782 research outputs found

    Guidance, flight mechanics and trajectory optimization. Volume 11 - Guidance equations for orbital operations

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    Mathematical formulation of guidance equations and solutions for orbital space mission

    Insights and guidance for offshore CO2 storage monitoring based on the QICS, ETI MMV, and STEMM-CCS projects

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    Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a collective term for technologies that allow society to unlock the benefits of energy intensive processes like fertiliser production and combustion of fuels (fossil or biologically sourced) without releasing the CO2 to the atmosphere. Hence, CCS could assist in accelerating decarbonisation while society pursues a just energy transition. This paper aims to summarise the learnings of three research projects that all investigated aspects of marine monitoring for CCS from a CO2 storage operator’s perspective. The QICS (Quantifying and Monitoring Potential Ecosystem Impacts of Geological Carbon Storage), ETI MMV (Energy Technologies Institute Measurement, Monitoring and Verification of CO2 Storage), and STEMM-CCS (Strategies for Environmental Monitoring of Marine CCS) projects collectively represent over twelve years of dedicated research to assess environmental impacts and to develop technologies for detection, location, and quantification of potential leakage from offshore geological storage of CO2. Each project used controlled releases in representative environments to test their methods and technologies. QICS as the first of the three projects, focused on the understanding of sensitivities of the UK marine environment to a potential leak from a CO2 storage complex and tested technologies to detect such emissions. The ETI MMV project brought together research and industry partners to develop and sea trial an operational, integrated and cost-effective marine monitoring system for geological CO2 storage. As a commercial project, these results have never been published before and this paper shares for the first-time insights from this work. In February 2020, STEMM-CCS, completed its quest to test techniques for environmental monitoring over a marine CO2 storage site in the UK North Sea, further improved near seabed leakage characterisation capabilities, and delivered a first marine CCS demonstration level ecological baseline. This paper aims to summarise some of the key insights from the three projects and provides references where available for the interested reader. The key finding of all three projects is that the impacts of small to medium CO2 leakages from large-scale storage are limited and localised. Technology capabilities exist for integrated marine CO2 storage monitoring and their performance has been benchmarked at controlled release trials. Even small leakages of 10− 50 L/min can be detected at unknown locations in a large area of interest. Finally, the first important steps towards automated monitoring data analysis have been made, including automated leakage signal detection from Side Scan Sonar data (ETI MMV project) and automated species identification from marine biology images (STEMM-CCS project). Some remaining challenges include missed/ false alerts because of large variations in the background signal, the cost of monitoring large areas over long periods, and making real-time decisions based on big data. Continued work to reduce the cost of marine monitoring technologies and advancing automation of data processing and analysis will be important in order to support safe and efficient offshore CCS deployment at large scale

    The Responsibility to Protect and International Law: Moral, Legal and Practical Perspectives on Kosovo, Libya, and Syria

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    Humanitarian intervention has long been a secondary or tertiary concern in a security driven international system. Since NATO\u27s intervention during the Kosovo crisis in 1999 there have been significant developments in both the language and form of humanitarian intervention as a matter of international law. The events in Kosovo sparked debate about how to handle humanitarian crisis in the future and thus humanitarian intervention evolved into a redefinition of sovereignty as responsibility and the Responsibility to Protect. The Responsibility to Protect has had a number of opportunities to continue to evolve and assert itself in an international legal context throughout the ensuing years since the Kosovo intervention. The purpose of this research is to explore the moral, legal and practical implications of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. Classical and contemporary theories of international relations and moral philosophy are applied in the context of the Responsibility to Protect and its effect upon the international system and specific states to cultivate a sense of the development of the norm and different actors\u27 attitudes towards it. A literature review is conducted to show the practical and conceptual issues inherent in the framework of the Responsibility to Protect. The norm is then applied to the cases of Kosovo, Libya, and Syria to assess its effect in practice and determine its origins. The analysis of these case studies leads to a number of conclusions regarding its effectiveness and future application. The case studies chosen for this research are Kosovo, Libya, and Syria. The case of Kosovo helps to establish a humanitarian intervention framework, the need for redefinition, and the beginning of the Responsibility to Protect. Libya shows the first strong case for the positive application of the Responsibility to Protect in a practical sense. The non-intervention in Syria shows the difficult political issues involved in intervention and presents uncertainty as to the positive develop of the norm. These cases clearly show the myriad of practical challenges to RtoP that are borne out the theoretical, moral issues embedded in its philosophy. The conclusion drawn from the literature review and subsequent case studies is that the current efforts to assert the Responsibility to Protect are aimed at the wrong areas of international law and states, and that the norm is not developing positively in a linear pattern. To successfully promote its acceptance the Responsibility to Protect must build institutional linkages to make intervention more cost effective, exercise the regional options available to promote and ensure the legitimacy of intervention, and assure the acceptance of RtoP by the major powers in the Security Council

    Chebyshev polynomial filtered subspace iteration in the Discontinuous Galerkin method for large-scale electronic structure calculations

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    The Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) electronic structure method employs an adaptive local basis (ALB) set to solve the Kohn-Sham equations of density functional theory (DFT) in a discontinuous Galerkin framework. The adaptive local basis is generated on-the-fly to capture the local material physics, and can systematically attain chemical accuracy with only a few tens of degrees of freedom per atom. A central issue for large-scale calculations, however, is the computation of the electron density (and subsequently, ground state properties) from the discretized Hamiltonian in an efficient and scalable manner. We show in this work how Chebyshev polynomial filtered subspace iteration (CheFSI) can be used to address this issue and push the envelope in large-scale materials simulations in a discontinuous Galerkin framework. We describe how the subspace filtering steps can be performed in an efficient and scalable manner using a two-dimensional parallelization scheme, thanks to the orthogonality of the DG basis set and block-sparse structure of the DG Hamiltonian matrix. The on-the-fly nature of the ALBs requires additional care in carrying out the subspace iterations. We demonstrate the parallel scalability of the DG-CheFSI approach in calculations of large-scale two-dimensional graphene sheets and bulk three-dimensional lithium-ion electrolyte systems. Employing 55,296 computational cores, the time per self-consistent field iteration for a sample of the bulk 3D electrolyte containing 8,586 atoms is 90 seconds, and the time for a graphene sheet containing 11,520 atoms is 75 seconds.Comment: Submitted to The Journal of Chemical Physic

    A Density Matrix-based Algorithm for Solving Eigenvalue Problems

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    A new numerical algorithm for solving the symmetric eigenvalue problem is presented. The technique deviates fundamentally from the traditional Krylov subspace iteration based techniques (Arnoldi and Lanczos algorithms) or other Davidson-Jacobi techniques, and takes its inspiration from the contour integration and density matrix representation in quantum mechanics. It will be shown that this new algorithm - named FEAST - exhibits high efficiency, robustness, accuracy and scalability on parallel architectures. Examples from electronic structure calculations of Carbon nanotubes (CNT) are presented, and numerical performances and capabilities are discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figure

    Radiation effects in Zr and Hf containing garnets

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    Garnets have been considered as host phases for the safe immobilisation of high-level nuclear waste, as they have been shown to accommodate a wide range of elements across three different cation sites, such as Ca, Y, Mn on the a-site, Fe, Al, U, Zr, and Ti on the b-site, and Si, Fe, Al on the c-site. Garnets, due to their ability to have variable composition, make ideal model materials for the examination of radiation damage and recovery in nuclear materials, including as potential waste forms. Kimzeyite, Ca3Zr2FeAlSiO12, has been shown naturally to contain up to 30 wt% Zr, and has previously been examined to elucidate both the structure and ordering within the lattice. This study examines the effects of radiation damage and recovery using in-situ ion beam irradiation with 1 MeV Kr ions at the IVEM-TANDEM facility, Argonne National Laboratory. The complementary Hf containing system Ca3Hf2FeAlSiO12 was also examined, and found to have a different response to irradiation damage. A sample of irradiated Ca3Zr2FeAlSiO12, at 1000 K, was characterised using aberration corrected (S)TEM and found to contain discreet, nano-sized, crystalline Fe rich particles, indicating a competing process during recovery is occurring

    Design and performance of ropes for climbing and sailing

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    Ropes are an important part of the equipment used by climbers, mountaineers, and sailors. On first inspection, most modern polymer ropes appear similar, and it might be assumed that their designs, construction, and properties are governed by the same requirements. In reality, the properties required of climbing ropes are dominated by the requirement that they effectively absorb and dissipate the energy of the falling climber, in a manner that it does not transmit more than a critical amount of force to his body. This requirement is met by the use of ropes with relatively low longitudinal stiffness. In contrast, most sailing ropes require high stiffness values to maximize their effectiveness and enable sailors to control sails and equipment precisely. These conflicting requirements led to the use of different classes of materials and different construction methods for the two sports. This paper reviews in detail the use of ropes, the properties required, manufacturing techniques and materials utilized, and the effect of service conditions on the performance of ropes. A survey of research that has been carried out in the field reveals what progress has been made in the development of these essential components and identifies where further work may yield benefits in the future

    The effect of intellectual ability on functional activation in a neurodevelopmental disorder: preliminary evidence from multiple fMRI studies in Williams syndrome

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    BACKGROUND: Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder caused by the deletion of approximately 25 genes at 7q11.23 that involves mild to moderate intellectual disability (ID). When using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to compare individuals with ID to typically developing individuals, there is a possibility that differences in IQ contribute to between-group differences in BOLD signal. If IQ is correlated with BOLD signal, then group-level analyses should adjust for IQ, or else IQ should be matched between groups. If, however, IQ is not correlated with BOLD signal, no such adjustment or criteria for matching (and exclusion) based on IQ is necessary. METHODS: In this study, we aimed to test this hypothesis systematically using four extant fMRI datasets in WS. Participants included 29 adult subjects with WS (17 men) demonstrating a wide range of standardized IQ scores (composite IQ mean = 67, SD = 17.2). We extracted average BOLD activation for both cognitive and task-specific anatomically defined regions of interest (ROIs) in each individual and correlated BOLD with composite IQ scores, verbal IQ scores and non-verbal IQ scores in Spearman rank correlation tests. RESULTS: Of the 312 correlations performed, only six correlations (2%) in four ROIs reached statistical significance at a P value < 0.01, but none survived correction for multiple testing. All six correlations were positive. Therefore, none supports the hypothesis that IQ is negatively correlated with BOLD response. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that the inclusion of subjects with below normal IQ does not introduce a confounding factor, at least for some types of fMRI studies with low cognitive load. By including subjects who are representative of IQ range for the targeted disorder, findings are more likely to generalize to that population

    Semicrystalline Polymer Micro/Nanostructures Formed by Droplet Evaporation of Aqueous Poly(ethylene oxide) Solutions: Effect of Solution Concentration

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    [Image: see text] Deposits formed after evaporation of sessile droplets, containing aqueous solutions of poly(ethylene oxide), on hydrophilic glass substrates were studied experimentally and mathematically as a function of the initial solution concentration. The macrostructure and micro/nanostructures of deposits were studied using stereo microscopy and atomic force microscopy. A model, based on thin-film lubrication theory, was developed to evaluate the deposit macrostructure by estimating the droplet final height. Moreover, the model was extended to evaluate the micro/nanostructure of deposits by estimating the rate of supersaturation development in connection with the driving force of crystallization. Previous studies had only described the macrostructure of poly(ethylene oxide) deposits formed after droplet evaporation, whereas the focus of our study was the deposit micro/nanostructures. Our atomic force microscopy study showed that regions close to the deposit periphery were composed of predominantly semicrystalline micro/nanostructures in the form of out-of-plane lamellae, which require a high driving force of crystallization. However, deposit central areas presented semicrystalline micro/nanostructures in the form of in-plane terraces and spirals, which require a lower driving force of crystallization. Increasing the initial concentration of solutions led to an increase in the lengths and thicknesses of the out-of-plane lamellae at the deposits’ periphery and enhanced the tendency to form spirals in the central areas. Our numerical study suggested that the rate of supersaturation development and thus the driving force of crystallization increased from the center toward the periphery of droplets, and the supersaturation rate was lower for solutions with higher initial concentrations at each radius. Therefore, periphery areas of droplets with lower initial concentrations were suitable for the formation of micro/nanostructures which require higher driving forces, whereas central areas of droplets with higher initial concentration were desirable for the formation of micro/nanostructures which require lower driving forces. These numerical results were in good qualitative agreement with the experimental findings
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