628 research outputs found
Characterising sand and gravel deposits using electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) : case histories from England and Wales
Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) is a rapidly developing geophysical imaging technique that is now widely
used to visualise subsurface geological structure, groundwater and lithological variations. It is being increasingly used
in environmental and engineering site investigations, but despite its suitability and potential benefits, ERT has yet to
be routinely applied by the minerals industry to sand and gravel deposit assessment and quarry planning. The
principal advantages of ERT for this application are that it is a cost-effective non-invasive method, which can provide
2D or 3D spatial models of the subsurface throughout the full region of interest. This complements intrusive sampling
methods, which typically provide information only at discrete locations. Provided that suitable resistivity contrasts are
present, ERT has the potential to reveal mineral and overburden thickness and quality variations within the body of
the deposit.
Here we present a number of case studies from the UK illustrating the use of 2D and 3D ERT for sand and gravel
deposit investigation in a variety of geological settings. We use these case studies to evaluate the performance of ERT,
and to illustrate good practice in the application of ERT to deposit investigation. We propose an integrated approach
to site investigation and quarry planning incorporating both conventional intrusive methods and ERT
Grassland biodiversity restoration increases resistance of carbon fluxes to drought
Evidence suggests that the restoration of plant diversity in grasslands not only brings benefits for biodiversity conservation, but also the delivery of ecosystem services. While biodiversity-function experiments show that greater plant diversity increases resistance of plant productivity to climate extremes, it is not known whether real-world management options for grassland restoration likewise stabilize ecosystem responses to extreme climate events. We used a long-term (23 year) field experiment in northern England to test the hypothesis that management aimed at biodiversity restoration increases the resistance and recovery of ecosystem carbon (C) fluxes to short-term summer drought. This was tested by measuring plant, soil and microbial responses to a simulated drought in experimental grassland plots where fertilizer application and seed addition have been managed to enhance plant species diversity. The cessation of fertilizer application brought about small increases in plant species richness. Additionally, cessation of fertilizer application reduced overall plant productivity and promoted hemi-parasitic plants at the expense of grasses and forbs. Resistance of CO 2 fluxes to drought, measured as ecosystem respiration, was greater in non-fertilized plots, as lower plant biomass reduced water demand, likely aided by proportionally more hemi-parasitic plants further reducing plant biomass. Additionally, legumes increased under drought, thereby contributing to overall resistance of plant productivity. Recovery of soil microbial C and nitrogen was more rapid after rewetting than soil microbial community composition, irrespective of restoration treatment, suggesting high resilience of soil microbial communities to drought. Synthesis and applications. This study shows that while grassland diversity restoration management increases the resistance of carbon fluxes to drought, it also reduces agricultural yields, revealing a trade-off for land managers. Furthermore legumes, promoted through long-term restoration treatments, can help to maintain plant community productivity under drought by increasing their biomass. As such, grassland management strategies not only have consequences for ecosystem processes, but also the capacity to withstand extreme weather events
Maternal health, pregnancy and birth outcomes for women involved in care proceedings in Wales: a linked data study
Background: Under the Children Act 1989, local authorities in Wales, UK, can issue care proceedings if they are concerned about the welfare of a child, which can lead to removal of a child from parents. For mothers at risk of child removal, timely intervention during pregnancy may avert the need for this and improve maternal/fetal health; however, little is known about this specific population during the antenatal period. The study examined maternity characteristics of mothers whose infants were subject to care proceedings, with the aim of informing preventative interventions targeted at high risk mothers. Methods: Anonymised administrative data from Cafcass Cymru, who provide child-focused advice and support for family court proceedings in Wales, were linked to population-based maternity and health records held within the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank. Linked data were available for 1111 birth mothers of infants involved in care proceedings between 2015 and 2018. Findings were benchmarked with reference to an age-deprivation-matched comparison group (n = 23,414), not subject to care proceedings but accessing maternity services during this period. Demographic characteristics, maternal health, reproductive history, interaction with midwifery services, and pregnancy and birth outcomes were examined. Descriptive and statistical tests of independence were used. Results: Half of the women in the cohort (49.4%) resided in the most deprived areas. They were more likely to be younger at entry to motherhood (63.5% <21 years-of-age compared to 42.7% in the comparison group), to have mental health (28.6% compared to 8.2%) and substance use issues (10.4% compared to 0.6%) and to smoke (62.7% compared to 24.8%) during pregnancy. The majority first engaged with maternity services within their first trimester of pregnancy (63.5% compared to 84.4%). Babies were more likely to be born preterm (14.2% compared to 6.7%) and, for full-term babies, to have low birthweights (8.0% compared to 2.8%). Conclusion: This novel linkage study highlights multiple vulnerabilities experienced by pregnant mothers who have experienced care proceedings concerning an infant. Policy and practice colleagues require a clearer picture of women’s needs if child protection and health services are to offer effective services which prevent the need for family court proceedings and infant removal
Individual differences determine the strength of ecological interactions
Biotic interactions are central to both ecological and evolutionary dynamics. In the vast majority of empirical studies the strength of intraspecific interactions is estimated using simple measures of population size. Biologists have long known that these are crude metrics, with experiments and theory suggesting that interactions between individuals should depend on traits, such as body size. In spite of this, it has been difficult to estimate the impact of traits on competitive ability from ecological field data, and this explains why the strength of biotic interactions has empirically been treated in a simplistic manner. Using long-term observational data from four different populations, we show that large Trinidadian guppies impose a significantly larger competitive pressure on conspecifics than individuals that are smaller; in other words, competition is asymmetric. When we incorporate this asymmetry into integral projection models the predicted size-structure is much closer to what we see in the field compared with models where competition is independent of body size. This difference in size-structure translates into a 2 fold difference in reproductive output. This demonstrates how the nature of ecological interactions drives the size structure which in turn will have important implications for both the ecological and evolutionary dynamics
Metabolic and nutritional support of critically ill patients: consensus and controversies.
The results of recent large-scale clinical trials have led us to review our understanding of the metabolic response to stress and the most appropriate means of managing nutrition in critically ill patients. This review presents an update in this field, identifying and discussing a number of areas for which consensus has been reached and others where controversy remains and presenting areas for future research. We discuss optimal calorie and protein intake, the incidence and management of re-feeding syndrome, the role of gastric residual volume monitoring, the place of supplemental parenteral nutrition when enteral feeding is deemed insufficient, the role of indirect calorimetry, and potential indications for several pharmaconutrients
Universality, the QCD critical/tricritical point and the quark number susceptibility
The quark number susceptibility near the QCD critical end-point (CEP), the
tricritical point (TCP) and the O(4) critical line at finite temperature and
quark chemical potential is investigated. Based on the universality argument
and numerical model calculations we propose a possibility that the hidden
tricritical point strongly affects the critical phenomena around the critical
end-point. We made a semi-quantitative study of the quark number susceptibility
near CEP/TCP for several quark masses on the basis of the
Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis (CJT) potential for QCD in the improved-ladder
approximation. The results show that the susceptibility is enhanced in a wide
region around CEP inside which the critical exponent gradually changes from
that of CEP to that of TCP, indicating a crossover of different universality
classes.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure
Field-Induced Magnetic Ordering in the Quantum Spin System KCuCl
KCuCl is a three-dimensional coupled spin-dimer system and has a singlet
ground state with an excitation gap K. High-field
magnetization measurements for KCuCl have been performed in static magnetic
fields of up to 30 T and in pulsed magnetic fields of up to 60 T. The entire
magnetization curve including the saturation region was obtained at K.
From the analysis of the magnetization curve, it was found that the exchange
parameters determined from the dispersion relations of the magnetic excitations
should be reduced, which suggests the importance of the renormalization effect
in the magnetic excitations. The field-induced magnetic ordering accompanied by
the cusplike minimum of the magnetization was observed as in the isomorphous
compound TlCuCl. The phase boundary was almost independent of the field
direction, and is represented by the power law. These results are consistent
with the magnon Bose-Einstein condensation picture for field-induced magnetic
ordering.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 9 eps files, revtex styl
Condensate cosmology -- dark energy from dark matter
Imagine a scenario in which the dark energy forms via the condensation of
dark matter at some low redshift. The Compton wavelength therefore changes from
small to very large at the transition, unlike quintessence or metamorphosis. We
study CMB, large scale structure, supernova and radio galaxy constraints on
condensation by performing a 4 parameter likelihood analysis over the Hubble
constant and the three parameters associated with Q, the condensate field:
Omega_Q, w_f and z_t (energy density and equation of state today, and redshift
of transition). Condensation roughly interpolates between Lambda CDM (for large
z_t) and sCDM (low z_t) and provides a slightly better fit to the data than
Lambda CDM. We confirm that there is no degeneracy in the CMB between H and z_t
and discuss the implications of late-time transitions for the Lyman-alpha
forest. Finally we discuss the nonlinear phase of both condensation and
metamorphosis, which is much more interesting than in standard quintessence
models.Comment: 13 pages, 13 colour figures. Final version with discussion of TE
cross-correlation spectra for condensation and metamorphosis in light of the
WMAP result
A quantum Monte Carlo study of the one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model
Quantum Monte Carlo methods are used to study a quantum phase transition in a
1D Hubbard model with a staggered ionic potential (D). Using recently
formulated methods, the electronic polarization and localization are determined
directly from the correlated ground state wavefunction and compared to results
of previous work using exact diagonalization and Hartree-Fock. We find that the
model undergoes a thermodynamic transition from a band insulator (BI) to a
broken-symmetry bond ordered (BO) phase as the ratio of U/D is increased. Since
it is known that at D = 0 the usual Hubbard model is a Mott insulator (MI) with
no long-range order, we have searched for a second transition to this state by
(i) increasing U at fixed ionic potential (D) and (ii) decreasing D at fixed U.
We find no transition from the BO to MI state, and we propose that the MI state
in 1D is unstable to bond ordering under the addition of any finite ionic
potential. In real 1D systems the symmetric MI phase is never stable and the
transition is from a symmetric BI phase to a dimerized BO phase, with a
metallic point at the transition
Adjoint "quarks" on coarse anisotropic lattices: Implications for string breaking in full QCD
A detailed study is made of four dimensional SU(2) gauge theory with static
adjoint ``quarks'' in the context of string breaking. A tadpole-improved action
is used to do simulations on lattices with coarse spatial spacings ,
allowing the static potential to be probed at large separations at a
dramatically reduced computational cost. Highly anisotropic lattices are used,
with fine temporal spacings , in order to assess the behavior of the
time-dependent effective potentials. The lattice spacings are determined from
the potentials for quarks in the fundamental representation. Simulations of the
Wilson loop in the adjoint representation are done, and the energies of
magnetic and electric ``gluelumps'' (adjoint quark-gluon bound states) are
calculated, which set the energy scale for string breaking. Correlators of
gauge-fixed static quark propagators, without a connecting string of spatial
links, are analyzed. Correlation functions of gluelump pairs are also
considered; similar correlators have recently been proposed for observing
string breaking in full QCD and other models. A thorough discussion of the
relevance of Wilson loops over other operators for studies of string breaking
is presented, using the simulation results presented here to support a number
of new arguments.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figure
- …