Financial Risks of Investments in Coal

Analyzes the regulatory, commodity, and construction risks of investing in coal mining and coal-fired power plants. Examines industry analysts' consensus on viable alternatives to coal, including natural gas, solar, wind, and energy efficiency

The petrology of fine-grained micrometeorites: Evidence for the diversity of primitive asteroids

We report the discovery by analytical TEM of serpentine and phases interpreted as dehydroxylates of serpentine in ultramicrotomed sections of a number of fine-grained Antarctic micrometeorites

Quantum behaviour of open pumped and damped Bose-Hubbard trimers

We propose and analyse analogs of optical cavities for atoms using three-well inline Bose-Hubbard models with pumping and losses. With one well pumped and one damped, we find that both the mean-field dynamics and the quantum statistics show a qualitative dependence on the choice of damped well. The systems we analyse remain far from equilibrium, although most do enter a steady-state regime. We find quadrature squeezing, bipartite and tripartite inseparability and entanglement, and states exhibiting the EPR paradox, depending on the parameter regimes. We also discover situations where the mean-field solutions of our models are noticeably different from the quantum solutions for the mean fields. Due to recent experimental advances, it should be possible to demonstrate the effects we predict and investigate in this article.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, theoretica

Responses of grain yield, biomass and harvest index and their rates of genetic progress to nitrogen availability in ten winter wheat varieties.

peer-reviewedIncreased yields in winter wheat cultivars have been found to be largely attributable to improved partitioning of biomass to the grain, i.e., higher harvest index. However, there is a biological upper limit to harvest index and therefore breeders need to exploit increased biomass production as the mechanism by which yields are increased. Evidence for improved biomass was sought in experiments conducted over three years (1994 to 1996), at the Plant Testing Station, Crossnacreevy, near Belfast, with 10 varieties of winter wheat introduced over the period 1977 to 1991. Variation in grain yield was more strongly associated with variation in biomass (an increase of 0.78 t/ha in grain yield at 85% dry matter (DM) per 1t/ha increase in biomass at 100% DM; R2 = 0.71) than in harvest index (an increase of 0.1t/ha at 85% DM per percentage point increase in harvest index; R2 = 0.36). When age (= year of first harvest in UK National List trials) of the varieties was taken into account, yield (0.037 t ha−y−; R2 = 0.42) and biomass (0.034 t ha−y−; R2 = 0.31), but not harvest index (0.34%/year; R2 = 0.001), increased as year increased. Genetic gain in yield was smaller without fertiliser N (0.021 t ha−y−; R2 = 0.21) and at 40 kg ha N (0.025 t ha−y−; R2 =0.25) than at 215–250 kg/ha N (0.065 t ha−y−; R2 = 0.39). Theoretically, if the maximum biomass (18.60 t/ha for Rialto), could have been combined with the maximum harvest index (55.3%) in Riband, yield would potentially have been increased by 2.5 t/ha compared with yields for either variety.Advice and guidance from Dr. Sally Watson, Biometrics Branch, Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute is appreciated

Dragonflies of (Anisoptera) Arkansas

Previous publications have recorded 69 species of dragonflies for Arkansas. Three of these are deleted, but state records for 21 new species are reported herein, bringing the list to 87 species. Based on lists from adjacent states, an additional nine species are listed as probably occurring in Arkansas. County records are given for both naiads and adults of each species, as well as first and last capture dates for adults. Specific location and capture date are given for new state records when such data are available. The most species (39) have been reported from Washington County. Twenty-nine counties list from 1-5 species, and six counties list no records

The proposed Caroline ESA M3 mission to a Main Belt Comet

We describe Caroline, a mission proposal submitted to the European Space Agency in 2010 in response to the Cosmic Visions M3 call for medium-sized missions. Caroline would have travelled to a Main Belt Comet (MBC), characterizing the object during a flyby, and capturing dust from its tenuous coma for return to Earth. MBCs are suspected to be transition objects straddling the traditional boundary between volatile–poor rocky asteroids and volatile–rich comets. The weak cometary activity exhibited by these objects indicates the presence of water ice, and may represent the primary type of object that delivered water to the early Earth. The Caroline mission would have employed aerogel as a medium for the capture of dust grains, as successfully used by the NASA Stardust mission to Comet 81P/Wild 2. We describe the proposed mission design, primary elements of the spacecraft, and provide an overview of the science instruments and their measurement goals. Caroline was ultimately not selected by the European Space Agency during the M3 call; we briefly reflect on the pros and cons of the mission as proposed, and how current and future mission MBC mission proposals such as Castalia could best be approached

Dust production 680-850 million years after the Big Bang

Dust plays an important role in our understanding of the Universe, but it is not obvious yet how the dust in the distant universe was formed. I derived the dust yields per asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star and per supernova (SN) required to explain dust masses of galaxies at z=6.3-7.5 (680-850 million years after the Big Bang) for which dust emission has been detected (HFLS3 at z=6.34, ULAS J1120+0641 at z=7.085, and A1689-zD1 at z=7.5), or unsuccessfully searched for. I found very high required yields, implying that AGB stars could not contribute substantially to dust production at these redshifts, and that SNe could explain these dust masses, but only if they do not destroy most of the dust they form (which is unlikely given the upper limits on the SN dust yields derived for galaxies where dust is not detected). This suggests that the grain growth in the interstellar medium is likely required at these early epochs.Comment: Accepted to A&A. 6 pages, 1 figure, 2 tables. V2: minor changes to match the published versio