2,144 research outputs found
The Relationship between Principal Leadership Behaviors and School Climate
The No Child Left Behind Act (2001) revised the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 by making substantial modifications in the major federal programs that support schools‘ efforts to educate all children (U.S. Department of Education, Office of the Deputy Secretary, 2004). Since the inception of this law, demand for greater accountability for student achievement from politicians and legislators has increased exponentially (Carnoy, Elmore, & Siskin, 2003). Strict accountability measures, developed and implemented with limited if any consent or involvement of educators, were imposed on students, teachers, schools, and school districts (Waite, Boone, & NcGgee, 2001). The increased emphasis on accountability heightened the demands on teachers and administrators more than ever before in the history of education in the United States (Carnoy et al., 2003). As increased accountability became the norm, school leadership became more challenging and demanding in order to achieve the newly stipulated accountability (Salazar, 2008)
Optimizing stellarators for large flows
Plasma flow is damped in stellarators because they are not intrinsically
ambipolar, unlike tokamaks, in which the flux-surface averaged radial electric
current vanishes for any value of the radial electric field. Only
quasisymmetric stellarators are intrinsically ambipolar, but exact
quasisymmetry is impossible to achieve in non-axisymmetric toroidal
configurations. By calculating the violation of intrinsic ambipolarity due to
deviations from quasisymmetry, one can derive criteria to assess when a
stellarator can be considered quasisymmetric in practice, i.e. when the flow
damping is weak enough. Let us denote by a small parameter that
controls the size of a perturbation to an exactly quasisymmetric magnetic
field. Recently, it has been shown that if the gradient of the perturbation is
sufficiently small, the flux-surface averaged radial electric current scales as
for any value of the collisionality. It was also argued that when
the gradient of the perturbation is large, the quadratic scaling is replaced by
a more unfavorable one. In this paper, perturbations with large gradients are
rigorously treated. In particular, it is proven that for low collisionality a
perturbation with large gradient yields, at best, an deviation
from quasisymmetry. Heuristic estimations in the literature incorrectly
predicted an deviation.Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Plasma Physics and Controlled
Fusio
Flow damping in stellarators close to quasisymmetry
Quasisymmetric stellarators are a type of optimized stellarators for which
flows are undamped to lowest order in an expansion in the normalized Larmor
radius. However, perfect quasisymmetry is impossible. Since large flows may be
desirable as a means to reduce turbulent transport, it is important to know
when a stellarator can be considered to be sufficiently close to quasisymmetry.
The answer to this question depends strongly on the size of the spatial
gradients of the deviation from quasisymmetry and on the collisionality regime.
Recently, formal criteria for closeness to quasisymmetry have been derived in a
variety of situations. In particular, the case of deviations with large
gradients was solved in the regime. Denoting by a parameter
that gives the size of the deviation from quasisymmetry, it was proven that
particle fluxes do not scale with , as typically claimed, but
with . It was also shown that ripple wells are not necessarily the main
cause of transport. This paper reviews those works and presents a new result in
another collisionality regime, in which particles trapped in ripple wells are
collisional and the rest are collisionless.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures. To appear in Plasma Physics and Controlled
Fusio
When omnigeneity fails
A generic non-symmetric magnetic field does not confine magnetized charged
particles for long times due to secular magnetic drifts. Stellarator magnetic
fields should be omnigeneous (that is, designed such that the secular drifts
vanish), but perfect omnigeneity is technically impossible. There always are
small deviations from omnigeneity that necessarily have large gradients. The
amplification of the energy flux caused by a deviation of size is
calculated and it is shown that the scaling with of the
amplification factor can be as large as linear. In opposition to common wisdom,
most of the transport is not due to particles trapped in ripple wells, but to
the perturbed motion of particles trapped in the omnigeneous magnetic wells
around their bounce points.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
The effect of tangential drifts on neoclassical transport in stellarators close to omnigeneity
In general, the orbit-averaged radial magnetic drift of trapped particles in
stellarators is non-zero due to the three-dimensional nature of the magnetic
field. Stellarators in which the orbit-averaged radial magnetic drift vanishes
are called omnigeneous, and they exhibit neoclassical transport levels
comparable to those of axisymmetric tokamaks. However, the effect of deviations
from omnigeneity cannot be neglected in practice. For sufficiently low
collision frequencies (below the values that define the regime), the
components of the drifts tangential to the flux surface become relevant. This
article focuses on the study of such collisionality regimes in stellarators
close to omnigeneity when the gradient of the non-omnigeneous perturbation is
small. First, it is proven that closeness to omnigeneity is required to
preserve radial locality in the drift-kinetic equation for collisionalities
below the regime. Then, it is shown that neoclassical transport is
determined by two layers in phase space. One of the layers corresponds to the
regime and the other to the superbanana-plateau regime. The
importance of the superbanana-plateau layer for the calculation of the
tangential electric field is emphasized, as well as the relevance of the latter
for neoclassical transport in the collisionality regimes considered in this
paper. In particular, the tangential electric field is essential for the
emergence of a new subregime of superbanana-plateau transport when the radial
electric field is small. A formula for the ion energy flux that includes the
regime and the superbanana-plateau regime is given. The energy
flux scales with the square of the size of the deviation from omnigeneity.
Finally, it is explained why below a certain collisionality value the
formulation presented in this article ceases to be valid.Comment: 36 pages. Version to be published in Plasma Physics and Controlled
Fusio
Electrostatic potential variations on stellarator magnetic surfaces in low collisionality regimes
The component of the neoclassical electrostatic potential that is
non-constant on the magnetic surface, that we denote by , can
affect radial transport of highly charged impurities, and this has motivated
its inclusion in some modern neoclassical codes. The number of neoclassical
simulations in which is calculated is still scarce, partly
because they are usually demanding in terms of computational resources,
especially at low collisionality. In this paper the size, the scaling with
collisionality and with aspect ratio, and the structure of on
the magnetic surface are analytically derived in the , and
superbanana-plateau regimes of stellarators close to omnigeneity; i. e.
stellarators that have been optimized for neoclassical transport. It is found
that the largest that the neoclassical equations admit scales
linearly with the inverse aspect ratio and with the size of the deviation from
omnigeneity. Using a model for a perturbed omnigeneous configuration, the
analytical results are verified and illustrated with calculations by the code
KNOSOS. The techniques, results and numerical tools employed in this paper can
be applied to neoclassical transport problems in tokamaks with broken
axisymmetry.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figures, 1 table. Published versio
Posada a punt d'un mètode d'anàlisi d'arsènic en lixiviats de minerals i sòls mitjançant fluorescència atòmica
En aquest projecte s’ha posat a punt un mètode d’anàlisi d’As mitjançant fluorescència atòmica. S’han utilitzat mostres sintètiques per a l’obtenció de tots els resultats. Abans de procedir a les etapes d’anàlisi s’ha fet una posada a punt de l’aparell, per comprovar el seu correcte funcionament. En una primera etapa s’han fet anàlisis utilitzant els patrons sintètics d’As (III), trobant rectes de calibratge, límits de detecció, precisió i exactitud i caducitats dels productes. En una segona etapa s’han fet proves utilitzant l’altre patró sintètic de As (V), obtenint una comparativa entre els resultats obtinguts amb l’As (III) i amb l’As (V). En la tercera i ultima etapa s’han realitzat proves addicionals com la contaminació d’As en el blanc de fons, experiments sobre la matriu de la mostra, utilitzant ambdós patrons d’As sintètic, i un últim experiment amb unes barreges d’As (III) amb As (V). Paral·lelament s’han enviat mostres sintètiques preparades a un laboratori extern per analitzar-les mitjançant el mètode ICP-MS i comparar els resultats del mètode de fluorescència amb aquest altre. Com a conclusió s’ha extret que és un mètode molt vàlid per a l’anàlisi d’As, amb uns nivells de precisió, exactitud i sensibilitat notables, amb una productivitat molt elevada. També s’ha extret com a conclusió que les mostres han de contenir un alt percentatge de blanc en la matriu per tal de ser analitzables, fixat a un 80 %, el que comporta una dilució prèvia de les mostres. Finalment s’ha fet un estudi de l’impacte ambiental que té el projecte i un estudi econòmic que inclou el cost d’anàlis
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