Factors of subjective heat stress of urban citizens in contexts of everyday life

Heat waves and the consequent heat stress of urban populations have a growing relevance in urban risk management and strategies of urban adaptation to climate change. In this context, social science studies on subjective heat stress of urban citizens are a new emerging field. To contribute to the understanding of subjective heat stress and its major determinants in a daily life perspective, we conducted a questionnaire survey with 323 respondents in Karlsruhe, Germany, after a heat wave in July and August 2013. Statistical data analysis showed that heat stress is an issue permeating everyday activities. It was found that the subjective heat stress at home is lower than at work and in general. Subjective heat stress in general, at home, and at work was determined by the health impairments experienced during the heat and the feeling of being helplessly exposed to the heat. For heat stress at home, additionally characteristics of the residential building and the built environment played a role. Although the rate of implemented coping measures was rather high, coping measures showed no uniform effect for the subjective heat stress. The results furthermore show that coping with heat is performed within the scopes of action in daily life. We conclude that in terms of urban adaptation strategies, further research is needed to understand how various processes of daily social (work) life enable or limit individual coping and adaptation capacities and that communication strategies are important for building capacities to better cope with future heat waves

A mean-field kinetic lattice gas model of electrochemical cells

We develop Electrochemical Mean-Field Kinetic Equations (EMFKE) to simulate electrochemical cells. We start from a microscopic lattice-gas model with charged particles, and build mean-field kinetic equations following the lines of earlier work for neutral particles. We include the Poisson equation to account for the influence of the electric field on ion migration, and oxido-reduction processes on the electrode surfaces to allow for growth and dissolution. We confirm the viability of our approach by simulating (i) the electrochemical equilibrium at flat electrodes, which displays the correct charged double-layer, (ii) the growth kinetics of one-dimensional electrochemical cells during growth and dissolution, and (iii) electrochemical dendrites in two dimensions.Comment: 14 pages twocolumn, 17 figure

Phase field theory of polycrystalline solidification in three dimensions

A phase field theory of polycrystalline solidification is presented that is able to describe the nucleation and growth of anisotropic particles with different crystallographic orientation in three dimensions. As opposed with the two-dimensional case, where a single orientation field suffices, in three dimensions, minimum three fields are needed. The free energy of grain boundaries is assumed to be proportional to the angular difference between the adjacent crystals expressed here in terms of the differences of the four symmetric Euler parameters. The equations of motion for these fields are obtained from variational principles. Illustrative calculations are performed for polycrystalline solidification with dendritic, needle and spherulitic growth morphologies.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Europhysics Letters on 14th February, 200

Population dynamics of Agrobacterium vitis in two grapevine varieties during the vegetation period

In this work populations of Agrobacterium vitis were monitored within one year. Starting in the middle of May, the population density of A. vitis was screened every week in all parts of two-year-old Müller-Thurgau and Riesling grapevines which were freed from A. vitis by thermotherapy and inoculated with A. vitis NW90. Every week, 5 plants of the two varieties were examined for A. vitis in new shoots, around the inoculation site, in one- and two-year-old parts of the stem, in the rootstock and in the roots. Beyond the inoculation site the A. vitis population density was too low for statistical evaluation of population dynamics. At the inoculation site a seasonal course of the A. vitis population was found in both grapevine varieties. The A. vitis population density was highest at the end of May, but little later it dropped to a low level during the sommer months. A second maximum of population density was determined in October which reached nearly the same value as in spring. Population density of A. vitis correlated to physiological changes of the grapevine plant during the vegetation period. Though the population dynamics of A. vitis followed parallel courses in both grapevine varieties, differences in the population density and in the onset of the autumn increase were determined. This could be attributed to physiological differences of the two varieties. The migration of pathogenic bacteria from the inoculation site to the roots took at least 15 weeks

Phase-Field Formulation for Quantitative Modeling of Alloy Solidification

A phase-field formulation is introduced to simulate quantitatively microstructural pattern formation in alloys. The thin-interface limit of this formulation yields a much less stringent restriction on the choice of interface thickness than previous formulations and permits to eliminate non-equilibrium effects at the interface. Dendrite growth simulations with vanishing solid diffusivity show that both the interface evolution and the solute profile in the solid are well resolved

Phase-Field Approach for Faceted Solidification

We extend the phase-field approach to model the solidification of faceted materials. Our approach consists of using an approximate gamma-plot with rounded cusps that can approach arbitrarily closely the true gamma-plot with sharp cusps that correspond to faceted orientations. The phase-field equations are solved in the thin-interface limit with local equilibrium at the solid-liquid interface [A. Karma and W.-J. Rappel, Phys. Rev. E53, R3017 (1996)]. The convergence of our approach is first demonstrated for equilibrium shapes. The growth of faceted needle crystals in an undercooled melt is then studied as a function of undercooling and the cusp amplitude delta for a gamma-plot of the form 1+delta(|sin(theta)|+|cos(theta)|). The phase-field results are consistent with the scaling law "Lambda inversely proportional to the square root of V" observed experimentally, where Lambda is the facet length and V is the growth rate. In addition, the variation of V and Lambda with delta is found to be reasonably well predicted by an approximate sharp-interface analytical theory that includes capillary effects and assumes circular and parabolic forms for the front and trailing rough parts of the needle crystal, respectively.Comment: 1O pages, 2 tables, 17 figure

Resonant forcing of select degrees of freedom of multidimensional chaotic map dynamics

We study resonances of multidimensional chaotic map dynamics. We use the calculus of variations to determine the additive forcing function that induces the largest response, that is, the greatest deviation from the unperturbed dynamics. We include the additional constraint that only select degrees of freedom be forced, corresponding to a very general class of problems in which not all of the degrees of freedom in an experimental system are accessible to forcing. We find that certain Lagrange multipliers take on a fundamental physical role as the efficiency of the forcing function and the effective forcing experienced by the degrees of freedom which are not forced directly. Furthermore, we find that the product of the displacement of nearby trajectories and the effective total forcing function is a conserved quantity. We demonstrate the efficacy of this methodology with several examples.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Towards a quantitative phase-field model of two-phase solidification

We construct a diffuse-interface model of two-phase solidification that quantitatively reproduces the classic free boundary problem on solid-liquid interfaces in the thin-interface limit. Convergence tests and comparisons with boundary integral simulations of eutectic growth show good accuracy for steady-state lamellae, but the results for limit cycles depend on the interface thickness through the trijunction behavior. This raises the fundamental issue of diffuse multiple-junction dynamics.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Better final discussion. 1 reference adde

Investigation of superstorm Sandy 2012 in a multi-disciplinary approach

At the end of October 2012, Hurricane Sandy moved from the Caribbean Sea into the Atlantic Ocean and entered the United States not far from New York. Along its track, Sandy caused more than 200 fatalities and severe losses in Jamaica, The Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, and the US. This paper demonstrates the capability and potential for near-real-time analysis of catastrophes. It is shown that the impact of Sandy was driven by the superposition of different extremes (high wind speeds, storm surge, heavy precipitation) and by cascading effects. In particular the interaction between Sandy and an extra-tropical weather system created a huge storm that affected large areas in the US. It is examined how Sandy compares to historic hurricane events, both from a hydro-meteorological and impact perspective. The distribution of losses to different sectors of the economy is calculated with simple input-output models as well as government estimates. Direct economic losses are estimated about USD 4.2 billion in the Caribbean and between USD 78 and 97 billion in the US. Indirect economic losses from power outages is estimated in the order of USD 16.3 billion. Modelling sector-specific dependencies quantifies total business interruption losses between USD 10.8 and 15.5 billion. Thus, seven years after the record impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Hurricane Sandy is the second costliest hurricane in the history of the United States

Multiscale Random-Walk Algorithm for Simulating Interfacial Pattern Formation

We present a novel computational method to simulate accurately a wide range of interfacial patterns whose growth is limited by a large scale diffusion field. To illustrate the computational power of this method, we demonstrate that it can be used to simulate three-dimensional dendritic growth in a previously unreachable range of low undercoolings that is of direct experimental relevance.Comment: 4 pages RevTex, 6 eps figures; substantial changes in presentation, but results and conclusions remain the sam