1,058 research outputs found

    Effects of Sand Addition to Heavy Saline-Alkali Soil on the Infiltration and Salt Leaching in Hetao Irrigation District, China

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    Proceeding PaperSoil salinity is a matter of great economic and environmental implications. In Hetao Irrigation District, soil salinity limits crop productivity affecting about 69% of its total cultivated land due to natural soil salinisation and salt accumulation caused by irrigation. The goal of this study is to contribute to the alleviation of this problem through the technique of adding wind-sand to the top layer of heavy saline-alkali soil, and to evaluate and analyse their effects on the infiltration and salt leaching. The experiment was carried out on a laboratory scale. Clayey soil with 21 g/kg of salts collected at the Ulat Front Banner site was used. Wind-sand was added to the top 30 cm layer of this soil. The infiltration tests were carried out in plastic columns with 9 cm diameter and 45 cm high, loaded with a soil and wind-sand mixture (from 2% to 30% ratio), supplied by a constant hydraulic head. Soil water samples were collected for 15 days for quantification of the soil salt leaching. A significant increase of the infiltration rate was observed in the first infiltration hour, rising from 1 to 9 mm/h, in response to the addition of 8% and 30% of sandy particles, respectively. The effects of wind-sand in salt leaching were relevant in the top 20 cm layer. After 7 days of infiltration there was a decrease in the salt content in soils with 4%, 8%, and 30% of sand particles added, of 35%, 55%, and 95%, respectively, in relation to the control. In conclusion, the practice of adding sandy particles to the topsoil is a soil melioration method that allows a positive impact on soil infiltration and salt leaching. An addition of 8% of sand seems to be a good choice, as it favours an increase in salt leaching of about 55% after 7 days. These results are encouraging and appeal to field studies to assess the impact on a field-scale system, and the effects of this soil melioration on irrigation, drainage, and agronomic aspectsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

    An assessment of the resolution limitation due to radiation-damage in x-ray diffraction microscopy

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    X-ray diffraction microscopy (XDM) is a new form of x-ray imaging that is being practiced at several third-generation synchrotron-radiation x-ray facilities. Although only five years have elapsed since the technique was first introduced, it has made rapid progress in demonstrating high-resolution threedimensional imaging and promises few-nm resolution with much larger samples than can be imaged in the transmission electron microscope. Both life- and materials-science applications of XDM are intended, and it is expected that the principal limitation to resolution will be radiation damage for life science and the coherent power of available x-ray sources for material science. In this paper we address the question of the role of radiation damage. We use a statistical analysis based on the so-called "dose fractionation theorem" of Hegerl and Hoppe to calculate the dose needed to make an image of a lifescience sample by XDM with a given resolution. We conclude that the needed dose scales with the inverse fourth power of the resolution and present experimental evidence to support this finding. To determine the maximum tolerable dose we have assembled a number of data taken from the literature plus some measurements of our own which cover ranges of resolution that are not well covered by reports in the literature. The tentative conclusion of this study is that XDM should be able to image frozen-hydrated protein samples at a resolution of about 10 nm with "Rose-criterion" image quality.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

    Dimensional Reduction via Noncommutative Spacetime: Bootstrap and Holography

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    Unlike noncommutative space, when space and time are noncommutative, it seems necessary to modify the usual scheme of quantum mechanics. We propose in this paper a simple generalization of the time evolution equation in quantum mechanics to incorporate the feature of a noncommutative spacetime. This equation is much more constraining than the usual Schr\"odinger equation in that the spatial dimension noncommuting with time is effectively reduced to a point in low energy. We thus call the new evolution equation the spacetime bootstrap equation, the dimensional reduction called for by this evolution seems close to what is required by the holographic principle. We will discuss several examples to demonstrate this point.Comment: 15 pages, harvmac. v2: typos corrected and some changes mad

    On the positive mass theorem for manifolds with corners

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    We study the positive mass theorem for certain non-smooth metrics following P. Miao's work. Our approach is to smooth the metric using the Ricci flow. As well as improving some previous results on the behaviour of the ADM mass under the Ricci flow, we extend the analysis of the zero mass case to higher dimensions.Comment: 21 pages, incorporated referee's comment

    X-ray image reconstruction from a diffraction pattern alone

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    A solution to the inversion problem of scattering would offer aberration-free diffraction-limited 3D images without the resolution and depth-of-field limitations of lens-based tomographic systems. Powerful algorithms are increasingly being used to act as lenses to form such images. Current image reconstruction methods, however, require the knowledge of the shape of the object and the low spatial frequencies unavoidably lost in experiments. Diffractive imaging has thus previously been used to increase the resolution of images obtained by other means. We demonstrate experimentally here a new inversion method, which reconstructs the image of the object without the need for any such prior knowledge.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, improved figures and captions, changed titl

    Issues Concerning Loop Corrections to the Primordial Power Spectra

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    We expound ten principles in an attempt to clarify the debate over infrared loop corrections to the primordial scalar and tensor power spectra from inflation. Among other things we note that existing proposals for nonlinear extensions of the scalar fluctuation field ζ\zeta introduce new ultraviolet divergences which no one understands how to renormalize. Loop corrections and higher correlators of these putative observables would also be enhanced by inverse powers of the slow roll parameter ϔ\epsilon. We propose an extension which should be better behaved.Comment: 36 pages, uses LaTeX2e, version 3 revised for publication with a much expanded section 4, proving that our proposed extension of the zeta-zeta correlator absorbs the one loop infrared divergences from graviton

    Exact Solution of Quantum Field Theory on Noncommutative Phase Spaces

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    We present the exact solution of a scalar field theory defined with noncommuting position and momentum variables. The model describes charged particles in a uniform magnetic field and with an interaction defined by the Groenewold-Moyal star-product. Explicit results are presented for all Green's functions in arbitrary even spacetime dimensionality. Various scaling limits of the field theory are analysed non-perturbatively and the renormalizability of each limit examined. A supersymmetric extension of the field theory is also constructed in which the supersymmetry transformations are parametrized by differential operators in an infinite-dimensional noncommutative algebra.Comment: 70 pages AMSTe
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