824 research outputs found
Variations in Longitudinal Permeability of Coastal Western Hemlock
The air permeability of western hemlock from coastal forests in western Oregon was assessed. Permeability varied widely among trees, as well as by position within individual trees. Permeability tended to decrease with distance inward from the bark, a trend implying that this species produces a heartwood zone. These variations may help to explain the treatability differences observed in lumber of this species
Carbon superatom thin films
Assembling clusters on surfaces has emerged as a novel way to grow thin films
with targeted properties. In particular, it has been proposed from experimental
findings that fullerenes deposited on surfaces could give rise to thin films
retaining the bonding properties of the incident clusters. However the
microscopic structure of such films is still unclear. By performing quantum
molecular dynamics simulations, we show that C_28 fullerenes can be deposited
on a surface to form a thin film of nearly defect free molecules, which act as
carbon superatoms. Our findings help clarify the structure of disordered small
fullerene films and also support the recently proposed hyperdiamond model for
solid C_28.Comment: 13 pages, RevTeX, 2 figures available as black and white PostScript
files; color PostScript and/or gif files available upon reques
Non-equilibrium transport through a vertical quantum dot in the absence of spin-flip energy relaxation
We investigate non-equilibrium transport in the absence of spin-flip energy
relaxation in a few-electron quantum dot artificial atom. Novel non-equilibrium
tunneling processes involving high-spin states which cannot be excited from the
ground state because of spin-blockade, and other processes involving more than
two charge states are observed. These processes cannot be explained by orthodox
Coulomb blockade theory. The absence of effective spin relaxation induces
considerable fluctuation of the spin, charge, and total energy of the quantum
dot. Although these features are revealed clearly by pulse excitation
measurements, they are also observed in conventional dc current characteristics
of quantum dots.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.Let
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Quantifying the roles of ocean circulation and biogeochemistry in governing ocean carbon-13 and atmospheric carbon dioxide at the last glacial maximum
We use a state-of-the-art ocean general circulation and biogeochemistry model to examine the impact of changes in ocean circulation and biogeochemistry in governing the change in ocean carbon-13 and atmospheric CO2 at the last glacial maximum (LGM). We examine 5 different realisations of the ocean's overturning circulation produced by a fully coupled atmosphere-ocean model under LGM forcing and suggested changes in the atmospheric deposition of iron and phytoplankton physiology at the LGM. Measured changes in carbon-13 and carbon-14, as well as a qualitative reconstruction of the change in ocean carbon export are used to evaluate the results. Overall, we find that while a reduction in ocean ventilation at the LGM is necessary to reproduce carbon-13 and carbon-14 observations, this circulation results in a low net sink for atmospheric CO2. In contrast, while biogeochemical processes contribute little to carbon isotopes, we propose that most of the change in atmospheric CO2 was due to such factors. However, the lesser role for circulation means that when all plausible factors are accounted for, most of the necessary CO2 change remains to be explained. This presents a serious challenge to our understanding of the mechanisms behind changes in the global carbon cycle during the geologic past
Encoded Universality for Generalized Anisotropic Exchange Hamiltonians
We derive an encoded universality representation for a generalized
anisotropic exchange Hamiltonian that contains cross-product terms in addition
to the usual two-particle exchange terms. The recently developed algebraic
approach is used to show that the minimal universality-generating encodings of
one logical qubit are based on three physical qubits. We show how to generate
both single- and two-qubit operations on the logical qubits, using suitably
timed conjugating operations derived from analysis of the commutator algebra.
The timing of the operations is seen to be crucial in allowing simplification
of the gate sequences for the generalized Hamiltonian to forms similar to that
derived previously for the symmetric (XY) anisotropic exchange Hamiltonian. The
total number of operations needed for a controlled-Z gate up to local
transformations is five. A scalable architecture is proposed.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Diffusion of gold nanoclusters on graphite
We present a detailed molecular-dynamics study of the diffusion and
coalescence of large (249-atom) gold clusters on graphite surfaces. The
diffusivity of monoclusters is found to be comparable to that for single
adatoms. Likewise, and even more important, cluster dimers are also found to
diffuse at a rate which is comparable to that for adatoms and monoclusters. As
a consequence, large islands formed by cluster aggregation are also expected to
be mobile. Using kinetic Monte Carlo simulations, and assuming a proper scaling
law for the dependence on size of the diffusivity of large clusters, we find
that islands consisting of as many as 100 monoclusters should exhibit
significant mobility. This result has profound implications for the morphology
of cluster-assembled materials
Predictive use of the Maximum Entropy Production principle for Past and Present Climates
In this paper, we show how the MEP hypothesis may be used to build simple
climate models without representing explicitly the energy transport by the
atmosphere. The purpose is twofold. First, we assess the performance of the MEP
hypothesis by comparing a simple model with minimal input data to a complex,
state-of-the-art General Circulation Model. Next, we show how to improve the
realism of MEP climate models by including climate feedbacks, focusing on the
case of the water-vapour feedback. We also discuss the dependence of the
entropy production rate and predicted surface temperature on the resolution of
the model
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