13,607 research outputs found
Design, fabrication, testing, and delivery of a solar energy collector system for residential heating and cooling
A low cost flat plate solar energy collector was designed for the heating and cooling of residential buildings. The system meets specified performance requirements, at the desired system operating levels, for a useful life of 15 to 20 years, at minimum cost and uses state-of-the-art materials and technology. The rationale for the design method was based on identifying possible material candidates for various collector components and then selecting the components which best meet the solar collector design requirements. The criteria used to eliminate certain materials were: performance and durability test results, cost analysis, and prior solar collector fabrication experience
A study of thermal response of the lunar surface at the landing site during the descent of the Lunar Excursion Module /LEM/
Thermal response of lunar surface at landing site due to radiative and convective heat transfer from LEM exhaust nozzl
Development of flat-plate solar collectors for the heating and cooling of buildings
The relevant design parameters in the fabrication of a solar collector for heating liquids were examined. The objective was to design, fabricate, and test a low-cost, flat-plate solar collector with high collection efficiency, high durability, and requiring little maintenance. Computer-aided math models of the heat transfer processes in the collector assisted in the design. The preferred physical design parameters were determined from a heat transfer standpoint and the absorber panel configuration, the surface treatment of the absorber panel, the type and thickness of insulation, and the number, spacing and material of the covers were defined. Variations of this configuration were identified, prototypes built, and performance tests performed using a solar simulator. Simulated operation of the baseline collector configuration was combined with insolation data for a number of locations and compared with a predicted load to determine the degree of solar utilization
Relatedness Measures to Aid the Transfer of Building Blocks among Multiple Tasks
Multitask Learning is a learning paradigm that deals with multiple different
tasks in parallel and transfers knowledge among them. XOF, a Learning
Classifier System using tree-based programs to encode building blocks
(meta-features), constructs and collects features with rich discriminative
information for classification tasks in an observed list. This paper seeks to
facilitate the automation of feature transferring in between tasks by utilising
the observed list. We hypothesise that the best discriminative features of a
classification task carry its characteristics. Therefore, the relatedness
between any two tasks can be estimated by comparing their most appropriate
patterns. We propose a multiple-XOF system, called mXOF, that can dynamically
adapt feature transfer among XOFs. This system utilises the observed list to
estimate the task relatedness. This method enables the automation of
transferring features. In terms of knowledge discovery, the resemblance
estimation provides insightful relations among multiple data. We experimented
mXOF on various scenarios, e.g. representative Hierarchical Boolean problems,
classification of distinct classes in the UCI Zoo dataset, and unrelated tasks,
to validate its abilities of automatic knowledge-transfer and estimating task
relatedness. Results show that mXOF can estimate the relatedness reasonably
between multiple tasks to aid the learning performance with the dynamic feature
transferring.Comment: accepted by The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
(GECCO 2020
Strings, T-duality breaking, and nonlocality without the shortest distance
T-duality of string theory suggests nonlocality manifested as the shortest
possible distance. As an alternative, we suggest a nonlocal formulation of
string theory that breaks T-duality at the fundamental level and does not
require the shortest possible distance. Instead, the string has an objective
shape in spacetime at all length scales, but different parts of the string
interact in a nonlocal Bohmian manner.Comment: 7 pages, revised, to appear in Eur. Phys. J.
Active noise compensation for multichannel magnetocardiography in an unshielded environment
A multichannel high-T/sub c/-SQUID-based heart scanner for unshielded environments is under development, Outside a magnetically shielded room, sensitive SQUID measurements are possible using gradiometers. However, it is difficult to realize large-baseline gradiometers in high-T/sub c/ materials, Therefore, the authors developed two active noise compensation techniques. In the Total Field Compensation technique, a Helmholtz type coil set is placed around the sensors. One magnetometer is used as a zero detector controlling the compensation current through the coil set. For Individual Flux Compensation, the reference signal is sent to the separate SQUIDs (or their flux transformer circuits) to compensate the local environmental noise fluxes, The latter technique was tested on low-T/sub c/ rf-SQUID magnetometers, each sensor set to a field resolution SQUID magnetometers, i.e. 0.1 pT/sub RMS///spl radic/Hz. The authors were able to suppress the environmental disturbances to such an extent that magnetocardiograms could be recorded in an ordinary environment. Here the two suppression techniques are described and experimental results are presente
Evolutionary implications of anoxygenic phototrophy in the bacterial phylum candidatus eremiobacterota (WPS-2)
Genome-resolved environmental metagenomic sequencing has uncovered substantial previously unrecognized microbial diversity relevant for understanding the ecology and evolution of the biosphere, providing a more nuanced view of the distribution and ecological significance of traits including phototrophy across diverse niches. Recently, the capacity for bacteriochlorophyll-based anoxygenic photosynthesis has been proposed in the uncultured bacterial WPS-2 phylum (recently proposed as Candidatus Eremiobacterota) that are in close association with boreal moss. Here, we use phylogenomic analysis to investigate the diversity and evolution of phototrophic WPS-2. We demonstrate that phototrophic WPS-2 show significant genetic and metabolic divergence from other phototrophic and non-phototrophic lineages. The genomes of these organisms encode a new family of anoxygenic Type II photochemical reaction centers and other phototrophy-related proteins that are both phylogenetically and structurally distinct from those found in previously described phototrophs. We propose the name Candidatus Baltobacterales for the order-level aerobic WPS-2 clade which contains phototrophic lineages, from the Greek for âbogâ or âswamp,â in reference to the typical habitat of phototrophic members of this clade
Electronic structure theory of the hidden order material URuSi
We report a comprehensive electronic structure investigation of the
paramagnetic (PM), the large moment antiferromagnetic (LMAF), and the hidden
order (HO) phases of URuSi. We have performed relativistic
full-potential calculations on the basis of the density functional theory
(DFT), employing different exchange-correlation functionals to treat electron
correlations within the open -shell of uranium. Specifically, we
investigate---through a comparison between calculated and low-temperature
experimental properties---whether the electrons are localized or
delocalized in URuSi. We also performed dynamical mean field theory
calculations (LDA+DMFT) to investigate the temperature evolution of the
quasi-particle states at 100~K and above, unveiling a progressive opening of a
quasi-particle gap at the chemical potential when temperature is reduced. A
detailed comparison of calculated properties with known experimental data
demonstrates that the LSDA and GGA approaches, in which the uranium
electrons are treated as itinerant, provide an excellent explanation of the
available low-temperature experimental data of the PM and LMAF phases. We show
furthermore that due to a materials-specific Fermi surface instability a large,
but partial, Fermi surface gapping of up to 750 K occurs upon antiferromagnetic
symmetry breaking. The occurrence of the HO phase is explained through
dynamical symmetry breaking induced by a mode of long-lived antiferromagnetic
spin-fluctuations. This dynamical symmetry breaking model explains why the
Fermi surface gapping in the HO phase is similar but smaller than that in the
LMAF phase and it also explains why the HO and LMAF phases have the same Fermi
surfaces yet different order parameters. Suitable derived order parameters for
the HO are proposed to be the Fermi surface gap or the dynamic spin-spin
correlation function.Comment: 23 pages, 20 figure
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