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Direct conversion of halogen-containing wastes to borosilicate glass
Glass has become a preferred waste form worldwide for radioactive wastes: however, there are limitations. Halogen-containing wastes can not be converted to glass because halogens form poor-quality waste glasses. Furthermore, halides in glass melters often form second phases that create operating problems. A new waste vitrification process, the Glass Material Oxidation and dissolution System (GMODS), removes these limitations by converting halogen-containing wastes into borosilicate glass and a secondary, clean, sodium-halide stream
Use of Geospatial, Hydrologic, and Geochemical Modeling to Determine the Influence of Wetland-Derived Organic Matter in Coastal Waters in Response to Extreme Weather Events
Flooding from extreme weather events (EWE), such as hurricanes, exports large amounts of dissolved organic matter (DOM) to both estuaries and coastal waters globally. Hydrologic connectivity of wetlands to adjacent river channels during flood events can potentially have a major control on the DOM exported to coastal waters after EWEs. In this study, a geographic information system based flood model was used to: (1) determine the volume of flooded wetlands in a river corridor following Hurricane Matthew in 2016; (2) compute the resulting volume fluxes of DOM to the Neuse River Estuary-Pamlico Sound (NRE-PS), in eastern North Carolina and (3) use the flood model to quantify the wetland contribution to DOM export. The flood model-derived contributions were validated with a Bayesian Monte Carlo mixing model combining measurements of DOM quality: specific UV Absorbance at 254 nm (SUVA254), spectral slope ratio (SR), and stable isotope ratios of dissolved organic carbon (δ13C-DOC). Results indicated that (1) hydrologic connectivity of the freshwater riparian wetlands caused the wetlands to become the primary source of organic matter (OM) that was exported into the NRE-PS after Matthew and (2) this source lingered in these coastal waters in the months after the storm. Thus, in consideration of the pulse-shunt concept, EWE such as Hurricane Matthew cause pulses of DOM from wetlands, which were the primary source of the OM shunted from the terrestrial environment to the estuary and sound. Wetlands constituted ca. 48% of the annual loading of DOC into the NRE and 16% of DOC loading into the PS over a period of 30 days after Hurricane Matthew. Results were consistent with prior studies in this system, and other coastal ecosystems, that attributed a high reactivity of DOM as the underlying reason for large CO2 releases following EWE. Adapting the pulse-shunt concept to estuaries requires the addition of a “processing” step to account for the DOM to CO2 dynamics, thus a new pulse-shunt process is proposed to incorporate coastal waters. Our results suggest that with increasing frequency and intensity of EWE, strengthening of the lateral transfer of DOM from land to ocean will occur and has the potential to greatly impact coastal carbon cycling
Lingering Carbon Cycle Effects of Hurricane Matthew in North Carolina's Coastal Waters
In 2016, Hurricane Matthew accounted for 25% of the annual riverine C loading to the Neuse River Estuary-Pamlico Sound, in eastern North Carolina. Unlike inland watersheds, dissolved organic carbon (DOC) was the dominant component of C flux from this coastal watershed and stable carbon isotope and chromophoric dissolved organic matter evidence indicated the estuary and sound were dominated by wetland-derived terrigenous organic matter sources for several months following the storm. Persistence of wetland-derived DOC enabled its degradation to carbon dioxide (CO2), which was supported by sea-to-air CO2 fluxes measured in the sound weeks after the storm. Under future increasingly extreme weather events such as Hurricane Matthew, and most recently Hurricane Florence (September 2018), degradation of terrestrial DOC in floodwaters could increase flux of CO2 from estuaries and coastal waters to the atmosphere
Extreme weather events modulate processing and export of dissolved organic carbon in the Neuse River Estuary, NC
As the interface between riverine and coastal systems, estuaries play a key role in receiving, transporting, and processing terrestrial organic carbon prior to export to downstream coastal systems. Estuaries can switch from terrestrial organic carbon reactors under low river flow to pipelines under high flow, but it remains unclear how estuarine terrestrial organic carbon processing responds to the full spectrum of discharge conditions, which are bracketed by these high and low discharge events. The amount of terrestrial dissolved organic carbon and colored dissolved organic matter imported, processed, and exported was assessed for riverine discharge events spanning from the 4th to 99th flow quantiles in the Neuse River Estuary, North Carolina, USA using spatially and temporally (July 2015–December 2016) resolved measurements. The extent of dissolved organic matter processing in the estuary under various flow conditions was estimated using a non-steady state box model to calculate estuary-wide terrestrial dissolved organic carbon and colored dissolved organic matter source & sink terms. Under mid-range riverine discharge conditions (4th to 89th flow quantiles), the Neuse River Estuary was a sink for terrestrial dissolved organic carbon, retaining and/or processing (i.e., flocculation; photochemical and microbial degradation) on average ∼29% of terrestrial dissolved organic carbon. Following floods due to extreme precipitation events (99th flow quantile), however, over 99% of the terrestrial dissolved organic carbon loaded from the riverine end-member was exported directly to the downstream coastal system. Following such extreme weather events, the estuary acts as a pipeline for direct export of terrestrial dissolved organic carbon, drastically altering the amount and quality of dissolved organic carbon loaded to downstream coastal systems. This has important implications under future climate scenarios, where extreme weather events are expected to increase
Recent increases of rainfall and flooding from tropical cyclones (TCs) in North Carolina (USA): implications for organic matter and nutrient cycling in coastal watersheds
Coastal North Carolina experienced 36 tropical cyclones (TCs), including three floods of historical significance in the past two decades (Hurricanes Floyd-1999, Matthew-2016 and Florence-2018). These events caused catastrophic flooding and major alterations of water quality, fisheries habitat and ecological conditions of the Albemarle-Pamlico Sound (APS), the second largest estuarine complex in the United States. Continuous rainfall records for coastal NC since 1898 reveal a period of unprecedented high precipitation storm events since the late-1990s. Six of seven of the “wettest” storm events in this > 120-year record occurred in the past two decades, identifying a period of elevated precipitation and flooding associated with recent TCs. We examined storm-related freshwater discharge, carbon (C) and nutrient, i.e., nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) loadings, and evaluated contributions to total annual inputs in the Neuse River Estuary (NRE), a major sub-estuary of the APS. These contributions were highly significant, accounting for > 50% of annual loads depending on antecedent conditions and storm-related flooding. Depending on the magnitude of freshwater discharge, the NRE either acted as a “processor” to partially assimilate and metabolize the loads or acted as a “pipeline” to transport the loads to the APS and coastal Atlantic Ocean. Under base-flow, terrestrial sources dominate riverine carbon. During storm events these carbon sources are enhanced through the inundation and release of carbon from wetlands. These findings show that event-scale discharge plays an important and, at times, predominant role in C, N and P loadings. We appear to have entered a new climatic regime characterized by more frequent extreme precipitation events, with major ramifications for hydrology, cycling of C, N and P, water quality and habitat conditions in estuarine and coastal waters
PYTHIA 6.4 Physics and Manual
The PYTHIA program can be used to generate high-energy-physics `events', i.e.
sets of outgoing particles produced in the interactions between two incoming
particles. The objective is to provide as accurate as possible a representation
of event properties in a wide range of reactions, within and beyond the
Standard Model, with emphasis on those where strong interactions play a role,
directly or indirectly, and therefore multihadronic final states are produced.
The physics is then not understood well enough to give an exact description;
instead the program has to be based on a combination of analytical results and
various QCD-based models. This physics input is summarized here, for areas such
as hard subprocesses, initial- and final-state parton showers, underlying
events and beam remnants, fragmentation and decays, and much more. Furthermore,
extensive information is provided on all program elements: subroutines and
functions, switches and parameters, and particle and process data. This should
allow the user to tailor the generation task to the topics of interest.Comment: 576 pages, no figures, uses JHEP3.cls. The code and further
information may be found on the PYTHIA web page:
http://www.thep.lu.se/~torbjorn/Pythia.html Changes in version 2: Mistakenly
deleted section heading for "Physics Processes" reinserted, affecting section
numbering. Minor updates to take into account referee comments and new colour
reconnection option
Search for supersymmetry with a dominant R-parity violating LQDbar couplings in e+e- collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 130GeV to 172 GeV
A search for pair-production of supersymmetric particles under the assumption
that R-parity is violated via a dominant LQDbar coupling has been performed
using the data collected by ALEPH at centre-of-mass energies of 130-172 GeV.
The observed candidate events in the data are in agreement with the Standard
Model expectation. This result is translated into lower limits on the masses of
charginos, neutralinos, sleptons, sneutrinos and squarks. For instance, for
m_0=500 GeV/c^2 and tan(beta)=sqrt(2) charginos with masses smaller than 81
GeV/c^2 and neutralinos with masses smaller than 29 GeV/c^2 are excluded at the
95% confidence level for any generation structure of the LQDbar coupling.Comment: 32 pages, 30 figure
Search for the glueball candidates f0(1500) and fJ(1710) in gamma gamma collisions
Data taken with the ALEPH detector at LEP1 have been used to search for gamma
gamma production of the glueball candidates f0(1500) and fJ(1710) via their
decay to pi+pi-. No signal is observed and upper limits to the product of gamma
gamma width and pi+pi- branching ratio of the f0(1500) and the fJ(1710) have
been measured to be Gamma_(gamma gamma -> f0(1500)). BR(f0(1500)->pi+pi-) <
0.31 keV and Gamma_(gamma gamma -> fJ(1710)). BR(fJ(1710)->pi+pi-) < 0.55 keV
at 95% confidence level.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure
Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector
A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results
Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS
We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a
significant distance from their production point into a final state containing
charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is
conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV
and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS
detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles
is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We
observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of
supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the
neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino
masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final
version to appear in Physics Letters
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