469 research outputs found
Scaling in Fracture and Refreezing of Sea Ice
Sea ice breaks up and regenerates rapidly during winter conditions in the
Arctic. Analyzing satellite data from the Kara Sea, we find that the average
ice floe size depends on weather conditions. Nevertheless, the frequency of
floes of size is a power law, , where ,
for less than approximately 100 . This scale-invariant behaviour
suggests a competition between fracture due to strains in the ice field and
refreezing of the fractures. A cellular model for this process gives results
consistent with observations.Comment: Physica A (in press
Recurrence and Polya number of general one-dimensional random walks
The recurrence properties of random walks can be characterized by P\'{o}lya
number, i.e., the probability that the walker has returned to the origin at
least once. In this paper, we consider recurrence properties for a general 1D
random walk on a line, in which at each time step the walker can move to the
left or right with probabilities and , or remain at the same position
with probability (). We calculate P\'{o}lya number of this
model and find a simple expression for as, , where is
the absolute difference of and (). We prove this rigorous
expression by the method of creative telescoping, and our result suggests that
the walk is recurrent if and only if the left-moving probability equals to
the right-moving probability .Comment: 3 page short pape
Didactic Software for Autistic Children
In this paper we describe the aims and requirements of a project devoted to designing and developing Open Source didactic Software (SW) for children in the autism disorder spectrum, conforming to the Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) learning technique. In this context, participatory design with therapists and child?s parents is necessary to ensure a usable product that responds to these children?s special needs and respects education principles and constraints of the ABA methodology
Application of the Analytic Hierarchy Process to Riparian Revegetation Policy Options
While riparian vegetation can play a major role in protecting land, water and natural habitat in catchments, there are high costs associated with tree planting and establishment and in diverting land from cropping. The distribution of costs and benefits of riparian revegetation creates conflicts in the objectives of various stakeholder groups, and elicitation of importance weights of objectives and determination of rankings of a number of policy options by these stakeholder groups becomes critical in decision-making. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a multicriteria analysis technique that provides an appropriate tool to accommodate the conflicting views of various stakeholder groups. The AHP allows the users to assess the relative importance of multiple criteria (or multiple alternatives against a given criterion) in an intuitive manner. This paper presents an application of AHP to obtain preference weights of environmental, social and economic objectives which have been used in ranking riparian revegetation policy options in a small catchment (watershed) in north Queensland, Australia. The preference weights towards environmental, economic and social objectives have been obtained for the various stakeholder groups (landholders, representatives of local sugar mill staff, environmentalists, recreational fishers and the local community). The AHP technique has proved useful in eliciting objectives and ranking policy options as well as in checking for consistency of the statements of stakeholder groups. Implementation of this approach requires a complex data elicitation process
Summer CO2 evasion from streams and rivers in the Kolyma River basin, north-east Siberia
Inland water systems are generally supersaturated in carbon dioxide (CO2) and are increasingly recognized as playing an important role in the global carbon cycle. The Arctic may be particularly important in this respect, given the abundance of inland waters and carbon contained in Arctic soils; however, a lack of trace gas measurements from small streams in the Arctic currently limits this understanding.We investigated the spatial variability of CO2 evasion during the summer low-flow period from streams and rivers in the northern portion of the Kolyma River basin in north-eastern Siberia. To this end, partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and gas exchange velocities (k) were measured at a diverse set of streams and rivers to calculate CO2 evasion fluxes.
We combined these CO2 evasion estimates with satellite remote sensing and geographic information system techniques to calculate total areal CO2 emissions. Our results show that small streams are substantial sources of atmospheric CO2 owing to high pCO2 and k, despite being a small portion of total inland water surface area. In contrast, large rivers were generally near equilibrium with atmospheric CO2. Extrapolating our findings across the Panteleikha-Ambolikha sub-watersheds demonstrated that small streams play a major role in CO2 evasion, accounting for 86% of the total summer CO2 emissions from inland waters within these two sub-watersheds. Further expansion of these regional CO2 emission estimates across time and space will be critical to accurately quantify and understand the role of Arctic streams and rivers in the global carbon budget
Semiclassical Theory of Coulomb Blockade Peak Heights in Chaotic Quantum Dots
We develop a semiclassical theory of Coulomb blockade peak heights in chaotic
quantum dots. Using Berry's conjecture, we calculate the peak height
distributions and the correlation functions. We demonstrate that the
corrections to the corresponding results of the standard statistical theory are
non-universal and can be expressed in terms of the classical periodic orbits of
the dot that are well coupled to the leads. The main effect is an oscillatory
dependence of the peak heights on any parameter which is varied; it is
substantial for both symmetric and asymmetric lead placement. Surprisingly,
these dynamical effects do not influence the full distribution of peak heights,
but are clearly seen in the correlation function or power spectrum. For
non-zero temperature, the correlation function obtained theoretically is in
good agreement with that measured experimentally.Comment: 5 color eps figure
Boundary friction characterisation of a used cylinder liner subject to fired engine conditions and surface deposition
In cylinder friction contributes as a primary source of parasitic dissipations in IC engines. For future engines to become more efficient, with enhanced fuel economy and increased power output, accurate prediction of new designs is required over the full lifetime of an engine. The work carried out presents use of a local pressure coefficient of boundary shear strength of asperities value, taking into account the localised effects of surface texture, coating and surface deposition. XPS spectra analysis was also carried out to identify the surface depositions as a result of combustion, not previously taken into account during piston ring pack simulation. Friction was shown by simulation to drop by up to 30% between the compression and combustion stroke as a result of using a carriable coefficient of boundary shear strength of asperities. It was found that piston varnish on the liner corresponded to higher values of the pressure coefficient of boundary shear strength of asperities, therefore showing the importance of using real system components run under representative operating conditions or numerical analyses
Measurement of the Charged Multiplicities in b, c and Light Quark Events from Z0 Decays
Average charged multiplicities have been measured separately in , and
light quark () events from decays measured in the SLD experiment.
Impact parameters of charged tracks were used to select enriched samples of
and light quark events, and reconstructed charmed mesons were used to select
quark events. We measured the charged multiplicities:
,
, from
which we derived the differences between the total average charged
multiplicities of or quark events and light quark events: and . We compared
these measurements with those at lower center-of-mass energies and with
perturbative QCD predictions. These combined results are in agreement with the
QCD expectations and disfavor the hypothesis of flavor-independent
fragmentation.Comment: 19 pages LaTex, 4 EPS figures, to appear in Physics Letters
Detector Description and Performance for the First Coincidence Observations between LIGO and GEO
For 17 days in August and September 2002, the LIGO and GEO interferometer
gravitational wave detectors were operated in coincidence to produce their
first data for scientific analysis. Although the detectors were still far from
their design sensitivity levels, the data can be used to place better upper
limits on the flux of gravitational waves incident on the earth than previous
direct measurements. This paper describes the instruments and the data in some
detail, as a companion to analysis papers based on the first data.Comment: 41 pages, 9 figures 17 Sept 03: author list amended, minor editorial
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