Modelling of the radiative properties of an opaque porous ceramic layer

Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) operate at temperatures above 1,100 K where radiation effects can be significant. Therefore, an accurate thermal model of an SOFC requires the inclusion of the contribution of thermal radiation. This implies that the thermal radiative properties of the oxide ceramics used in the design of SOFCs must be known. However, little information can be found in the literature concerning their operating temperatures. On the other hand, several types of ceramics with different chemical compositions and microstructures for designing efficient cells are now being tested. This is a situation where the use of a numerical tool making possible the prediction of the thermal radiative properties of SOFC materials, whatever their chemical composition and microstructure are, may be a decisive help. Using this method, first attempts to predict the radiative properties of a lanthanum nickelate porous layer deposited onto an yttria stabilized zirconium substrate can be reported

Compressive Pattern Matching on Multispectral Data

We introduce a new constrained minimization problem that performs template and pattern detection on a multispectral image in a compressive sensing context. We use an original minimization problem from Guo and Osher that uses $L_1$ minimization techniques to perform template detection in a multispectral image. We first adapt this minimization problem to work with compressive sensing data. Then we extend it to perform pattern detection using a formal transform called the spectralization along a pattern. That extension brings out the problem of measurement reconstruction. We introduce shifted measurements that allow us to reconstruct all the measurement with a small overhead and we give an optimality constraint for simple patterns. We present numerical results showing the performances of the original minimization problem and the compressed ones with different measurement rates and applied on remotely sensed data.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensin

Evaluation of an urban NMHC emission inventory by measurements and impact on CTM results

This paper presents an evaluation of the consistency of an urban state-of-the-art hydrocarbon (HC) emission inventory. The evaluation was conducted through the comparison of this inventory with hourly HC measurements during two summer months in the centre of Marseille, on the Mediterranean French coast. Factors of under or overestimation could be calculated for each compound on the basis of a systematic HC to HC ratio analysis. These results, associated with a deep analysis of the speciation profiles, show that most of the common and highly concentrated hydrocarbons (such as butanes) are too much predominant in the emission speciation, while the heavy and less common species (branched alkanes, substituted aromatics) are under-represented in the inventory. The urban diffuse sources appear here as one critical point of the inventories. The disagreements were shown to have a strong incidence on the representation of the air mass reactivity. In a last step, the identified uncertainties in emissions were implemented in an air-quality model for sensitivity studies. It was shown that the observed biases in the inventory could affect the regional ozone production, with a probable impact on ozone peaks of 2-10 ppbv over the area. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd

Ring Exchange and Phase Separation in the Two-dimensional Boson Hubbard model

We present Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the soft-core bosonic Hubbard model with a ring exchange term K. For values of K which exceed roughly half the on-site repulsion U, the density is a non-monotonic function of the chemical potential, indicating that the system has a tendency to phase separate. This behavior is confirmed by an examination of the density-density structure factor and real space images of the boson configurations. Adding a near-neighbor repulsion can compete with phase separation, but still does not give rise to a stable normal Bose liquid.Comment: 12 pages, 23 figure

Effective algebraic degeneracy

We prove that any nonconstant entire holomorphic curve from the complex line C into a projective algebraic hypersurface X = X^n in P^{n+1}(C) of arbitrary dimension n (at least 2) must be algebraically degenerate provided X is generic if its degree d = deg(X) satisfies the effective lower bound: d larger than or equal to n^{{(n+1)}^{n+5}}

An Exploration of the Culture Care Experiences of Puerto Rican Families with a Child with Special Health Care Needs as Perceived by the Family Caregiver

Advances in medical care have resulted in rising numbers of children living with chronic illness. Nurses care for families with special needs during all aspects of their care from the office visit, the inpatient stay, and in the home. Therefore, nurses need to be highly skilled and sensitive to the families\u27 cultural needs in order to assist with coping and the daily challenges they face. This study explored the culture care experiences of Puerto Rican families with a child with special health care needs as perceived by the family caregiver. This family member is the individual who has the greatest amount of interaction with the health care system and is most intimately involved in the care of the special health care needs child. Interviews with the family caregiver, using a self-developed semi-structured interview guide explored the culture care experiences of the family caregiver. The Culture Care Diversity and Universality Theory guided the study and Leininger\u27s four phases of data collection and analysis was implemented. A sample of 16 general and 8 key informants were interviewed and data was organized and managed using NVIVO 10.0 software. The findings included the identification of 14 categories, and 5 patterns from which emerged the themes of: 1) The family caregiver describes the of burden of care, 2) the family caregiver perceives caring behaviors as attentiveness and respect, and 3) the family caregiver\u27s feelings of responsibility for the child creates fear and uncertainty in their ability to meet the child\u27s needs. The themes indicate that nurses must ensure the development of a trusting, respectful therapeutic relationship with the caregiver and the child in order to promote confidence in the caregiver as well as decrease stress and anxiety levels