3,298 research outputs found
Spatially distributed water-balance and meteorological data from the Wolverton catchment, Sequoia National Park, California
Accurate water-balance measurements in the seasonal, snow-dominated Sierra Nevada are important for forest and downstream water management. However, few sites in the southern Sierra offer detailed records of the spatial and temporal patterns of snowpack and soil-water storage and the fluxes affecting them, i.e., precipitation as rain and snow, snowmelt, evapotranspiration, and runoff. To explore these stores and fluxes we instrumented the Wolverton basin (2180-2750 m) in Sequoia National Park with distributed, continuous sensors. This 2006-2016 record of snow depth, soil moisture and soil temperature, and meteorological data quantifies the hydrologic inputs and storage in a mostly undeveloped catchment. Clustered sensors record lateral differences with regards to aspect and canopy cover at approximately 2250 and 2625 m in elevation, where two meteorological stations are installed. Meteorological stations record air temperature, relative humidity, radiation, precipitation, wind speed and direction, and snow depth. Data are available at hourly intervals by water year (1 October-30 September) in non-proprietary formats from online data repositories (https://doi.org/10.6071/M3S94T)
National Transonic Facility: A review of the operational plan
The proposed National Transonic Facility (NTF) operational plan is reviewed. The NTF will provide an aerodynamic test capability significantly exceeding that of other transonic regime wind tunnels now available. A limited number of academic research program that might use the NTF are suggested. It is concluded that the NTF operational plan is useful for management, technical, instrumentation, and model building techniques available in the specialized field of aerodynamic analysis and simulation. It is also suggested that NASA hold an annual conference to discuss wind tunnel research results and to report on developments that will further improve the utilization and cost effectiveness of the NTF and other wind tunnels
Development of a thermal ionizer as ion catcher
An effective ion catcher is an important part of a radioactive beam facility
that is based on in-flight production. The catcher stops fast radioactive
products and emits them as singly charged slow ions. Current ion catchers are
based on stopping in He and H gas. However, with increasing intensity of
the secondary beam the amount of ion-electron pairs created eventually prevents
the electromagnetic extraction of the radioactive ions from the gas cell. In
contrast, such limitations are not present in thermal ionizers used with the
ISOL production technique. Therefore, at least for alkaline and alkaline earth
elements, a thermal ionizer should then be preferred. An important use of the
TRIP facility will be for precision measurements using atom traps. Atom
trapping is particularly possible for alkaline and alkaline earth isotopes. The
facility can produce up to 10 s of various Na isotopes with the
in-flight method. Therefore, we have built and tested a thermal ionizer. An
overview of the operation, design, construction, and commissioning of the
thermal ionizer for TRIP will be presented along with first results for
Na and Na.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, XVth International Conference on Electromagnetic
Isotope Separators and Techniques Related to their Applications (EMIS 2007
Reconstructing Van Gogh’s palette to determine the optical characteristics of his paints
The colors of Field with Irises near Arles, painted by Van Gogh in Arles in 1888, have changed considerably. To get an idea of how this painting, as well as other works by Van Gogh, looked shortly after their production, the Revigo (Re-assessing Vincent van Gogh’s colors) research project was initiated. The aim of this project was to digitally visualize the original colors of paintings and drawings by Vincent van Gogh, using scientific methods backed by expert judgement where required. We adopted an experimental art technological approach and physically reconstructed Van Gogh’s full palette of oil paints, closely matching those he used to paint Field with Irises near Arles. Sixteen different paints were reconstructed, among which the most light-sensitive pigments and linseed oil, which is prone to yellowing, were produced according to 19th century practice. The resulting pigments and oils were chemically analyzed and compared to those used by Van Gogh. The ones that resembled his paints the most were used in the paint reconstructions. Other pigments were either obtained from the Cultural Heritage Agency’s collection of historical pigments, or purchased from Kremer Pigmente. The reconstructed paints were subsequently used to calculate the absorption K and scattering S parameters of the individual paints. Using Kubelka–Munk theory, these optical parameters could in turn be used to determine the color of paint mixtures. We applied this method successfully to digitally visualize the original colors of Field with Irises near Arles. Moreover, the set of optical parameters presented here can similarly be applied to calculate digital visualizations of other paintings by Van Gogh and his contemporaries
Efficient Pattern Matching in Python
Pattern matching is a powerful tool for symbolic computations. Applications
include term rewriting systems, as well as the manipulation of symbolic
expressions, abstract syntax trees, and XML and JSON data. It also allows for
an intuitive description of algorithms in the form of rewrite rules. We present
the open source Python module MatchPy, which offers functionality and
expressiveness similar to the pattern matching in Mathematica. In particular,
it includes syntactic pattern matching, as well as matching for commutative
and/or associative functions, sequence variables, and matching with
constraints. MatchPy uses new and improved algorithms to efficiently find
matches for large pattern sets by exploiting similarities between patterns. The
performance of MatchPy is investigated on several real-world problems
Subthreshold K+ production in deuteron and alpha induced nuclear reactions
Double differential cross sections have been measured for pi+ and K+ emitted
around midraidity in d+A and He+A collisions at a beam kinetic energy of 1.15
GeV/nucleon. The total pi+ yield increases by a factor of about 2 when using an
alpha projectile instead of a deuteron whereas the K+ yield increases by a
factor of about 4. According to transport calculations, the K+ enhancement
depends both on the number of hadron-hadron collisions and on the energy
available in those collisions: their center-of-mass energy increases with
increasing number of projectile nucleons
High-precision measurement of the half-life of Ga
The beta-decay half-life of 62Ga has been studied with high precision using
on-line mass separated samples. The decay of 62Ga which is dominated by a 0+ to
0+ transition to the ground state of 62Zn yields a half-life of T_{1/2} =
116.19(4) ms. This result is more precise than any previous measurement by
about a factor of four or more. The present value is in agreement with older
literature values, but slightly disagrees with a recent measurement. We
determine an error weighted average value of all experimental half-lives of
116.18(4) ms.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in PR
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