3,287 research outputs found
Re-thinking the Legacy 2012: The Olympics as commodity and gift
This paper opens discussion about the nature of Olympic ‘legacy’ and articulates a contradiction in the way ‘legacy’ is conceived - between ’gift’ and ’commodity’ (Mauss 1954).The The paper argues that establishing working definitions and parameters for ‘legacy’ is a difficult task. Defining ‘legacy’ is problematic especially if conceived as an entirely predictable or measurable set of objectives. Indeed, the definition of ‘legacy’ is partly constitutive of the legacy itself, a component of achievements that the city might make. Such a ‘legacy definition’ will become a functional term in the complex planning and evolving conceptions underpinning urban change for some time—if successfully negotiated and if governable. As such, ‘legacy’, and the activities and values entailed to it, can come to provide a catalytic ‘vocabulary of motives’ and a legitimating discourse enabling politicians, communities and their individual representatives to justify investments, evolving strategies and activities connected to and connecting developmental gains in a more or less healthy fashion. It is because of this that legacy and its various meanings come to matter
Off-nadir antenna bias correction using Amazon rain sigma(0) data
The radar response from the Amazon rain forest was studied to determine the suitability of this region for use as a standard target to calibrate a scatterometer like that proposed for the National Oceanic Satellite System (NOSS). Backscattering observations made by the SEASAT Scatterometer System (SASS) showed the Amazon rain forest to be a homogeneous, azimuthally-isotropic, radar target which was insensitive to polarization. The variation with angle of incidence was adequately modeled as scattering coefficient (dB) = a theta b with typical values for the incidence-angle coefficient from 0.07 to 0.15 dB/deg. A small diurnal effect occurs, with measurements at sunrise being 0.5 dB to 1 dB higher than the rest of the day. Maximum-likelihood estimation algorithms presented here permit determination of relative bias and true pointing angle for each beam. Specific implementation of these algorithms for the proposed NOSS scatterometer system is also discussed
Off-nadir antenna bias correction using Amazon rain forest sigma deg data
The radar response from the Amazon rain forest was studied to determine the suitability of this region for use as a standard target to calibrate a scatterometer like that proposed for the National Ocean Satellite System (NOSS). Backscattering observations made by the SEASAT-1 scatterometer system show the Amazon rain forest to be a homogeneous, azimuthally-isotropic, radar target which is insensitive to polarization. The variation with angle of incidence may be adequately modeled as sigma deg (dB) = alpha theta + beta with typical values for the incidence-angle coefficient from 0.07 dB deg to 0.15 dB/deg. A small diurnal effect occurs, with measurements at sunrise being 0.5 dB to 1 dB higher than the rest of the day. Maximum likelihood estimation algorithms are presented which permit determination of relative bias and true pointing angle for each beam. Specific implementation of these algorithms for the proposed NOSS scatterometer system is also discussed
Magnetic Reconnection with Radiative Cooling. I. Optically-Thin Regime
Magnetic reconnection, a fundamental plasma process associated with a rapid
dissipation of magnetic energy, is believed to power many disruptive phenomena
in laboratory plasma devices, the Earth magnetosphere, and the solar corona.
Traditional reconnection research, geared towards these rather tenuous
environments, has justifiably ignored the effects of radiation on the
reconnection process. However, in many reconnecting systems in high-energy
astrophysics (e.g., accretion-disk coronae, relativistic jets, magnetar flares)
and, potentially, in powerful laser plasma and z-pinch experiments, the energy
density is so high that radiation, in particular radiative cooling, may start
to play an important role. This observation motivates the development of a
theory of high-energy-density radiative magnetic reconnection. As a first step
towards this goal, we present in this paper a simple Sweet--Parker-like theory
of non-relativistic resistive-MHD reconnection with strong radiative cooling.
First, we show how, in the absence of a guide magnetic field, intense cooling
leads to a strong compression of the plasma in the reconnection layer,
resulting in a higher reconnection rate. The compression ratio and the layer
temperature are determined by the balance between ohmic heating and radiative
cooling. The lower temperature in the radiatively-cooled layer leads to a
higher Spitzer resistivity and hence to an extra enhancement of the
reconnection rate. We then apply our general theory to several specific
astrophysically important radiative processes (bremsstrahlung, cyclotron, and
inverse-Compton) in the optically thin regime, for both the zero- and
strong-guide-field cases. We derive specific expressions for key reconnection
parameters, including the reconnection rate. We also discuss the limitations
and conditions for applicability of our theory.Comment: 31 pages, 1 figur
Thermal performance of two heat exchangers for thermoelectric generators
Thermal performance of heat exchanger is important for potential application in integrated solar cell/module and
thermoelectric generator (TEG) system. Usually, thermal performance of a heat exchanger for TEGs is analysed
by using a 1D heat conduction theory which ignores the detailed phenomena associated with thermo-hydraulics.
In this paper, thermal and mass transports in two different exchangers are simulated by means of a steady-state,
3D turbulent flow k -e model with a heat conduction module under various flow rates. In order to simulate an
actual working situation of the heat exchangers, hot block with an electric heater is included in the model. TEG
model is simplified by using a 1D heat conduction theory, so its thermal performance is equivalent to a real TEG.
Natural convection effect on the outside surfaces of the computational model is considered. Computational
models and methods used are validated under transient thermal and electrical experimental conditions of a TEG.
It is turned out that the two heat exchangers designed have a better thermal performance compared with an
existing heat exchanger for TEGs, and more importantly, the fin heat exchanger is more compact and has nearly
half temperature rise compared with the tube heat exchanger
Effective dynamics using conditional expectations
The question of coarse-graining is ubiquitous in molecular dynamics. In this
article, we are interested in deriving effective properties for the dynamics of
a coarse-grained variable , where describes the configuration of
the system in a high-dimensional space , and is a smooth function
with value in (typically a reaction coordinate). It is well known that,
given a Boltzmann-Gibbs distribution on , the equilibrium
properties on are completely determined by the free energy. On the
other hand, the question of the effective dynamics on is much more
difficult to address. Starting from an overdamped Langevin equation on , we propose an effective dynamics for using conditional
expectations. Using entropy methods, we give sufficient conditions for the time
marginals of the effective dynamics to be close to the original ones. We check
numerically on some toy examples that these sufficient conditions yield an
effective dynamics which accurately reproduces the residence times in the
potential energy wells. We also discuss the accuracy of the effective dynamics
in a pathwise sense, and the relevance of the free energy to build a
coarse-grained dynamics
A Model for Patchy Reconnection in Three Dimensions
We show, theoretically and via MHD simulations, how a short burst of
reconnection localized in three dimensions on a one-dimensional current sheet
creates a pair of reconnected flux tubes. We focus on the post-reconnection
evolution of these flux tubes, studying their velocities and shapes. We find
that slow-mode shocks propagate along these reconnected flux tubes, releasing
magnetic energy as in steady-state Petschek reconnection. The geometry of these
three-dimensional shocks, however, differs dramatically from the classical
two-dimensional geometry. They propagate along the flux tube legs in four
isolated fronts, whereas in the two-dimensional Petschek model, they form a
continuous, stationary pair of V-shaped fronts.
We find that the cross sections of these reconnected flux tubes appear as
teardrop shaped bundles of flux propagating away from the reconnection site.
Based on this, we argue that the descending coronal voids seen by Yohkoh SXT,
LASCO, and TRACE are reconnected flux tubes descending from a flare site in the
high corona, for example after a coronal mass ejection. In this model, these
flux tubes would then settle into equilibrium in the low corona, forming an
arcade of post-flare coronal loops.Comment: 27 pages plus 16 figure
Searching for Binary Y Dwarfs with the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System (GeMS)
The NASA Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has discovered almost all the known members of the new class of Y-type brown dwarfs. Most of these Y dwarfs have been identified as isolated objects in the field. It is known that binaries with L- and T-type brown dwarf primaries are less prevalent than either M-dwarf or solar-type primaries, they tend to have smaller separations and are more frequently detected in near-equal mass configurations. The binary statistics for Y-type brown dwarfs, however, are sparse, and so it is unclear if the same trends that hold for L- and T-type brown dwarfs also hold for Y-type ones. In addition, the detection of binary companions to very cool Y dwarfs may well be the best means available for discovering even colder objects. We present results for binary properties of a sample of five WISE Y dwarfs with the Gemini Multi-Conjugate Adaptive Optics System. We find no evidence for binary companions in these data, which suggests these systems are not equal-luminosity (or equal-mass) binaries with separations larger than ~0.5–1.9 AU. For equal-mass binaries at an age of 5 Gyr, we find that the binary binding energies ruled out by our observations (i.e., 10^(42) erg) are consistent with those observed in previous studies of hotter ultra-cool dwarfs
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