2,426 research outputs found
Optimality and Conductivity for Water Flow: From Landscapes, to Unsaturated Soils, to Plant Leaves
Optimality principles have been widely used in many areas. Based on an optimality principle that any flow field will tend toward a minimum in the energy dissipation rate, this work shows that there exists a unified form of conductivity relationship for three different flow systems: landscapes, unsaturated soils and plant leaves. The conductivity, the ratio of water flux to energy gradient, is a power function of water flux although the power value is system dependent. This relationship indicates that to minimize energy dissipation rate for a whole system, water flow has a small resistance (or a large conductivity) at a location of large water flux. Empirical evidence supports validity of the relationship for landscape and unsaturated soils (under gravity dominated conditions). Numerical simulation results also show that the relationship can capture the key features of hydraulic structure for a plant leaf, although more studies are needed to further confirm its validity. Especially, it is of interest that according to this relationship, hydraulic conductivity for gravity-dominated unsaturated flow, unlike that defined in the classic theories, depends on not only capillary pressure (or saturation), but also the water flux. Use of the optimality principle allows for determining useful results that are applicable to a broad range of areas involving highly non-linear processes and may not be possible to obtain from classic theories describing water flow processes
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Analysis of Alcove 8/Niche 3 Flow and Transport Tests
The purpose of this report is to document analyses of the Alcove 8/Niche 3 flow and transport tests, with a focus on the large-infiltration-plot tests and compare pre-test model predictions with the actual test observations. The tests involved infiltration that originated from the floor of Alcove 8 (located in the Enhanced Characterization of Repository Block (ECRB) Cross Drift) and observations of seepage and tracer transport at Niche 3 (located in the Main Drift of the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF)). The test results are relevant to drift seepage and solute transport in the unsaturated zone (UZ) of Yucca Mountain. The main objective of this analysis was to evaluate the modeling approaches used and the importance of the matrix diffusion process by comparing simulation and actual test observations. The pre-test predictions for the large plot test were found to differ from the observations and the reasons for the differences were documented in this report to partly address CR 6783, which concerns unexpected test results. These unexpected results are discussed and assessed with respect to the current baseline unsaturated zone radionuclide transport model in Sections 6.2.4, 6.3.2, and 6.4
Suppression of Superconducting Critical Current Density by Small Flux Jumps in Thin Films
By doing magnetization measurements during magnetic field sweeps on thin
films of the new superconductor , it is found that in a low temperature
and low field region small flux jumps are taking place. This effect strongly
suppresses the central magnetization peak leading to reduced nominal
superconducting critical current density at low temperatures. A borderline for
this effect to occur is determined on the field-temperature (H-T) phase
diagram. It is suggested that the small size of the flux jumps in films is due
to the higher density of small defects and the relatively easy thermal
diffusion in thin films in comparison with bulk samples.Comment: 7 figures Phys. Rev. B accepted scheduled issue: 01 Feb 200
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Scale Dependence of Effective Matrix Diffusion Coefficient Evidence and Preliminary Interpertation
The exchange of solute mass (through molecular diffusion) between fluid in fractures and fluid in the rock matrix is called matrix diffusion. Owing to the orders-of-magnitude slower flow velocity in the matrix compared to fractures, matrix diffusion can significantly retard solute transport in fractured rock, and therefore is an important process for a variety of problems, including remediation of subsurface contamination and geological disposal of nuclear waste. The effective matrix diffusion coefficient (molecular diffusion coefficient in free water multiplied by matrix tortuosity) is an important parameter for describing matrix diffusion, and in many cases largely determines overall solute transport behavior. While matrix diffusion coefficient values measured from small rock samples in the laboratory are generally used for modeling field-scale solute transport in fractured rock (Boving and Grathwohl, 2001), several research groups recently have independently found that effective matrix diffusion coefficients much larger than laboratory measurements are needed to match field-scale tracer-test data (Neretnieks, 2002; Becker and Shapiro, 2000; Shapiro, 2001; Liu et al., 2003,2004a). In addition to the observed enhancement, Liu et al. (2004b), based on a relatively small number of field-test results, reported that the effective matrix diffusion coefficient might be scale dependent, and, like permeability and dispersivity, it seems to increases with test scale. This scale-dependence has important implications for large-scale solute transport in fractured rock. Although a number of mechanisms have been proposed to explain the enhancement of the effective matrix diffusion coefficient, the potential scale dependence and its mechanisms are not fully investigated at this stage. The major objective of this study is to again demonstrate (based on more data published in the literature than those used in Liu et al. [2004b]) the potential scale dependence of the effective matrix-diffusion coefficient, and to -develop a preliminary explanation for this scale-dependent behavior
An image reconstruction algorithm based on the semiparametric model for electrical capacitance tomography
AbstractElectrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is considered as a promising tomography technology, and exactly reconstructing the original objects is highly desirable in real applications. In this paper, a generalized image reconstruction model that simultaneously considers the inaccurate property in the measured capacitance data and the linearization approximation error is presented. A generalized objective function, which has been developed using a combinational M-estimation and an extended stabilizing item, is proposed. The objective function unifies six estimation methods into a concise formula, where different estimation methods can be easily obtained by selecting different parameters. The homotopy method that integrates the beneficial advantages of the alternant iteration scheme is employed to solve the proposed objective function. Numerical simulations are implemented to evaluate the numerical performances and effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, and the numerical results reveal that the proposed algorithm is efficient and overcomes the numerical instability in the process of ECT image reconstruction. For the reconstructed objects in this paper, a dramatic improvement in accuracy and spatial resolution can be achieved, which indicates that the proposed algorithm is a promising candidate for solving ECT inverse problems
Microfluidic enzymatic reactors for proteome research
The field of proteomics has emerged as a valuable analytical tool for elucidating cellular and biological systems at the molecular level. As there is an ever-growing demand for new highly automated, high-throughput, and sensitive analytical tools, a key challenge is the characterization of low abundance proteins that are crucial in modulating biological functions of cells and may also be associated with a number of diseases. If the detection modes are mainly dominated by fluorescence spectroscopy and mass spectrometry, the recent advances in microfluidic techniques have the potential to meet the requirements for sample treatment and processing. Microfluidic devices can address the future analytical needs of increased throughput, lower sample and reagent consumption, smaller size, and lower operating costs. It has been found that microfluidic-based enzymatic reactors can carry out protein digestion with high efficiency to facilitate subsequent reliable protein identification by peptide mass fingerprinting. Compared to conventional digestion approaches, microfluidic enzymatic reactors can not only accelerate digestion rate but also reduce enzyme autolysis and, ultimately, achieve the purpose of repetitive utilization
Stopping and Isospin Equilibration in Heavy Ion Collisions
We investigate the density behaviour of the symmetry energy with respect to
isospin equilibration in the combined systems at relativistic
energies of 0.4 and . The study is performed within a relativistic
framework and the contribution of the iso-vector, scalar field to the
symmetry energy and the isospin dynamics is particularly explored. We find that
the isospin mixing depends on the symmetry energy and a stiff behaviour leads
to more transparency. The results are also nicely sensitive to the "fine
structure" of the symmetry energy, i.e. to the covariant properties of the
isovector meson fields. The isospin tracing appears much less dependent on the
in-medium neutron-proton cross-sections () and this makes such
observable very peculiar for the study of the isovector part of the nuclear
equation of state. Within such a framework, comparisons with experiments
support the introduction of the meson in the description of the
iso-vector equation of state.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in Phys.Lett.
Properties and Performance of Two Wide Field of View Cherenkov/Fluorescence Telescope Array Prototypes
A wide field of view Cherenkov/fluorescence telescope array is one of the
main components of the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory project. To
serve as Cherenkov and fluorescence detectors, a flexible and mobile design is
adopted for easy reconfiguring of the telescope array. Two prototype telescopes
have been constructed and successfully run at the site of the ARGO-YBJ
experiment in Tibet. The features and performance of the telescopes are
presented
Competition of crystal field splitting and Hund's rule coupling in two-orbital magnetic metal-insulator transitions
Competition of crystal field splitting and Hund's rule coupling in magnetic
metal-insulator transitions of half-filled two-orbital Hubbard model is
investigated by multi-orbital slave-boson mean field theory. We show that with
the increase of Coulomb correlation, the system firstly transits from a
paramagnetic (PM) metal to a {\it N\'{e}el} antiferromagnetic (AFM) Mott
insulator, or a nonmagnetic orbital insulator, depending on the competition of
crystal field splitting and the Hund's rule coupling. The different AFM Mott
insulator, PM metal and orbital insulating phase are none, partially and fully
orbital polarized, respectively. For a small and a finite crystal
field, the orbital insulator is robust. Although the system is nonmagnetic, the
phase boundary of the orbital insulator transition obviously shifts to the
small regime after the magnetic correlations is taken into account. These
results demonstrate that large crystal field splitting favors the formation of
the orbital insulating phase, while large Hund's rule coupling tends to destroy
it, driving the low-spin to high-spin transition.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
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