The fragmented city.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Architecture University of the Witwatersrand in fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Masters in Urban Design.Johannesburg, like many other major cities in Third World nations is facing major urban influx, This urban influx is causing extreme pressure on the existing social and economic fabric. This in tum has resulted in fragmentation on a number of different levels - social, political, economic and physical. The spatial organisation of the city appears to be incapable of coping with this fragmentation. The means or method needs to be discovered where the fragmented elements of the city can be reunited and absorbed into the city system. (Abbreviation abstract)Andrew Chakane 201

E2 properties of nuclei far from stability and the proton-halo problem of 8B

E2 properties of A=6--10 nuclei, including those of nuclei far from stability, are studied by a $(0+2)\hbar\omega$ shell-model calculation which includes E2 core-polarization effects explicitly. The quadrupole moments and the E2 transition strengths in A=6--10 nuclei are described quite well by the present calculation. This result indicates that the relatively large value of the quadrupole moment of $^8$B can be understood without introducing the proton-halo in $^8$B. An interesting effect of the $2\hbar\omega$ core-polarization is found for effective charges used in the $0\hbar\omega$ shell model; although isoscalar effective-charges are almost constant as a function of nucleus, appreciable variations are needed for isovector effective-charges which play important roles in nuclei with high isospin-values.Comment: (LaTeX, 23 pages

Excellent impact performance of PVC pipeline materials in gas distribution networks after many years of service

It has been about fifty years ago since the first unplasticized poly(vinyl chloride) (uPVC) pipes were installed for use in gas distribution purposes. Currently, about 22,500 km of uPVC is still in use in the Dutch gas distribution network. The pipes were originally designed for a lifetime of 50 years, but due to positive experiences the question arises if (and how long) the lifetime can be extended without any concessions to safety. This is supported by the data of leak surveys presented in this paper. The amount of leaks per installed km of uPVC is even slightly lower than that of polyethylene or steel pipes. Only impact modified PVC has a better performance. The impact behaviour is presumed to be the limiting factor for the lifetime of uPVC. Therefore, the impact behaviour was studied as a function of the age. Two types of research have been carried out: instrumented falling weight tests were carried out on recently produced uPVC pipes (some of which were aged artificially) and tensile impact tests were carried out on excavated uPVC pipes which had been in service for 20 to 50 years. The overall conclusion that can be drawn from these experiments is that the most significant change in impact behaviour is likely to occur in the early stages, just after the production of the uPVC pipe. Physical ageing occurs on a logarithmic timescale, thus the changes occurring between the 20th and the 50th year of service are relatively small compared to the changes that occur in the first 20 years. This leads to the conclusion that uPVC pipes that currently show good impact behaviour, are expected to have good impact properties for many years to come

Influence of anisotropic conductivity of the white matter tissue on EEG source reconstruction a FEM simulation study

The aim of this study was to quantify the influence of the inclusion of anisotropic conductivity on EEG source reconstruction. We applied high-resolution finite element modeling and performed forward and inverse simulation with over 4000 single dipoles placed around an anisotropic volume block (with an anisotropic ratio of 1:10) in a rabbit brain. We investigated three different orientation of the dipoles with respect to the anisotropy in the white matter block. We found a weak influence of the anisotropy in the forward simulation on the electric potential. The relative difference measure (RDM) between the potentials simulated with and without taking into account anisotropy was less than 0.009. The changes in magnitude (MAG) ranged from 0.944 to 1.036. Using the potentials of the forward simulation derived with the anisotropic model and performing source reconstruction by employing the isotropic model led to dipole shifts of up to 2 mm, however the mean shift over all dipoles and orientations of 0.05 mm was smaller than the grid size of the FEM model (0.6 mm). However, we found the source strength estimation to be more influenced by the anisotropy (up to 7-times magnified dipole strength)

Entanglement of two individual atoms using the Rydberg blockade

We report on our recent progress on the manipulation of single rubidium atoms trapped in optical tweezers and the generation of entanglement between two atoms, each individually trapped in neighboring tweezers. To create an entangled state of two atoms in their ground states, we make use of the Rydberg blockade mechanism. The degree of entanglement is measured using global rotations of the internal states of both atoms. Such internal state rotations on a single atom are demonstrated with a high fidelity.Comment: Proceeding of the 19th International Conference on Laser Spectroscopy ICOLS 2009, 7-13 June 2009, Hokkaido, Japa

Extraction of soil solution by drainage centrifugation-effects of centrifugal force and time of centrifugation on soil moisture recovery and solute concentration in soil moisture of loess subsoils.

The solute concentration in the subsoil beneath the root zone is an important parameter for leaching assessment. Drainage centrifugation is considered a simple and straightforward method of determining soil solution chemistry. Although several studies have been carried out to determine whether this method is robust, hardly any results are available for loess subsoils. To study the effect of centrifugation conditions on soil moisture recovery and solute concentration, we sampled the subsoil (1.5-3.0 m depth) at commercial farms in the loess region of the Netherlands. The effect of time (20, 35, 60, 120 and 240 min) on recovery was studied at two levels of the relative centrifugal force (733 and 6597g). The effect of force on recovery was studied by centrifugation for 35 min at 117, 264, 733, 2932, 6597 and 14,191g. All soil moisture samples were chemically analysed. This study shows that drainage centrifugation offers a robust, reproducible and standardised way for determining solute concentrations in mobile soil moisture in silt loam subsoils. The centrifugal force, rather than centrifugation time, has a major effect on recovery. The maximum recovery for silt loams at field capacity is about 40%. Concentrations of most solutes are fairly constant with an increasing recovery, as most solutes, including nitrate, did not show a change in concentration with an increasing recovery

Spin-dependent transport in metal/semiconductor tunnel junctions

This paper describes a model as well as experiments on spin-polarized tunnelling with the aid of optical spin orientation. This involves tunnel junctions between a magnetic material and gallium arsenide (GaAs), where the latter is optically excited with circularly polarized light in order to generate spin-polarized carriers. A transport model is presented that takes account of carrier capture in the semiconductor surface states, and describes the semiconductor surface in terms of a spin-dependent energy distribution function. The so-called surface spin-splitting can be calculated from the balance of the polarized electron and hole flow in the semiconductor subsurface region, the polarized tunnelling current across the tunnel barrier between the magnetic material and the semiconductor surface, and the spin relaxation at the semiconductor surface. Measurements are presented of the circular-polarization-dependent photocurrent (the so-called helicity asymmetry) in thin-film tunnel junctions of Co/Al2O3/GaAs. In the absence of a tunnel barrier, the helicity asymmetry is caused by magneto-optical effects (magnetic circular dichroism). In the case where a tunnel barrier is present, the data cannot be explained by magneto-optical effects alone; the deviations provide evidence that spin-polarized tunnelling due to optical spin orientation occurs. In Co/τ-MnAl/AlAs/GaAs junctions no deviations from the magneto-optical effects are observed, most probably due to the weak spin polarization of τ-MnAl along the tunnelling direction; the latter is corroborated by bandstructure calculations. Finally, the application of photoexcited GaAs for spin-polarized tunnelling in a scanning tunnelling microscope is discussed.