2,726 research outputs found
Experimental investigation of the Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal effect in low-Z targets
In the CERN NA63 collaboration we have addressed the question of the
potential inadequacy of the commonly used Migdal formulation of the
Landau-Pomeranchuk-Migdal (LPM) effect by measuring the photon emission by 20
and 178 GeV electrons in the range 100 MeV - 4 GeV, in targets of
LowDensityPolyEthylene (LDPE), C, Al, Ti, Fe, Cu, Mo and, as a reference
target, Ta. For each target and energy, a comparison between simulated values
based on the LPM suppression of incoherent bremsstrahlung is shown, taking
multi-photon effects into account. For these targets and energies, we find that
Migdal's theoretical formulation is adequate to a precision of better than
about 5%, irrespective of the target substance.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figure
How far can various control options take us in terms of increased hydraulic capacity under wet weather conditions?
Does computer use pose a hazard for future long-term sickness absence?
The aim of the study was to investigate if weekly duration of computer use predicted sickness absence for more than two weeks at a later time
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Comparison of ammonia emissions related to nitrogen use efficiency of livestock production in Europe
The increasing global demand for food and the environmental effects of reactive nitrogen losses in the food production chain, increase the need for efficient use of nitrogen (N). Of N harvested in agricultural plant products, 80% is used to feed livestock. Because the largest atmospheric loss of reactive nitrogen from livestock production systems is ammonia (NH3), the focus of this paper is on N lost as NH3 during the production of animal protein. The focus of this paper is to understand the key factors explaining differences in Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) of animal production among various European countries. Therefore we developed a conceptual framework to describe the NUE defined as the amount of animal-protein N per N in feed and NH3–N losses in the production of milk, beef, pork, chicken meat and eggs in The Netherlands, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria and Denmark. The framework describes how manure management and animal-related parameters (feed, metabolism) relate to NH3 emissions and NUE. The results showed that the animal product with the lowest NUE had the largest NH3 emissions and vice versa, which agrees with the reciprocal relationship between NUE and NH3 within the conceptual framework. Across animal products for the countries considered, about 20% of the N in feed is lost as NH3. The significant smallest proportion (12%) of NH3–N per unit of Nfeed is from chicken production. The proportions for other products are 17%, 19%, 20% and 22% for milk, pork, eggs and beef respectively. These differences were not significantly different due to the differences among countries. For all countries, NUE was lowest for beef and highest for chicken. The production of 1 kg N in beef required about 5 kg N in feed, of which 1 kg N was lost as NH3–N. For the production of 1 kg N in chicken meat, 2 kg N in feed was required and 0.2 kg was lost as NH3. The production of 1 kg N in milk required 4 kg N in feed with 0.6 kg NH3–N loss, the same as pork and eggs, but those needed 3 and 3.5 kg N in feed per kg N in product respectively. Except for beef, the differences among these European countries were mainly caused by differences in manure management practices and their emission factors, rather than by animal-related factors including feed and digestibility influencing the excreted amount of ammoniacal N (TAN). For beef, both aspects caused important differences. Based on the results, we encourage the expression of N losses as per N in feed or per N in product, in addition to per animal place, when comparing production efficiency and NUE. We consider that disaggregating emission factors into a diet/animal effect and a manure management effect would improve the basis for comparing national NH3 emission inventories. © 2018 The Author
Source control options for reducing emission of priority pollutants from urban areas.
The overall aim of the ScorePP project is to develop comprehensive and appropriate source
control strategies that authorities, cities, water utilities and the chemical industry can employ
to reduce emissions of priority pollutants (PPs) from urban areas into the receiving water
environment. Focus is on the 33 priority and priority hazardous substances and substance
groups identified in the European Water Framework Directive. However, this list may be
expanded to include emerging pollutants or reduced if appropriate model compounds can be
identified. The initial work focuses on 67 substances, including substances identified in the
proposed European environmental quality standard (EQS) directive as well as the defined
example compounds and several organometallic derivatives. Information on inherent
properties, environmental presence and fate, and legislative issues is made available in open
database format, and a data management system combining chemical identification (CAS#),
NACE economic activity classifications and NOSE-P emission source classifications has been
developed as a basis for spatial characterisation of PP sources using GIS. Further work will
focus on dynamic urban scale source-flux models, identifying emission patterns and
optimising monitoring programmes in case studies and multi-criteria comparison of source
control versus end-of-pipe mitigation options in relation to their economic, social and
environmental impacts
High real-space resolution measurement of the local structure of Ga_1-xIn_xAs using x-ray diffraction
High real-space resolution atomic pair distribution functions (PDF)s from the
alloy series Ga_1-xIn_xAs have been obtained using high-energy x-ray
diffraction. The first peak in the PDF is resolved as a doublet due to the
presence of two nearest neighbor bond lengths, Ga-As and In-As, as previously
observed using XAFS. The widths of nearest, and higher, neighbor pairs are
analyzed by separating the strain broadening from the thermal motion. The
strain broadening is five times larger for distant atomic neighbors as compared
to nearest neighbors. The results are in agreement with model calculations.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
BAs and boride III-V alloys
Boron arsenide, the typically-ignored member of the III-V arsenide series
BAs-AlAs-GaAs-InAs is found to resemble silicon electronically: its Gamma
conduction band minimum is p-like (Gamma_15), not s-like (Gamma_1c), it has an
X_1c-like indirect band gap, and its bond charge is distributed almost equally
on the two atoms in the unit cell, exhibiting nearly perfect covalency. The
reasons for these are tracked down to the anomalously low atomic p orbital
energy in the boron and to the unusually strong s-s repulsion in BAs relative
to most other III-V compounds. We find unexpected valence band offsets of BAs
with respect to GaAs and AlAs. The valence band maximum (VBM) of BAs is
significantly higher than that of AlAs, despite the much smaller bond length of
BAs, and the VBM of GaAs is only slightly higher than in BAs. These effects
result from the unusually strong mixing of the cation and anion states at the
VBM. For the BAs-GaAs alloys, we find (i) a relatively small (~3.5 eV) and
composition-independent band gap bowing. This means that while addition of
small amounts of nitrogen to GaAs lowers the gap, addition of small amounts of
boron to GaAs raises the gap (ii) boron ``semi-localized'' states in the
conduction band (similar to those in GaN-GaAs alloys), and (iii) bulk mixing
enthalpies which are smaller than in GaN-GaAs alloys. The unique features of
boride III-V alloys offer new opportunities in band gap engineering.Comment: 18 pages, 14 figures, 6 tables, 61 references. Accepted for
publication in Phys. Rev. B. Scheduled to appear Oct. 15 200
Theoretical investigation of carbon defects and diffusion in α-quartz
The geometries, formation energies, and diffusion barriers of carbon point defects in silica (α-quartz) have been calculated using a charge-self-consistent density-functional based nonorthogonal tight-binding method. It is found that bonded interstitial carbon configurations have significantly lower formation energies (on the order of 5 eV) than substitutionals. The activation energy of atomic C diffusion via trapping and detrapping in interstitial positions is about 2.7 eV. Extraction of a CO molecule requires an activation energy <3.1 eV but the CO molecule can diffuse with an activation energy <0.4 eV. Retrapping in oxygen vacancies is hindered—unlike for O2—by a barrier of about 2 eV
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