2,091 research outputs found
The Life of a Vortex Knot
The idea that the knottedness (hydrodynamic Helicity) of a fluid flow is
conserved has a long history in fluid mechanics. The quintessential example of
a knotted flow is a knotted vortex filament, however, owing to experimental
difficulties, it has not been possible until recently to directly generate
knotted vortices in real fluids. Using 3D printed hydrofoils and high-speed
laser scanning tomography, we generate vortex knots and links and measure their
subsequent evolution. In both cases, we find that the vortices deform and
stretch until a series of vortex reconnections occurs, eventually resulting
several disjoint vortex rings.
This article accompanies a fluid dynamics video entered into the Gallery of
Fluid Motion at the 66th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics.Comment: Videos are included; this submission is part of the DFD Gallery of
Fluid Motio
What personal and environmental factors determine frequency of urban greenspace use?
For many people, urban greenspaces are the only places where they encounter the natural world. This is concerning as there is growing evidence demonstrating that human well-being is enhanced by exposure to nature. There is, therefore, a compelling argument to increase how frequently people use urban greenspaces. This may be achieved in two complementary ways by encouraging: (I) non-users to start visiting urban greenspaces; (II) existing users to visit more often. Here we examine the factors that influence frequency of greenspace visitation in the city of Sheffield, England. We demonstrate that people who visit a site least frequently state lower self-reported psychological well-being. We hypothesised that a combination of socio-demographic characteristics of the participants, and the biophysical attributes of the greenspaces that they were visiting, would be important in influencing visit frequency. However, socio-demographic characteristics (income, age, gender) were not found to be predictors. In contrast, some biophysical attributes of greenspaces were significantly related to use frequency. Frequent use was more likely when the time taken to reach a greenspace was shorter and for sites with a higher index of greenspace neglect, but were unrelated to tree cover or bird species richness. We related these results to the motivations that people provide for their visits. Infrequent users were more likely to state motivations associated with the quality of the space, while frequent users gave motivations pertaining to physical, repeated activities. This suggests that there may be no simple way to manage greenspaces to maximise their use across user cohorts as the motivations for visits are very different
Order-disorder and ionic conductivity in calcium nitride-hydride
Prof John TS Irvine and Prof Martin Owen Jones: STFC 5005—Development of Combined In situ Neutron Diffraction and Electrochemical Studies.Recently nitrogen-hydrogen compounds have successfully been applied as co-catalysts for mild conditions ammonia synthesis. Ca2NH was shown to act as a H2 sink during reaction, with H atoms from its lattice being incorporated into the NH3(g) product. Thus the ionic transport and diffusion properties of the N–H co-catalyst are fundamentally important to understanding and developing such syntheses. Here we show hydride ion conduction in these materials. Two distinct calcium nitride-hydride Ca2NH phases, prepared via different synthetic paths are found to show dramatically different properties. One phase (β) shows fast hydride ionic conduction properties (0.08 S/cm at 600 °C), on a par with the best binary ionic hydrides and 10 times higher than CaH2, whilst the other (α) is 100 times less conductive. An in situ combined analysis techniques reveals that the effective β-phase conducts ions via a vacancy-mediated phenomenon in which the charge carrier concentration is dependent on the ion concentration in the secondary site and by extension the vacancy concentration in the main site.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Geometric frustration and concerted migration in the superionic conductor barium hydride
Authors would like to thank the ISIS Facility Development Studentship for funding this work. Additionally, I would like to thank ISIS Neutron and Muon Source for providing the beam time to collect all the scattering data presented in this paper. Finally, I would like to thank the Crockett Scholarship for supporting my studies. For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to any Accepted Author Manuscript version arising.Ionic conductivity is a phenomenon of great interest, not least because of its application in advanced electrochemical devices such as batteries and fuel cells. While lithium, sodium, and oxide fast ion conductors have been the subjects of much study, the advent of hydride (H–) ion fast conductors opens up new windows in the understanding of fast ion conduction due to the fundamental simplicity of the H– ion consisting of just two electrons and one proton. Here we probe the nature of fast ion conduction in the hydride ion conductor, barium hydride (BaH2). Unusually for a fast ion conductor, this material has a structure based upon a close-packed hexagonal lattice, with important analogues such as BaF2 and Li2S. We elucidate how the structure of the high temperature phase of BaH2 results in a disordered hydride sublattice. Furthermore, using novel combined quasi-elastic neutron scattering (QENS) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) we show how the high energy ions interact to create a concerted migration that results in macroscopic superionic conductivity via an interstitialcy mechanism.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Varenicline and suicidal behaviour: a cohort study based on data from the General Practice Research Database
Objective To determine whether varenicline, a recently licensed smoking cessation product, is associated with an increased risk of suicide and suicidal behaviour compared with alternative treatments bupropion and nicotine replacement therapy
Spectra of Nearby Galaxies Measured with a New Very Broadband Receiver
Three-millimeter-wavelength spectra of a number of nearby galaxies have been
obtained at the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory (FCRAO) using a new,
very broadband receiver. This instrument, which we call the Redshift Search
Receiver, has an instantaneous bandwidth of 36 GHz and operates from 74 to
110.5 GHz. The receiver has been built at UMass/FCRAO to be part of the initial
instrumentation for the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) and is intended
primarily for determination of the redshift of distant, dust-obscured galaxies.
It is being tested on the FCRAO 14m by measuring the 3mm spectra of a number of
nearby galaxies. There are interesting differences in the chemistry of these
galaxies.Comment: published in the Proceedings of the International Astronomical Union
(2008), 4. Vol 251, pp 251-256 Cambridge University Pres
Real time statistical field theory
We have written a {\it Mathematica} program that calculates the integrand
corresponding to any amplitude in the closed-time-path formulation of real time
statistical field theory. The program is designed so that it can be used by
someone with no previous experience with {\it Mathematica}. It performs the
contractions over the tensor indices that appear in real time statistical field
theory and gives the result in the 1-2, Keldysh or RA basis. We have used the
program to calculate the ward identity for the QED 3-point function, the QED
4-point function for two photons and two fermions, and the QED 5-point function
for three photons and two fermions. In real time statistical field theory,
there are seven 3-point functions, 15 4-point functions and 31 5-point
functions. We produce a table that gives the results for all of these
functions. In addition, we give a simple general expression for the KMS
conditions between -point green functions and vertex functions, in both the
Keldysh and RA basesComment: 25 pages, 12 figure
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Measurement of Time-Dependent CP Asymmetry in the Decay of a Neutral B Meson to a J/Psi and a Long-Lived Neutral Kaon at BaBar
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