208 research outputs found
Investigation of lightning direct effects on aircraft materials
Lightning is one of the most unpredictable and destructive forces in nature, and ensuring the protection and safety of aircraft in flight, as well as other modes of airborne transport, when struck by lightning presents a unique set of engineering challenges. In order to progress into a new generation of conductive carbon composites and/or embedded light-weight lightning protection systems, further scientific understanding is required on the mechanisms and impact of lightning on carbon composite aircraft. This paper recalls how modern lightning research has progressed from deducing information from natural lightning events to reproducible and instrumented lightning generators capable of accurate and repeatable experimentation. Results of investigations on how aerospace materials, with and without lightning protection, react when struck by lightning are presented illustrating the extent of damage that could be caused. Furthermore, methods of studying lightning effects, such as mechanical deflection, chemical element interaction, and temperature measurements, are then presented to illustrate the role of lightning experimentation as a means to help support aspects of modelling such as material behavior, aircraft design and potentially flight performance
Human Impacts Flatten Rainforest-Savanna Gradient and Reduce Adaptive Diversity in a Rainforest Bird
Ecological gradients have long been recognized as important regions for diversification and speciation. However, little attention has been paid to the evolutionary consequences or conservation implications of human activities that fundamentally change the environmental features of such gradients. Here we show that recent deforestation in West Africa has homogenized the rainforest-savanna gradient, causing a loss of adaptive phenotypic diversity in a common rainforest bird, the little greenbul (Andropadus virens). Previously, this species was shown to exhibit morphological and song divergence along this gradient in Central Africa. Using satellite-based estimates of forest cover, recent morphological data, and historical data from museum specimens collected prior to widespread deforestation, we show that the gradient has become shallower in West Africa and that A. virens populations there have lost morphological variation in traits important to fitness. In contrast, we find no loss of morphological variation in Central Africa where there has been less deforestation and gradients have remained more intact. While rainforest deforestation is a leading cause of species extinction, the potential of deforestation to flatten gradients and inhibit rainforest diversification has not been previously recognized. More deforestation will likely lead to further flattening of the gradient and loss of diversity, and may limit the ability of species to persist under future environmental conditions
Topographic roughness as a signature of the emergence of bedrock in eroding landscapes
Rock is exposed at the Earth surface when rates of erosion locally exceed
rates of soil production. The thinning of soils and emergence of bedrock has
implications spanning geomorphology, ecology and hydrology. Soil-mantled
hillslopes are typically shaped by diffusion-like sediment transport
processes that act to smooth topography through time, generating the
familiar smooth, convex hillslope profiles that are common in low relief
landscapes. Other processes, however, can roughen the landscape. Bedrock
emergence can produce rough terrain; in this contribution we exploit the
contrast between rough patches of bedrock outcrop and smooth, diffusion-dominated soil to detect bedrock outcrops. Specifically, we demonstrate that
the local variability of surface normal vectors, measured from 1 m resolution
airborne LiDAR data, can be used as a topographic signature to
identify areas within landscapes where rock exposure is present. We then use
this roughness metric to investigate the transition from soil-mantled to
bedrock hillslopes as erosion rates increase in two transient landscapes,
Bald Rock Basin, which drains into the Middle Fork Feather River,
California, and Harrington Creek, a tributary of the Salmon River, Idaho.
Rather than being abrupt, as predicted by traditional soil production
models, in both cases the transition from fully soil-mantled to bedrock
hillslopes is gradual and spatially heterogeneous, with rapidly eroding
hillslopes supporting a patchwork of bedrock and soil that is well
documented by changes in topographic roughness, highlighting the utility of
this metric for testing hypotheses concerning the emergence of bedrock and
adding to a growing body of evidence that indicates the persistence of
partial soil mantles in steep, rapidly eroding landscapes
A novel application of satellite radar data: measuring carbon sequestration and detecting degradation in a community forestry project in Mozambique
Background: It is essential that systems for measuring changes in carbon stocks for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects are accurate, reliable and low cost. Widely used systems involving classifying optical satell
Coverage of high biomass forests by the ESA BIOMASS mission under defense restrictions
The magnitude of the global terrestrial carbon pool and related fluxes to and from the atmosphere are still poorly known. The European Space Agency P-band radar BIOMASS mission will help to reduce this uncertainty by providing unprecedented information on the distribution of forest above-ground biomass (AGB), particularly in the tropics where the gaps are greatest and knowledge is most needed. Mission selection was made in full knowledge of coverage restrictions over Europe, North and Central America imposed by the US Department of Defense Space Objects Tracking Radar (SOTR) stations. Under these restrictions, only 3% of AGB carbon stock coverage is lost in the tropical forest biome, with this biome representing 66% of global AGB carbon stocks in 2005. The loss is more significant in the temperate (72%), boreal (37%) and subtropical (29%) biomes, with these accounting for approximately 12%, 15% and 7%, respectively, of the global forest AGB carbon stocks. In terms of global carbon cycle modelling, there is minimal impact in areas of high AGB density, since mainly lower biomass forests in cooler climates are affected. In addition, most areas affected by the SOTR stations are located in industrialized countries with well-developed national forest inventories, so that extensive information on AGB is already available. Hence the main scientific objectives of the BIOMASS mission are not seriously compromised. Furthermore, several space sensors that can estimate AGB in lower biomass forests are in orbit or planned for launch between now and the launch of BIOMASS in 2021, which will help to fill the gaps in mission coverage
25 years of satellite InSAR monitoring of ground instability and coastal geohazards in the archaeological site of Capo Colonna, Italy
For centuries the promontory of Capo Colonna in Calabria region, southern Italy, experienced land subsidence and coastline retreat to an extent that the archaeological ruins of the ancient Greek sanctuary are currently under threat of cliff failure, toppling and irreversible loss. Gas extraction in nearby wells is a further anthropogenic element to account for at the regional scale. Exploiting an unprecedented satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) time series including ERS-1/2, ENVISAT, TerraSAR-X, COSMO-SkyMed and Sentinel-1A data stacks acquired between 1992 and 2016, this paper presents the first and most complete Interferometric SAR (InSAR) baseline assessment of land subsidence and coastal processes affecting Capo Colonna. We analyse the regional displacement trends, the correlation between vertical displacements with gas extraction volumes, the impact on stability of the archaeological heritage, and the coastal geohazard susceptibility. In the last 25 years, the land has subsided uninterruptedly, with highest annual line-of-sight deformation rates ranging between -15 and -20 mm/year in 2011-2014. The installation of 40 pairs of corner reflectors along the northern coastline and within the archaeological park resulted in an improved imaging capability and higher density of measurement points. This proved to be beneficial for the ground stability assessment of recent archaeological excavations, in an area where field surveying in November 2015 highlighted new events of cliff failure. The conceptual model developed suggests that combining InSAR results, geomorphological assessments and inventorying of wave-storms will contribute to unveil the complexity of coastal geohazards in Capo Colonna. © (2016) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only
Structure of the Vacuum in Nuclear Matter - A Nonperturbative Approach
We compute the vacuum polarisation correction to the binding energy of
nuclear matter in the Walecka model using a nonperturbative approach. We first
study such a contribution as arising from a ground state structure with
baryon-antibaryon condensates. This yields the same results as obtained through
the relativistic Hartree approximation of summing tadpole diagrams for the
baryon propagator. Such a vacuum is then generalized to include quantum effects
from meson fields through scalar-meson condensates. The method is applied to
study properties of nuclear matter and leads to a softer equation of state
giving a lower value of the incompressibility than would be reached without
quantum effects. The density dependent effective sigma mass is also calculated
including such vacuum polarisation effects.Comment: 26 pages including 5 eps files, uses revtex style; PACS number:
21.65.+f,21.30.+
On Kinks and Bound States in the Gross-Neveu Model
We investigate static space dependent \sigx=\lag\bar\psi\psi\rag saddle
point configurations in the two dimensional Gross-Neveu model in the large N
limit. We solve the saddle point condition for \sigx explicitly by employing
supersymmetric quantum mechanics and using simple properties of the diagonal
resolvent of one dimensional Schr\"odinger operators rather than inverse
scattering techniques. The resulting solutions in the sector of unbroken
supersymmetry are the Callan-Coleman-Gross-Zee kink configurations. We thus
provide a direct and clean construction of these kinks. In the sector of broken
supersymmetry we derive the DHN saddle point configurations. Our method of
finding such non-trivial static configurations may be applied also in other two
dimensional field theories.Comment: Revised version. A new section added with derivation of the DHN
static configurations in the sector of broken supersymmetry. Some references
added as well. 25 pp, latex, e-mail [email protected]
Evidence For The Production Of Slow Antiprotonic Hydrogen In Vacuum
We present evidence showing how antiprotonic hydrogen, the quasistable
antiproton-proton (pbar-p) bound system, has been synthesized following the
interaction of antiprotons with the hydrogen molecular ion (H2+) in a nested
Penning trap environment. From a careful analysis of the spatial distributions
of antiproton annihilation events, evidence is presented for antiprotonic
hydrogen production with sub-eV kinetic energies in states around n=70, and
with low angular momenta. The slow antiprotonic hydrogen may be studied using
laser spectroscopic techniques.Comment: 5 pages with 4 figures. Published as Phys. Rev. Letters 97, 153401
(2006), in slightly different for
ATHENA -- First Production of Cold Antihydrogen and Beyond
Atomic systems of antiparticles are the laboratories of choice for tests of
CPT symmetry with antimatter. The ATHENA experiment was the first to report the
production of copious amounts of cold antihydrogen in 2002. This article
reviews some of the insights that have since been gained concerning the
antihydrogen production process as well as the external and internal properties
of the produced anti-atoms. Furthermore, the implications of those results on
future prospects of symmetry tests with antimatter are discussed.Comment: Proc. of the Third Meeting on CPT and Lorentz Symmetry, Bloomington
(Indiana), USA, August 2004, edited by V. A. Kostelecky (World Scientific,
Singapore). 10 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Author affiliations cor
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