Impacts of Fire Emissions and Transport Pathways on the Interannual Variation of CO In the Tropical Upper Troposphere

This study investigates the impacts of fire emission, convection, various climate conditions and transport pathways on the interannual variation of carbon monoxide (CO) in the tropical upper troposphere (UT), by evaluating the field correlation between these fields using multi-satellite observations and principle component analysis, and the transport pathway auto-identification method developed in our previous study. The rotated empirical orthogonal function (REOF) and singular value decomposition (SVD) methods are used to identify the dominant modes of CO interannual variation in the tropical UT and to study the coupled relationship between UT CO and its governing factors. Both REOF and SVD results confirm that Indonesia is the most significant land region that affects the interannual variation of CO in the tropical UT, and El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant climate condition that affects the relationships between surface CO emission, convection and UT CO. In addition, our results also show that the impact of El Nino on the anomalous CO pattern in the tropical UT varies strongly, primarily due to different anomalous emission and convection patterns associated with different El Nino events. In contrast, the anomalous CO pattern in the tropical UT during La Nina period appears to be less variable among different events. Transport pathway analysis suggests that the average CO transported by the "local convection" pathway (Delta COlocal) accounts for the differences of UT CO between different ENSO phases over the tropical continents during biomass burning season. Delta COlocal is generally higher over Indonesia-Australia and lower over South America during El Nino years than during La Nina years. The other pathway ("advection within the lower troposphere followed by convective vertical transport") occurs more frequently over the west-central Pacific during El Nino years than during La Nina years, which may account for the UT CO differences over this region between different ENSO phases.NASA Aura Science Team (AST) program NNX09AD85GJackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at AustinJet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under NASAGeological Science

Behavior of axially loaded circular stainless steel tube confined concrete stub columns

A stainless steel tube confined concrete (SSTCC) stub column is a new form of steel-concrete composite column in which the stainless steel tube without bearing the axial load directly is used to confine the core concrete. It could take the advantages of both the stainless steel tube and the confined concrete columns. This paper presents the experimental investigation of circular SSTCC stub columns subjected to axial load. Meanwhile, comparative tests of the circular concrete-filled stainless steel tubes and circular hollow stainless steel tubes were also conducted. The experimental phenomena of specimens are introduced in detail and the experimental results are analyzed. Through the investigation of axial stress and circumference stress on the stainless steel tube, the interaction behavior between stainless steel tube and core concrete is studied. The experimental results showed that the stainless steel tube provides better confinement to the concrete core, thus results the compressive capacity increased obviously comparing with unconfined concrete. The load-carrying capacity of SSTCC stub columns is higher than that of concrete-filled stainless steel tubes. An equation to calculate the load-carrying capacity of SSTCC stub columns was proposed, the results based on calculation are close to the experimental results

Potential distribution surrounding a photo- emitting plate in a dilute plasma

Potential distribution in photo-emitting plate in dilute plasma

The effect of pre-processing and grain structure on the bio-corrosion and fatigue resistance of magnesium alloy AZ31

Magnesium alloys are broadly used for structural applications in the aerospace and automotive industries as well as in consumer electronics. While a high specific strength is the forte of magnesium alloys, one serious limitation for Mg alloys is their corrosion performance. Unlike aluminium, it does not form a stable passive film to provide long-term protection from further corrosion. The poor corrosion resistance of magnesium and magnesium alloys is regarded as a major drawback, and significant effort has been focused on improving this.[1-3] However, the high reactivity of magnesium alloys in corrosive media can be used to advantage in biomedical applications, particularly in temporary implants where the capacity of a material for bio-degradation is one of the most sought after properties. Indeed, permanent implant materials, such as stainless steel, titanium alloys or Nitinol (55Ni-45Ti), are the only choices currently available for hard tissue implantation. They can cause permanent physical irritation, long-term endothelial dysfunction and chronic inflammatory local reaction. Sometimes a second operation is needed for the implant to be removed. Given the ability of the human body to gradually recover and regenerate damaged tissue, the ideal solution would thus be a degradable implant, which would offer a physiologically less invasive repair and temporary support during tissue recovery. After fulfilling its function, this implant would be obliterated, being absorbed by the body. This philosophy of implant surgery would also be of particular interest for endovascular stent

Phase properties of hypergeometric states and negative hypergeometric states

We show that the three quantum states (P$\acute{o}$lya states, the generalized non-classical states related to Hahn polynomials and negative hypergeometric states) introduced recently as intermediates states which interpolate between the binomial states and negative binomial states are essentially identical. By using the Hermitial-phase-operator formalism, the phase properties of the hypergeometric states and negative hypergeometric states are studied in detail. We find that the number of peaks of phase probability distribution is one for the hypergeometric states and $M$ for the negative hypergeometric states.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Geographic and Seasonal Distributions of CO Transport Pathways and Their Roles in Determining CO Centers in the Upper Troposphere

Past studies have identified a variety of pathways by which carbon monoxide (CO) may be transported from the surface to the tropical upper troposphere (UT); however, the relative roles that these transport pathways play in determining the distribution and seasonality of CO in the tropical UT remain unclear. We have developed a method to automate the identification of two pathways ('local convection' and 'advection within the lower troposphere (LT) followed by convective vertical transport') involved in CO transport from the surface to the UT. This method is based on the joint application of instantaneous along-track, co-located, A-Train satellite measurements. Using this method, we find that the locations and seasonality of the UT CO maxima in the tropics were strongly correlated with the frequency of local convective transport during 2007. We also find that the 'local convection' pathway (convective transport that occurred within a fire region) typically transported significantly more CO to the UT than the 'LT advection -> convection' pathway (advection of CO within the LT from a fire region to a convective region prior to convective transport). To leading order, the seasonality of CO concentrations in the tropical UT reflected the seasonality of the 'local convection' transport pathway during 2007. The UT CO maxima occurred over Central Africa during boreal spring and over South America during austral spring. Occurrence of the 'local convection' transport pathway in these two regions also peaked during these seasons. During boreal winter and summer, surface CO emission and convection were located in opposite hemispheres, which limited the effectiveness of transport to the UT. During these seasons, CO transport from the surface to the UT typically occurred via the 'LT advection -> convection' pathway.NASA Aura Science Team NNX09AD85GJackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at AustinNASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of TechnologyGeological Science

On Mitigation of Side-Channel Attacks in 3D ICs: Decorrelating Thermal Patterns from Power and Activity

Various side-channel attacks (SCAs) on ICs have been successfully demonstrated and also mitigated to some degree. In the context of 3D ICs, however, prior art has mainly focused on efficient implementations of classical SCA countermeasures. That is, SCAs tailored for up-and-coming 3D ICs have been overlooked so far. In this paper, we conduct such a novel study and focus on one of the most accessible and critical side channels: thermal leakage of activity and power patterns. We address the thermal leakage in 3D ICs early on during floorplanning, along with tailored extensions for power and thermal management. Our key idea is to carefully exploit the specifics of material and structural properties in 3D ICs, thereby decorrelating the thermal behaviour from underlying power and activity patterns. Most importantly, we discuss powerful SCAs and demonstrate how our open-source tool helps to mitigate them.Comment: Published in Proc. Design Automation Conference, 201

Global modeling of secondary organic aerosol formation from aromatic hydrocarbons: high- vs low-yield pathways

Formation of SOA from the aromatic species toluene, xylene, and, for the first time, benzene, is added to a global chemical transport model. A simple mechanism is presented that accounts for competition between low and high-yield pathways of SOA formation, wherein secondary gas-phase products react further with either nitrogen oxide (NO) or hydroperoxy radical (HO2) to yield semi- or non-volatile products, respectively. Aromatic species yield more SOA when they react with OH in regions where the [NO]/[HO2] ratios are lower. The SOA yield thus depends upon the distribution of aromatic emissions, with biomass burning emissions being in areas with lower [NO]/[HO2] ratios, and the reactivity of the aromatic with respect to OH, as a lower initial reactivity allows transport away from industrial source regions, where [NO]/[HO2] ratios are higher, to more remote regions, where this ratio is lower and, hence, the ultimate yield of SOA is higher. As a result, benzene is estimated to be the most important aromatic species with regards to formation of SOA, with a total production nearly equal that of toluene and xylene combined. In total, while only 39% percent of the aromatic species react via the low-NOx pathway, 72% of the aromatic SOA is formed via this mechanism. Predicted SOA concentrations from aromatics in the Eastern United States and Eastern Europe are actually largest during the summer, when the [NO]/[HO2] ratio is lower. Global production of SOA from aromatic sources is estimated at 3.5 Tg/yr, resulting in a global burden of 0.08 Tg, twice as large as previous estimates. The contribution of these largely anthropogenic sources to global SOA is still small relative to biogenic sources, which are estimated to comprise 90% of the global SOA burden, about half of which comes from isoprene. Compared to recent observations, it would appear there are additional pathways beyond those accounted for here for production of anthropogenic SOA. However, owing to differences in spatial distributions of sources and seasons of peak production, there are still regions in which aromatic SOA produced via the mechanisms identified here are predicted to contribute substantially to, and even dominate, the local SOA concentrations, such as outflow regions from North America and South East Asia during the wintertime, though total SOA concentrations there are small (~0.1 μg/m^³)