Motor brush wear measured with strain gages

Balanced bridge circuit, supplied with low-voltage direct current and connected to a readout device, measures remaining brush material, rate of brush wear, armature runout, and brush signature

Mathematical Modelling of Hydrophilic Ionic Fertiliser Diffusion in Plant Cuticles: Lipophilic Surfactant Effects

The agricultural industry requires improved efficacy of sprays being applied to crops and weeds to reduce their environmental impact and increase financial returns. One way to improve efficacy is by enhancing foliar penetration. The plant leaf cuticle is the most significant barrier to agrochemical diffusion within the leaf. It has been noted that a comprehensive set of mechanisms for ionic active ingredient penetration through plant leaves with surfactants is not well defined and oils that enhance penetration have been given little attention. The importance of a mechanistic mathematical model has been noted previously in the literature. Two mechanistic mathematical models have been previously developed by the authors, focusing on plant cuticle penetration of calcium chloride through tomato fruit cuticles. The models included ion binding and evaporation with hygroscopic water absorption, along with the ability to vary the active ingredient concentration and type, relative humidity and plant species. Here we further develop these models to include lipophilic adjuvant effects, as well as the adsorption and desorption of compounds on the cuticle surface with a novel Adaptive Competitive Langmuir model. These modifications to a penetration model provide a novel addition to the literature. We validate our theoretical model results against appropriate experimental data, discuss key sensitivities and relate theoretical predictions to physical mechanisms. The results indicate the addition of the desorption mechanism may be one way to predict increased penetration at late times and the sensitivity of model parameters compares wells to those present in the literature

Detailed Structure and Dynamics in Particle-in-Cell Simulations of the Lunar Wake

The solar wind plasma from the Sun interacts with the Moon, generating a wake structure behind it, since the Moon is to a good approximation an insulator, has no intrinsic magnetic field and a very thin atmosphere. The lunar wake in simplified geometry has been simulated via a 1-1/2-D electromagnetic particle-in-cell code, with high resolution in order to resolve the full phase space dynamics of both electrons and ions. The simulation begins immediately downstream of the moon, before the solar wind has infilled the wake region, then evolves in the solar wind rest frame. An ambipolar electric field and a potential well are generated by the electrons, which subsequently create a counter-streaming beam distribution, causing a two-stream instability which confines the electrons. This also creates a number of electron phase space holes. Ion beams are accelerated into the wake by the ambipolar electric field, generating a two stream distribution with phase space mixing that is strongly influenced by the potentials created by the electron two-stream instability. The simulations compare favourably with WIND observations.Comment: 10 pages, 13 figures, to be published in Physics of Plasma

Greenhouse gas intensity of an irrigated cropping system in Saskatchewan

Non-Peer ReviewedIn response to increasing global food demands, the proportion of irrigated agricultural land within the Canadian Prairies is likely to increase. However, the implications of this with respect to the agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) balance are not well understood. This study investigates and compares the greenhouse gas intensity of a typical irrigated and dryland cropping system in Saskatchewan, a semi-arid region of the Canadian Prairies. Compared to their dryland counterpart, irrigated cropping systems have higher GHG emissions which are a result of the energy used for pumping and larger nitrous oxide (N2O) production rates associated with higher N-fertilizer application and moist soil conditions. These emissions may be partially offset by increased carbon sequestration from the greater productivity realized through irrigation. This investigation focuses on the quantification of soil GHG emissions through chamber-based flux measurements. Factors driving these emissions have been determined through in-situ soil temperature, matric potential, and moisture measurements. The emissions associated with pumping and other crop management activities are accounted for using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) literature and methodology. Preliminary results from the first season of study confirm that irrigated cropping systems have greater greenhouse gas intensity. Soil N2O emissions from the irrigated system were four times greater than the dryland and were the greatest source of emissions for the irrigated system. Diesel combustion used to power equipment was comparable between cropping systems. Emissions associated with pumping were notable; however, due to the wet growing season they remained smaller than could be expected most years. The information derived from this study will aid in the development of regional specific soil emission factors, improved management strategies, and will identify new approaches for mitigating emissions

Data compression for the Cassini radio and plasma wave instrument

The Cassini Radio and Plasma Wave Science experiment will employ data compression to make effective use of the available data telemetry bandwidth. Some compression will be achieved by use of a lossless data compression chip and some by software in a dedicated 80C85 processor. A description of the instrument and data compression system are included in this report. Also, the selection of data compression systems and acceptability of data degradation is addressed

Surgery groups of the fundamental groups of hyperplane arrangement complements

Using a recent result of Bartels and Lueck (arXiv:0901.0442) we deduce that the Farrell-Jones Fibered Isomorphism conjecture in L-theory is true for any group which contains a finite index strongly poly-free normal subgroup, in particular, for the Artin full braid groups. As a consequence we explicitly compute the surgery groups of the Artin pure braid groups. This is obtained as a corollary to a computation of the surgery groups of a more general class of groups, namely for the fundamental group of the complement of any fiber-type hyperplane arrangement in the complex n-space.Comment: 11 pages, AMSLATEX file, revised following referee's comments and suggestions, to appear in Archiv der Mathemati

Anisotropy of permeability in faulted porous sandstones

Thank you to Total E & P UK for funding the project, and especially Chris Wibberley, Claude Gout and Stephane Vignau for input. The author would also like to thank Zoe Shipton and Graham Yielding for their constructive reviews of the manuscript. Thanks also to Manuel Prieto for sharing his MSc pilot study written at the University of Aberdeen, Professor Martin Lee and Peter Chung at the University of Glasgow for SEM use and lastly thank you to Gavin Tennent for access to the Clashach Quarry and for samples.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Feasibility study for a Scanning Celestial Attitude Determination System /SCADS/ for three axis attitude determination at a Command and Data Acquisition /CDA/ station Final report

Scanning Celestial Attitude Determination System /SCADS/ for three axis attitude determination at Command and Data Acquisition /CDA/ statio

Mathematical Modeling of Diffusion of a Hydrophilic Ionic Fertilizer in Plant Cuticles: Surfactant and Hygroscopic Effects

The agricultural industry requires improved efficacy of sprays being applied to crops and weeds to reduce their environmental impact and increase financial returns. One way to improve efficacy is by enhancing foliar penetration. The plant leaf cuticle is the most significant barrier to agrochemical diffusion within the leaf. The importance of a mechanistic mathematical model has been noted previously in the literature, as each penetration experiment is dictated by its specific parameters, namely plant species, environmental conditions such as relative humidity and spray formulation including adjuvant addition. A mechanistic mathematical model has been previously developed by the authors, focusing on plant cuticle diffusion of calcium chloride through tomato fruit cuticles including pore swelling, ion binding and evaporation, along with the ability to vary the active ingredient concentration and type, relative humidity and plant species. Here we further develop this model to include adjuvant effects as well as the hygroscopic nature of deliquescent ionic solutions with evaporation on the cuticle surface. These modifications to a penetration and evaporation model provide a novel addition to the literature and allow the model to be applied to many types of evaporating ionic hygroscopic solutions on many types of substrates, not just plant cuticles. We validate our theoretical model results against appropriate experimental data, discuss key sensitivities and relate theoretical predictions to physical mechanisms. The important governing mechanisms influencing surfactant enhanced penetration of ionic active through plant cuticles were found to be aqueous pore radius, pore density, cuticle thickness and initial contact angle of the applied droplet; ion binding, relative humidity and evaporation including hygroscopic water absorption parameters for point of deliquescence. The sensitivity analysis indicated surfactants increase penetration by changing the point of deliquescence of a solution, which alters the water absorption and the initial contact angle, which alters the number of pores under the droplet. The results of the validation and sensitivity analysis imply that this model accounts for many of the mechanisms governing penetration in plant cuticles

Conditions for one-dimensional supersonic flow of quantum gases

One can use transsonic Bose-Einstein condensates of alkali atoms to establish the laboratory analog of the event horizon and to measure the acoustic version of Hawking radiation. We determine the conditions for supersonic flow and the Hawking temperature for realistic condensates on waveguides where an external potential plays the role of a supersonic nozzle. The transition to supersonic speed occurs at the potential maximum and the Hawking temperature is entirely determined by the curvature of the potential