude is far smaller than is required. We find that the duration of the second phase of inflation can be short, so that cosmologically interesting scales exit the Hubble radius prior to the phase transition, and the density perturbations have the correct amplitude, only if the fundamental scale takes an intermediate value. Finally we comment briefly on the implications of an intermediate fundamental scale for the production of primordial black holes and baryogenesis.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures version to appear in Phys. Rev. D, additional references and minor changes to discussio

Spatio-temporal genetic tagging of a cosmopolitan planktivorous shark provides insight to gene flow, temporal variation and site-specific re-encounters

Migratory movements in response to seasonal resources often influence population structure and dynamics. Yet in mobile marine predators, population genetic consequences of such repetitious behaviour remain inaccessible without comprehensive sampling strategies. Temporal genetic sampling of seasonally recurring aggregations of planktivorous basking sharks, Cetorhinus maximus, in the Northeast Atlantic (NEA) affords an opportunity to resolve individual re-encounters at key sites with population connectivity and patterns of relatedness. Genetic tagging (19 microsatellites) revealed 18% of re-sampled individuals in the NEA demonstrated inter/multi-annual site-specific re-encounters. High genetic connectivity and migration between aggregation sites indicate the Irish Sea as an important movement corridor, with a contemporary effective population estimate (Ne) of 382 (CI = 241–830). We contrast the prevailing view of high gene flow across oceanic regions with evidence of population structure within the NEA, with early-season sharks off southwest Ireland possibly representing genetically distinct migrants. Finally, we found basking sharks surfacing together in the NEA are on average more related than expected by chance, suggesting a genetic consequence of, or a potential mechanism maintaining, site-specific re-encounters. Long-term temporal genetic monitoring is paramount in determining future viability of cosmopolitan marine species, identifying genetic units for conservation management, and for understanding aggregation structure and dynamics