30,540 research outputs found
Influent Wastewater Microbiota and Temperature Influence Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor Microbial Community
Sustainable municipal wastewater recovery scenarios highlight benefits of anaerobic membrane bioreactors (AnMBRs). However, influences of continuous seeding by influent wastewater and temperature on attached-growth AnMBRs are not well understood. In this study, four bench-scale AnMBR operated at 10 and 25 °C were fed synthetic (SPE) and then real (PE) primary effluent municipal wastewater. Illumina sequencing revealed different bacterial communities in each AnMBR in response to temperature and bioreactor configuration, whereas differences were not observed in archaeal communities. Activity assays revealed hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis was the dominant methanogenic pathway at 10 °C. The significant relative abundance of Methanosaeta at 10 °C concomitant with low acetoclastic methanogenic activity may indicate possible Methanosaeta-Geobacter direct interspecies electron transfer. When AnMBR feed was changed to PE, continual seeding with wastewater microbiota caused AnMBR microbial communities to shift, becoming more similar to PE microbiota. Therefore, influent wastewater microbiota, temperature and reactor configuration influenced the AnMBR microbial community
Frequency Dependent Viscosity Near the Critical Point: The Scale to Two Loop Order
The recent accurate measurements of Berg, Moldover and Zimmerli of the
viscoelastic effect near the critical point of xenon has shown that the scale
factor involved in the frequency scaling is about twice the scale factor
obtained theoretically. We show that this discrepancy is a consequence of using
first order perturbation theory. Including two loop contribution goes a long
way towards removing the discrepancy.Comment: No of pages:7,Submitted to PR-E(Rapid Communication),No of EPS
files:
Thruster Allocation for Dynamical Positioning
Positioning a vessel at a fixed position in deep water is of great importance when working offshore. In recent years a Dynamical Positioning (DP) system was developed at Marin [2]. After the measurement of the current position and external forces (like waves, wind etc.), each thruster of the vessel is actively controlled to hold the desired location.
In this paper we focus on the allocation process to determine the settings for each thruster that results in the minimal total power and thus fuel consumption. The mathematical formulation of this situation leads to a nonlinear optimization problem with equality and inequality constraints, which can be solved by applying Lagrange multipliers.
We give three approaches: first of all, the full problem was solved using the MATLAB fmincon routine with the solution from the linearised problem as a starting point. This implementation, with robust handling of the situations where the thrusters are overloaded, lead to promising results: an average reduction in fuel consumption of approximately two percent. However, further analysis proved useful. A second approach changes the set of variables and so reduces the number of equations. The third and last approach solves the Lagrange equations with an iterative method on the linearized Lagrange problem
Glassy behavior induced by geometrical frustration in a hard-core lattice gas model
We introduce a hard-core lattice-gas model on generalized Bethe lattices and
investigate analytically and numerically its compaction behavior. If
compactified slowly, the system undergoes a first-order crystallization
transition. If compactified much faster, the system stays in a meta-stable
liquid state and undergoes a glass transition under further compaction. We show
that this behavior is induced by geometrical frustration which appears due to
the existence of short loops in the generalized Bethe lattices. We also compare
our results to numerical simulations of a three-dimensional analog of the
model.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, revised versio
Direct electronic measurement of Peltier cooling and heating in graphene
Thermoelectric effects allow the generation of electrical power from waste
heat and the electrical control of cooling and heating. Remarkably, these
effects are also highly sensitive to the asymmetry in the density of states
around the Fermi energy and can therefore be exploited as probes of distortions
in the electronic structure at the nanoscale. Here we consider two-dimensional
graphene as an excellent nanoscale carbon material for exploring the
interaction between electronic and thermal transport phenomena, by presenting a
direct and quantitative measurement of the Peltier component to electronic
cooling and heating in graphene. Thanks to an architecture including nanoscale
thermometers, we detected Peltier component modulation of up to 15 mK for
currents of 20 A at room temperature and observed a full reversal between
Peltier cooling and heating for electron and hole regimes. This fundamental
thermodynamic property is a complementary tool for the study of nanoscale
thermoelectric transport in two-dimensional materials.Comment: Final version published in Nature Communications under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
A comparison of extremal optimization with flat-histogram dynamics for finding spin-glass ground states
We compare the performance of extremal optimization (EO), flat-histogram and
equal-hit algorithms for finding spin-glass ground states. The
first-passage-times to a ground state are computed. At optimal parameter of
tau=1.15, EO outperforms other methods for small system sizes, but equal-hit
algorithm is competitive to EO, particularly for large systems. Flat-histogram
and equal-hit algorithms offer additional advantage that they can be used for
equilibrium thermodynamic calculations. We also propose a method to turn EO
into a useful algorithm for equilibrium calculations.
Keywords: extremal optimization. flat-histogram algorithm, equal-hit
algorithm, spin-glass model, ground state.Comment: 10 LaTeX pages, 2 figure
Testing Error Correcting Codes by Multicanonical Sampling of Rare Events
The idea of rare event sampling is applied to the estimation of the
performance of error-correcting codes. The essence of the idea is importance
sampling of the pattern of noises in the channel by Multicanonical Monte Carlo,
which enables efficient estimation of tails of the distribution of bit error
rate. The idea is successfully tested with a convolutional code
The unreasonable effectiveness of equilibrium-like theory for interpreting non-equilibrium experiments
There has been great interest in applying the results of statistical
mechanics to single molecule experiements. Recent work has highlighted
so-called non-equilibrium work-energy relations and Fluctuation Theorems which
take on an equilibrium-like (time independent) form. Here I give a very simple
heuristic example where an equilibrium result (the barometric law for colloidal
particles) arises from theory describing the {\em thermodynamically}
non-equilibrium phenomenon of a single colloidal particle falling through
solution due to gravity. This simple result arises from the fact that the
particle, even while falling, is in {\em mechanical} equilibrium (gravitational
force equal the viscous drag force) at every instant. The results are
generalized by appeal to the central limit theorem. The resulting time
independent equations that hold for thermodynamically non-equilibrium (and even
non-stationary) processes offer great possibilities for rapid determination of
thermodynamic parameters from single molecule experiments.Comment: 6 page
Particles held by springs in a linear shear flow exhibit oscillatory motion
The dynamics of small spheres, which are held by linear springs in a low
Reynolds number shear flow at neighboring locations is investigated. The flow
elongates the beads and the interplay of the shear gradient with the nonlinear
behavior of the hydrodynamic interaction among the spheres causes in a large
range of parameters a bifurcation to a surprising oscillatory bead motion. The
parameter ranges, wherein this bifurcation is either super- or subcritical, are
determined.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
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