1,070 research outputs found
Fuels treatment and wildfire effects on runoff from Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forests
We applied an eco-hydrologic model (Regional Hydro-Ecologic Simulation System [RHESSys]), constrained with spatially distributed field measurements, to assess the impacts of forest-fuel treatments and wildfire on hydrologic fluxes in two Sierra Nevada firesheds. Strategically placed fuels treatments were implemented during 2011–2012 in the upper American River in the central Sierra Nevada (43 km2) and in the upper Fresno River in the southern Sierra Nevada (24 km2). This study used the measured vegetation changes from mechanical treatments and modelled vegetation change from wildfire to determine impacts on the water balance. The well-constrained headwater model was transferred to larger catchments based on geologic and hydrologic similarities. Fuels treatments covered 18% of the American and 29% of the Lewis catchment. Averaged over the entire catchment, treatments in the wetter central Sierra Nevada resulted in a relatively light vegetation decrease (8%), leading to a 12% runoff increase, averaged over wet and dry years. Wildfire with and without forest treatments reduced vegetation by 38% and 50% and increased runoff by 55% and 67%, respectively. Treatments in the drier southern Sierra Nevada also reduced the spatially averaged vegetation by 8%, but the runoff response was limited to an increase of less than 3% compared with no treatment. Wildfire following treatments reduced vegetation by 40%, increasing runoff by 13%. Changes to catchment-scale water-balance simulations were more sensitive to canopy cover than to leaf area index, indicating that the pattern as well as amount of vegetation treatment is important to hydrologic response
Intersublevel Polaron Dephasing in Self-Assembled Quantum Dots
Polaron dephasing processes are investigated in InAs/GaAs dots using
far-infrared transient four wave mixing (FWM) spectroscopy. We observe an
oscillatory behaviour in the FWM signal shortly (< 5 ps) after resonant
excitation of the lowest energy conduction band transition due to coherent
acoustic phonon generation. The subsequent single exponential decay yields long
intraband dephasing times of 90 ps. We find excellent agreement between our
measured and calculated FWM dynamics, and show that both real and virtual
acoustic phonon processes are necessary to explain the temperature dependence
of the polarization decay.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys Rev Let
Effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction in mood, breast- and endocrine-related quality of life, and well-being in stage 0 to III breast cancer : a randomized, controlled trial
Purpose To assess the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for mood, breast- and endocrine-specific quality of life, and well-being after hospital treatment in women with stage 0 to III breast cancer. Patients and Methods A randomized, wait-listed, controlled trial was carried out in 229 women after surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy for breast cancer. Patients were randomly assigned to the 8-week MBSR program or standard care. Profile of Mood States (POMS; primary outcome), Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy–Breast (FACT-B), Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy–Endocrine Symptoms (FACT-ES) scales and the WHO five-item well-being questionnaire (WHO-5) evaluated mood, quality of life, and well-being at weeks 0, 8, and 12. For each outcome measure, a repeated-measures analysis of variance model, which incorporated week 0 measurements as a covariate, was used to compare treatment groups at 8 and 12 weeks. Results There were statistically significant improvements in outcome in the experimental group compared with control group at both 8 and 12 weeks (except as indicated) for POMS total mood disturbance (and its subscales of anxiety, depression [8 weeks only], anger [12 weeks only], vigor, fatigue, and confusion [8 weeks only]), FACT-B, FACT-ES, (and Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy subscales of physical, social [8 weeks only], emotional, and functional well-being), and WHO-5. Conclusion MSBR improved mood, breast- and endocrine-related quality of life, and well-being more effectively than standard care in women with stage 0 to III breast cancer, and these results persisted at three months. To our knowledge, this study provided novel evidence that MBSR can help alleviate long-term emotional and physical adverse effects of medical treatments, including endocrine treatments. MBSR is recommended to support survivors of breast cancer
Dynamic buckling and fragmentation in brittle rods
We present experiments on the dynamic buckling and fragmentation of slender
rods axially impacted by a projectile. By combining the results of Saint-Venant
and elastic beam theory, we derive a preferred wavelength lambda for the
buckling instability, and experimentally verify the resulting scaling law for a
range of materials including teflon, dry pasta, glass, and steel. For brittle
materials, buckling leads to the fragmentation of the rod. Measured fragment
length distributions show two clear peaks near lambda/2 and lambda/4. The
non-monotonic nature of the distributions reflect the influence of the
deterministic buckling process on the more random fragmentation processes.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Physical Review Letter
Micromagnetometry of two-dimensional ferromagnets
The study of atomically thin ferromagnetic crystals has led to the discovery
of unusual magnetic behaviour and provided insight into the magnetic properties
of bulk materials. However, the experimental techniques that have been used to
explore ferromagnetism in such materials cannot probe the magnetic field
directly. Here, we show that ballistic Hall micromagnetometry can be used to
measure the magnetization of individual two-dimensional ferromagnets. Our
devices are made by van der Waals assembly in such a way that the investigated
ferromagnetic crystal is placed on top of a multi-terminal Hall bar made from
encapsulated graphene. We use the micromagnetometry technique to study
atomically thin chromium tribromide (CrBr3). We find that the material remains
ferromagnetic down to monolayer thickness and exhibits strong out-of-plane
anisotropy. We also find that the magnetic response of CrBr3 varies little with
the number of layers and its temperature dependence cannot be described by the
simple Ising model of two-dimensional ferromagnetism.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure
Black Hole Complementarity vs. Locality
The evaporation of a large mass black hole can be described throughout most
of its lifetime by a low-energy effective theory defined on a suitably chosen
set of smooth spacelike hypersurfaces. The conventional argument for
information loss rests on the assumption that the effective theory is a local
quantum field theory. We present evidence that this assumption fails in the
context of string theory. The commutator of operators in light-front string
theory, corresponding to certain low-energy observers on opposite sides of the
event horizon, remains large even when these observers are spacelike separated
by a macroscopic distance. This suggests that degrees of freedom inside a black
hole should not be viewed as independent from those outside the event horizon.
These nonlocal effects are only significant under extreme kinematic
circumstances, such as in the high-redshift geometry of a black hole.
Commutators of space-like separated operators corresponding to ordinary
low-energy observers in Minkowski space are strongly suppressed in string
theory.Comment: 32 pages, harvmac, 3 figure
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