The lithospheric mantle and lower crust-mantle relationships under Scotland: a xenolithic perspective

In the British Isles the majority of volcanic rocks containing upper mantle and lower crustal xenoliths occur in Scotland. Most of the occurrences are of Carboniferous–Permian age. This paper presents new data on the mineral chemistry of spinel lherzolite xenoliths from the five principal Scottish tectonic terranes. Compositional variations among the minerals emphasize the broad lateral heterogeneity of the subcontinental lithospheric mantle across the region. The remarkable range of Al2O3 v. CaO exhibited by the clinopyroxenes compared with data from other ‘xenolith provinces' emphasizes the extremely complex tectonomagmatic history of the Scottish lithosphere. The generalized age increase from southern and central Scotland to the Northern Highland and Hebridean terranes of the north and NW, with concomitant complexity of geological history, is reflected also by trace element and isotopic studies. Reaction relationships in lherzolites from the Hebridean Terrane, owing to pervasive metasomatism, involve secondary growth of sodic feldspar. This, and light REE enrichment of clinopyroxenes, points to involvement of a natro-carbonatitic melt. Most pyroxenitic xenoliths are inferred to form a basal crustal layer with a generally sharp discontinuity above the underlying (dominantly lherzolitic) mantle. A second discontinuity is inferred to separate these ultramafic cumulates from overlying, broadly cognate metagabbroic cumulates

Black Hole Chromosphere at the LHC

If the scale of quantum gravity is near a TeV, black holes will be copiously produced at the LHC. In this work we study the main properties of the light descendants of these black holes. We show that the emitted partons are closely spaced outside the horizon, and hence they do not fragment into hadrons in vacuum but more likely into a kind of quark-gluon plasma. Consequently, the thermal emission occurs far from the horizon, at a temperature characteristic of the QCD scale. We analyze the energy spectrum of the particles emerging from the "chromosphere", and find that the hard hadronic jets are almost entirely suppressed. They are replaced by an isotropic distribution of soft photons and hadrons, with hundreds of particles in the GeV range. This provides a new distinctive signature for black hole events at LHC.Comment: Incorporates changes made for the version to be published in Phys. Rev. D. Additional details provided on the effect of the chromosphere in cosmic ray shower

Genome-wide association studies reveal QTL hotspots for grain brightness and black point traits in barley

Grain kernel discoloration (KD) in cereal crops leads to down-grading grain quality and substantial economic losses worldwide. Breeding KD tolerant varieties requires a clear understanding of the genetic basis underlying this trait. Here, we generated a high-density single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) map for a diverse barley germplasm and collected trait data from two independent field trials for five KD related traits: grain brightness (TL), redness (Ta), yellowness (Tb), black point impact (Tbpi), and total black point in percentage (Tbpt). Although grain brightness and black point is genetically correlated, the grain brightness traits (TL, Ta, and Tb) have significantly higher heritability than that of the black point traits (Tbpt and Tbpi), suggesting black point traits may be more susceptible to environmental influence. Using genome-wide association studies (GWAS), we identified a total of 37 quantitative trait loci (QTL), including two major QTL hotspots on chromosomes 4H and 7H, respectively. The two QTL hotspots are associated with all five KD traits. Further genetic linkage and gene transcription analyses identified candidate genes for the grain KD, including several genes in the flavonoid pathway and plant peroxidase. Our study provides valuable insights into the genetic basis for the grain KD in barley and would greatly facilitate future breeding programs for improving grain KD resistance

Scalar conservation laws with nonconstant coefficients with application to particle size segregation in granular flow

Granular materials will segregate by particle size when subjected to shear, as occurs, for example, in avalanches. The evolution of a bidisperse mixture of particles can be modeled by a nonlinear first order partial differential equation, provided the shear (or velocity) is a known function of position. While avalanche-driven shear is approximately uniform in depth, boundary-driven shear typically creates a shear band with a nonlinear velocity profile. In this paper, we measure a velocity profile from experimental data and solve initial value problems that mimic the segregation observed in the experiment, thereby verifying the value of the continuum model. To simplify the analysis, we consider only one-dimensional configurations, in which a layer of small particles is placed above a layer of large particles within an annular shear cell and is sheared for arbitrarily long times. We fit the measured velocity profile to both an exponential function of depth and a piecewise linear function which separates the shear band from the rest of the material. Each solution of the initial value problem is non-standard, involving curved characteristics in the exponential case, and a material interface with a jump in characteristic speed in the piecewise linear case

Assessment, evaluation and quality assurance: implications for integrity in reporting academic achievement in higher education

The terms assessment, evaluation and quality assurance have various interpretations in higher education. The first two, assessment and evaluation, share considerable conceptual ground and interconnected histories. Quality assurance, on the other hand, is a more recent development. The issue of academic achievement standards in particular has significant implications for quality assurance. The first half of this article provides a selective broad-brush outline of the topics just described. The second half is about an emerging concept, grade integrity, which is focused on the trustworthiness of course grades recorded on student academic transcripts. This focus serves as a platform to illustrate: how difficult issues can be analysed; why established conventions and assumptions need to be challenged; and how ways forward can be sought out and thought through. The context for the paper is higher education but the principles also apply to other educational sectors

Two-photon absorption photocurrent enhancement in bulk AlGaAs semiconductor microcavities

We report on two-photon absorption (TPA) photocurrent in semiconductor microcavities. We experimentally show a substantial increase in the TPA photocurrent generated, at resonance, in a GaAlAs/GaAs microcavity designed for TPA operation at ~890 nm. An enhancement factor of ~12 000 of the photocurrent is obtained via the microcavity effect, which could have an important impact on the use of TPA devices for high speed switching and sampling applications. Our results also show the implications of the cavity photon lifetime on autocorrelation traces measured using TPA in semiconductor microcavities

Mass Loss Due to Sputtering and Thermal Processes in Meteoroid Ablation

Conventional meteoroid theory assumes that the dominant mode of ablation is by evaporation following intense heating during atmospheric flight. In this paper we consider the question of whether sputtering may provide an alternative disintegration process of some importance.For meteoroids in the mass range from 10^-3 to 10^-13 kg and covering a meteor velocity range from 11 to 71 km/s, we numerically modeled both thermal ablation and sputtering ablation during atmospheric flight. We considered three meteoroid models believed to be representative of asteroidal (3300 kg m^-3 mass density), cometary (1000 kg m^-3) and porous cometary (300 kg m^-3) meteoroid structures. Atmospheric profiles which considered the molecular compositions at different heights were used in the sputtering calculations. We find that while in many cases (particularly at low velocities and for relatively large meteoroid masses) sputtering contributes only a small amount of mass loss during atmospheric flight, in some cases sputtering is very important. For example, a 10^-10 kg porous meteoroid at 40 km/s will lose nearly 51% of its mass by sputtering, while a 10^-13 kg asteroidal meteoroid at 60 km/s will lose nearly 83% of its mass by sputtering. We argue that sputtering may explain the light production observed at very great heights in some Leonid meteors. The impact of this work will be most dramatic for very small meteoroids such as those observed with large aperture radars.Comment: in pdf form, 48 pgs incl figures and table

Renormalization group and isochronous oscillations

We show how the condition of isochronicity can be studied for two dimensional systems in the renormalization group (RG) context. We find a necessary condition for the isochronicity of the Cherkas and another class of cubic systems. Our conditions are satisfied by all the cases studied recently by Bardet et al \cite{bard} and Ghose Choudhury and Guh