30 research outputs found
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Northern Eurasia Future Initiative (NEFI): facing the challenges and pathways of global change in the 21st century
During the past several decades, the Earth system has changed significantly, especially across Northern Eurasia. Changes in the socio-economic conditions of the larger countries in the region have also resulted in a variety of regional environmental changes that can
have global consequences. The Northern Eurasia Future Initiative (NEFI) has been designed as an essential continuation of the Northern Eurasia Earth Science
Partnership Initiative (NEESPI), which was launched in 2004. NEESPI sought to elucidate all aspects of ongoing environmental change, to inform societies and, thus, to
better prepare societies for future developments. A key principle of NEFI is that these developments must now be secured through science-based strategies co-designed
with regional decision makers to lead their societies to prosperity in the face of environmental and institutional challenges. NEESPI scientific research, data, and
models have created a solid knowledge base to support the NEFI program. This paper presents the NEFI research vision consensus based on that knowledge. It provides the reader with samples of recent accomplishments in regional studies and formulates new NEFI science questions. To address these questions, nine research foci are identified and their selections are briefly justified. These foci include: warming of the Arctic; changing frequency, pattern, and intensity of extreme and inclement environmental conditions; retreat of the cryosphere; changes in terrestrial water cycles; changes in the biosphere; pressures on land-use; changes in infrastructure; societal actions in response to environmental change; and quantification of Northern Eurasia's role in the global Earth system. Powerful feedbacks between the Earth and human systems in Northern Eurasia (e.g., mega-fires, droughts, depletion of the cryosphere essential for water supply, retreat of sea ice) result from past and current human activities (e.g., large scale water withdrawals, land use and governance change) and
potentially restrict or provide new opportunities for future human activities. Therefore, we propose that Integrated Assessment Models are needed as the final stage of global
change assessment. The overarching goal of this NEFI modeling effort will enable evaluation of economic decisions in response to changing environmental conditions and justification of mitigation and adaptation efforts
Detection of terahertz radiation in gated two-dimensional structures governed by dc current
We present theoretical and experimental studies of the direct current effect on the detection of subterahertz and terahertz radiation in gated two-dimensional structures. We developed a theory of the current-driven detection both for resonant case, when the fundamental frequency of plasma oscillation is large compared to inverse scattering time, omega(0)tau >> 1, and for the nonresonant case, omega(0)tau << 1, when the plasma oscillations are damped. We predict that, in the nonresonant case, even a very small dc current would increase the detection amplitude up to two orders of magnitude. Physically, this increase is related to an abrupt transition from the linear to saturation region near the knee of the current-voltage characteristic. When the current increases up to the saturation value, the electron concentration near the drain becomes very low and can be strongly affected by a small external field. As a consequence, the two-dimensional channel becomes extremely sensitive to external perturbations. In the resonant case, the detection amplitude has maxima when the radiation frequency is equal to fundamental plasma frequency and its harmonics. We predict that the effective linewidths of the respective resonances would decrease with the increasing current. Physically, this happens because dc current shifts the system towards the plasma wave instability. At some critical current value, the width corresponding to the fundamental frequency would turn to zero, indicating the onset of plasma waves generation. Our experimental measurements performed on GaAs HEMT confirm the theoretical predictions
Some inferences from in vivo experiments with metal and metal oxide nanoparticles: the pulmonary phagocytosis response, subchronic systemic toxicity and genotoxicity, regulatory proposals, searching for bioprotectors (a self-overview)
Boris A Katsnelson,1 Larisa I Privalova,1 Marina P Sutunkova,1 Vladimir B Gurvich,1 Nadezhda V Loginova,1 Ilzira A Minigalieva,1 Ekaterina P Kireyeva,1 Vladimir Y Shur,2 Ekaterina V Shishkina,2 Ya B Beikin,3 Oleg H Makeyev,4 Irene E Valamina4 1The Medical Research Center for Prophylaxis and Health Protection in Industrial Workers, Ekaterinburg, Russia; 2The Institute of Natural Sciences, The Ural Federal University, Ekaterinburg, Russia; 3The City Clinical Diagnostics Centre, Ekaterinburg, Russia; 4The Ural State Medical University, Ekaterinburg, Russia Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to overview and summarize previously published results of our experiments on white rats exposed to either a single intratracheal instillation or repeated intraperitoneal injections of silver, gold, iron oxide, copper oxide, nickel oxide, and manganese oxide nanoparticles (NPs) in stable water suspensions without any chemical additives. Based on these results and some corroborating data of other researchers we maintain that these NPs are much more noxious on both cellular and systemic levels as compared with their 1 µm or even submicron counterparts. However, within the nanometer range the dependence of systemic toxicity on particle size is intricate and non-unique due to complex and often contra-directional relationships between the intrinsic biological aggressiveness of the specific NPs, on the one hand, and complex mechanisms that control their biokinetics, on the other. Our data testify to the high activity of the pulmonary phagocytosis of NPs deposited in airways. This fact suggests that safe levels of exposure to airborne NPs are possible in principle. However, there are no reliable foundations for establishing different permissible exposure levels for particles of different size within the nanometric range. For workroom air, such permissible exposure levels of metallic NP can be proposed at this stage, even if tentatively, based on a sufficiently conservative approach of decreasing approximately tenfold the exposure limits officially established for respective micro-scale industrial aerosols. It was shown that against the background of adequately composed combinations of some bioactive agents (comprising pectin, multivitamin-multimineral preparations, some amino acids, and omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid) the systemic toxicity and even genotoxicity of metallic NPs could be markedly attenuated. Therefore we believe that, along with decreasing NP-exposures, enhancing organisms’ resistance to their adverse action with the help of such bioprotectors can prove an efficient auxiliary tool of health risk management in occupations connected with them. Keywords: nanoparticles, metals, metal oxides, toxicit
Temperature-dependent ferroelectric properties of near stoichiometric lithium niobate single crystal
Recent Results on Broadband Nanotransistor Based THz Detectors
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