28,562 research outputs found
The Economic Feasibility of Producing Pasture Poultry for Limited Resource Farmers in Southeastern North Carolina
This study examines the economic feasibility of two pasture poultry production operations (pasture pen and net range) by limited resource farmers (LRFs) using the Net Present Value (NPV) method of analysis. Results of the NPV method illustrated unacceptable investments for both production operations.Alternative Enterprises, Agricultural Prosperity, Pasture Poultry Production, Limited Resource Farming, Farm Management, Land Economics/Use,
Topologically Driven Swelling of a Polymer Loop
Numerical studies of the average size of trivially knotted polymer loops with
no excluded volume are undertaken. Topology is identified by Alexander and
Vassiliev degree 2 invariants. Probability of a trivial knot, average gyration
radius, and probability density distributions as functions of gyration radius
are generated for loops of up to N=3000 segments. Gyration radii of trivially
knotted loops are found to follow a power law similar to that of self avoiding
walks consistent with earlier theoretical predictions.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PNAS (USA) in Feb 200
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Visualising gas heating from an RF plasma loudspeaker
In an electro-acoustic transduction mechanism, an ac modulation (here in the audio frequency range) of the electric field in an atmospheric pressure air plasma gives rise to a rapid increase in the gas temperature and dimensions of the gas volume. As in natural lightning, the rapid expansion in the ionised column though the air produces external pressure variations at the modulation frequency.
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Spatial and temporal measurement of the gas temperature can identify the nature of the thermal expansion and provide a direct approach to understanding its relationship to the sound pressure wave that is generated. However, the established method through spectroscopic measurement of rotational line emission from nitrogen molecules is limited to the main current channel where relaxation and subsequent optical emission of the excited nitrogen molecules occurs. The wider picture is revealed through the use of the Schlieren method where the refractive index gradients caused by gas heating in the plasma are imaged
Phase diagram of the frustrated, spatially anisotropic S=1 antiferromagnet on a square lattice
We study the S=1 square lattice Heisenberg antiferromagnet with spatially
anisotropic nearest neighbor couplings , frustrated by a
next-nearest neighbor coupling numerically using the density-matrix
renormalization group (DMRG) method and analytically employing the
Schwinger-Boson mean-field theory (SBMFT). Up to relatively strong values of
the anisotropy, within both methods we find quantum fluctuations to stabilize
the N\'{e}el ordered state above the classically stable region. Whereas SBMFT
suggests a fluctuation-induced first order transition between the N\'{e}el
state and a stripe antiferromagnet for and an
intermediate paramagnetic region opening only for very strong anisotropy, the
DMRG results clearly demonstrate that the two magnetically ordered phases are
separated by a quantum disordered region for all values of the anisotropy with
the remarkable implication that the quantum paramagnetic phase of the spatially
isotropic - model is continuously connected to the limit of
decoupled Haldane spin chains. Our findings indicate that for S=1 quantum
fluctuations in strongly frustrated antiferromagnets are crucial and not
correctly treated on the semiclassical level.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figure
NetFPGA SUME: Toward 100 Gbps as research commodity
The demand-led growth of datacenter networks has
meant that many constituent technologies are beyond the budget
of the research community. In order to make and validate
timely and relevant research contributions, the wider research
community requires accessible evaluation, experimentation and
demonstration environments with specification comparable to
the subsystems of the most massive datacenter networks. We
present NetFPGA SUME, an FPGA-based PCIe board with I/O
capabilities for 100Gb/s operation as NIC, multiport switch,
firewall, or test/measurement environment. As a powerful new
NetFPGA platform, SUME provides an accessible development
environment that both reuses existing codebases and enables new
designs.This work was jointly supported by EPSRC INTERNET
Project EP/H040536/1, National Science Foundation under
Grant No. CNS-0855268, and Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), under contract FA8750-11-C-0249.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from IEEE at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6866035&sortType%3Dasc_p_Sequence%26filter%3DAND%28p_IS_Number%3A5210076%29
Structural and wetting properties of nature\u27s finest silks (order Embioptera)
Insects from the order Embioptera (webspinners) spin silk fibres which are less than 200 nm in diameter. In this work, we characterized and compared the diameters of single silk fibres from nine species—Antipaluria urichi, Pararhagadochir trinitatis, Saussurembia calypso, Diradius vandykei, Aposthonia ceylonica, Haploembia solieri, H. tarsalis, Oligotoma nigra and O. saundersii. Silk from seven of these species have not been previously quantified. Our studies cover five of the 10 named taxonomic families and represent about one third of the known taxonomic family-level diversity in the order Embioptera. Naturally spun silk varied in diameter from 43.6 ± 1.7 nm for D. vandykei to 122.4 ± 3.2 nm for An. urichi. Mean fibre diameter did not correlate with adult female body length. Fibre diameter is more similar in closely related species than in more distantly related species. Field observations indicated that silk appears shiny and smooth when exposed to rainwater. We therefore measured contact angles to learn more about interactions between silk and water. Higher contact angles were measured for silks with wider fibre diameter and higher quantity of hydrophobic amino acids. High static contact angles (ranging up to 122° ± 3° for An. urichi) indicated that silken sheets spun by four arboreal, webspinner species were hydrophobic. A second contact angle measurement made on a previously wetted patch of silk resulted in a lower contact angle (average difference was greater than 27°) for all four species. Our studies suggest that silk fibres which had been previously exposed to water exhibited irreversible changes in hydrophobicity and water adhesion properties. Our results are in alignment with the ‘super-pinning’ site hypothesis by Yarger and co-workers to describe the hydrophobic, yet water adhesive, properties exhibited by webspinner silk fibres. The physical and chemical insights gained here may inform the synthesis and development of smaller diameter silk fibres with unique water adhesion properties
\Omega-deformation of B-twisted gauge theories and the 3d-3d correspondence
We study \Omega-deformation of B-twisted gauge theories in two dimensions. As
an application, we construct an \Omega-deformed, topologically twisted
five-dimensional maximally supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory on the product of a
Riemann surface and a three-manifold , and show that when
is a disk, this theory is equivalent to analytically continued Chern-Simons
theory on . Based on these results, we establish a correspondence between
three-dimensional superconformal theories and analytically
continued Chern-Simons theory. Furthermore, we argue that there is a mirror
symmetry between {\Omega}-deformed two-dimensional theories.Comment: 26 pages. v2: the discussion on the boundary condition for vector
multiplet improved, and other minor changes mad
Continuity properties of measurable group cohomology
A version of group cohomology for locally compact groups and Polish modules
has previously been developed using a bar resolution restricted to measurable
cochains. That theory was shown to enjoy analogs of most of the standard
algebraic properties of group cohomology, but various analytic features of
those cohomology groups were only partially understood.
This paper re-examines some of those issues. At its heart is a simple
dimension-shifting argument which enables one to `regularize' measurable
cocycles, leading to some simplifications in the description of the cohomology
groups. A range of consequences are then derived from this argument.
First, we prove that for target modules that are Fr\'echet spaces, the
cohomology groups agree with those defined using continuous cocycles, and hence
they vanish in positive degrees when the acting group is compact. Using this,
we then show that for Fr\'echet, discrete or toral modules the cohomology
groups are continuous under forming inverse limits of compact base groups, and
also under forming direct limits of discrete target modules.
Lastly, these results together enable us to establish various circumstances
under which the measurable-cochains cohomology groups coincide with others
defined using sheaves on a semi-simplicial space associated to the underlying
group, or sheaves on a classifying space for that group. We also prove in some
cases that the natural quotient topologies on the measurable-cochains
cohomology groups are Hausdorff.Comment: 52 pages. [Nov 22, 2011:] Major re-write with Calvin C. Moore as new
co-author. Results from previous version strengthened and several new results
added. [Nov 25, 2012:] Final version now available at springerlink.co
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