321 research outputs found
Geophysical and geochemical signatures of Gulf of Mexico seafloor brines
International audienceGeophysical, temperature, and discrete depth-stratified geochemical data illustrate differences between an actively venting mud volcano and a relatively quiescent brine pool in the Gulf of Mexico along the continental slope. Geophysical data, including laser-line scan mosaics and sub-bottom profiles, document the dynamic nature of both environments. Temperature profiles, obtained by lowering a CTD into the brine fluid, show that the venting brine was at least 10°C warmer than the bottom water. At the brine pool, thermal stratification was observed and only small differences in stratification were documented between three sampling times (1991, 1997 and 1998). In contrast, at the mud volcano, substantial temperature variability was observed, with the core brine temperature being slightly higher than bottom water (by 2°C) in 1997 but substantially higher than bottom water (by 19°C) in 1998. Detailed geochemical samples were obtained in 2002 using a device called the "brine trapper" and concentrations of dissolved gases, major ions and nutrients were determined. Both brines contained about four times as much salt as seawater and steep concentration gradients of dissolved ions and nutrients versus brine depth were apparent. Differences in the concentrations of calcium, magnesium and potassium between the two brine fluids suggest that the fluids are derived from different sources, have different dilution/mixing histories, or that brine-sediment reactions are more important at the mud volcano. Substantial concentrations of methane, ammonium, and silicate were observed in both brines, suggesting that fluids expelled from deep ocean brines are important sources of these constituents to the surrounding environment
A rigorous implementation of the Jeans--Landau--Teller approximation
Rigorous bounds on the rate of energy exchanges between vibrational and
translational degrees of freedom are established in simple classical models of
diatomic molecules. The results are in agreement with an elementary
approximation introduced by Landau and Teller. The method is perturbative
theory ``beyond all orders'', with diagrammatic techniques (tree expansions) to
organize and manipulate terms, and look for compensations, like in recent
studies on KAM theorem homoclinic splitting.Comment: 23 pages, postscrip
On the energy growth of some periodically driven quantum systems with shrinking gaps in the spectrum
We consider quantum Hamiltonians of the form H(t)=H+V(t) where the spectrum
of H is semibounded and discrete, and the eigenvalues behave as E_n~n^\alpha,
with 0<\alpha<1. In particular, the gaps between successive eigenvalues decay
as n^{\alpha-1}. V(t) is supposed to be periodic, bounded, continuously
differentiable in the strong sense and such that the matrix entries with
respect to the spectral decomposition of H obey the estimate
|V(t)_{m,n}|0,
p>=1 and \gamma=(1-\alpha)/2. We show that the energy diffusion exponent can be
arbitrarily small provided p is sufficiently large and \epsilon is small
enough. More precisely, for any initial condition \Psi\in Dom(H^{1/2}), the
diffusion of energy is bounded from above as _\Psi(t)=O(t^\sigma) where
\sigma=\alpha/(2\ceil{p-1}\gamma-1/2). As an application we consider the
Hamiltonian H(t)=|p|^\alpha+\epsilon*v(\theta,t) on L^2(S^1,d\theta) which was
discussed earlier in the literature by Howland
Continuous deformations of the Grover walk preserving localization
The three-state Grover walk on a line exhibits the localization effect
characterized by a non-vanishing probability of the particle to stay at the
origin. We present two continuous deformations of the Grover walk which
preserve its localization nature. The resulting quantum walks differ in the
rate at which they spread through the lattice. The velocities of the left and
right-traveling probability peaks are given by the maximum of the group
velocity. We find the explicit form of peak velocities in dependence on the
coin parameter. Our results show that localization of the quantum walk is not a
singular property of an isolated coin operator but can be found for entire
families of coins
The Quantum Adiabatic Approximation and the Geometric Phase
A precise definition of an adiabaticity parameter of a time-dependent
Hamiltonian is proposed. A variation of the time-dependent perturbation theory
is presented which yields a series expansion of the evolution operator
with being at least of
the order . In particular corresponds to the
adiabatic approximation and yields Berry's adiabatic phase. It is shown that
this series expansion has nothing to do with the -expansion of
. It is also shown that the non-adiabatic part of the evolution
operator is generated by a transformed Hamiltonian which is off-diagonal in the
eigenbasis of the initial Hamiltonian. Some related issues concerning the
geometric phase are also discussed.Comment: uuencoded LaTeX file, 19 page
Imaginary Phases in Two-Level Model with Spontaneous Decay
We study a two-level model coupled to the electromagnetic vacuum and to an
external classic electric field with fixed frequency. The amplitude of the
external electric field is supposed to vary very slow in time. Garrison and
Wright [{\it Phys. Lett.} {\bf A128} (1988) 177] used the non-hermitian
Hamiltonian approach to study the adiabatic limit of this model and obtained
that the probability of this two-level system to be in its upper level has an
imaginary geometric phase. Using the master equation for describing the time
evolution of the two-level system we obtain that the imaginary phase due to
dissipative effects is time dependent, in opposition to Garrison and Wright
result. The present results show that the non-hermitian hamiltonian method
should not be used to discuss the nature of the imaginary phases in open
systems.Comment: 11 pages, new version, to appear in J. Phys.
Metabolic variability in seafloor brines revealed by carbon and sulphur dynamics
Brine fluids that upwell from deep, hot reservoirs below the sea bed supply the sea floor with energy-rich substrates and nutrients that are used by diverse microbial ecosystems. Contemporary hypersaline environments formed by brine seeps may provide insights into the metabolism and distribution of microorganisms on the early Earth or on extraterrestrial bodies. Here we use geochemical and genetic analyses to characterize microbial community composition and metabolism in two seafloor brines in the Gulf of Mexico: an active mud volcano and a quiescent brine pool. Both brine environments are anoxic and hypersaline. However, rates of sulphate reduction and acetate production are much higher in the brine pool, whereas the mud volcano supports much higher rates of methane production. We find no evidence of anaerobic oxidation of methane, despite high methane fluxes at both sites. We conclude that the contrasting microbial community compositions and metabolisms are linked to differences in dissolved-organic-matter input from the deep subsurface and different fluid advection rates between the two sites.
DOI: 10.1038/NGEO47
Impact of Integrating Rabies Education Into the Curriculum of Public Elementary Schools in Ilocos Norte, Philippines on Rabies Knowledge, and Animal Bite Incidence
As part of a province wide rabies elimination program, rabies specific information was integrated into the curriculum of all public elementary schools in Ilocos Norte, Philippines using a specifically developed teachers' manual. The rabies educational messages included rabies, animal bite prevention, bite management and responsible pet ownership and were integrated into lessons in several subjects. Four elementary schools were randomly selected and an assessment of the change in student's rabies knowledge and animal bite incidence were conducted. The study tested all students in grades 1â5 before the curriculum integration was implemented and retested these cohorts 1 year later, after implementation. Awareness of rabies was high before the implementation, likely due to the province-wide elimination campaign. However, awareness still increased significantly across all schools, and detailed knowledge of rabies increased significantly in all but one school and age cohort. Bite incidence in the 6 months prior to each survey was also recorded and the percentage of students suffering animal bites fell significantly between the two tests. The data suggested that knowledge increase correlated with decreased bite incidence in some groups but not all, suggesting a more complex relationship between knowledge acquisition and behavioral change which warrants further investigation
- âŠ