1,296 research outputs found
Renewing the Exploration Approach for Mid-Enthalpy Systems: Examples from Northern England and Scotland
After a promising start in the 1970s and 80s, the UK rather fell behind other countries in the search for viable mid-enthalpy
geothermal resources. This situation began to turn around in 2004, when the first of three deep geothermal exploration boreholes
were drilled in northern England. What distinguished these from earlier drilling in Cornwall was the deliberate search for naturallyhigh
permeability associated with major faults, especially those that have undergone strike-slip reactivation during the Cenozoic.
Boreholes at Eastgate in the North Pennines targeted buried radiothermal granite, whereas the 1,821m-deep Science Central
Borehole in Newcastle upon Tyne targeted a postulated deep sedimentary aquifer (the Fell Sandstones), which were inferred to be
connected laterally to the granitic heat source by a major fault (the reactivation of the Iapetus geo-suture). The drilling was in both
cases rewarded with impressive heat flows, and in the case of Eastgate with what is believed to be the highest permeability yet
found in a deep granite batholith anywhere in the world. In parallel with these developments, a re-assessment was made of the preexisting
geothermal heat flow database for the UK, applying newly-standardised correction protocols for palaeoclimatic and
topographic distortions, which were found to be particularly marked in Scotland (where only shallow boreholes had been used to
establish geothermal gradients in the original 1980s analysis), Similar prospects in northern England (similar to that drilled at
Science Central) are now the focus of commercial exploration efforts. Appraisal of fault dispositions relative to the present-day
maximum compressive stress azimuth are being used to identify the most promising areas for intersecting fault-related permeability
at depth. New geophysical tools – most notably atomic dielectric resonance scanning – are also being appraised for their ability to
directly detect features (such as hot brines) which are indicative of localised convection in target fault zones and aquifers
A new approach to improving the efficiency of fel oscillator simulations
During the last year we have been benchmarking FEL
oscillator simulation codes against the measured
performance of the three Jefferson Lab oscillator FELs.
While one might think that a full 4D simulation is de
facto the best predictor of performance, the simulations
are computationally intensive, even when analytical
approximations to the electron bunch longitudinal
distribution are used. In this presentation we compare the
predictions of the 4D FEL interaction codes Genesis and
Medusa, in combination with the optical code OPC, with
those using a combination of the 2D & 3D versions of
these codes, which can be run quickly on a single CPU
core desktop computer
Prominent bulk pinning effect in the MgB_2 superconductor
We report the magnetic-field dependence of the irreversible magnetization of
the recently discovered binary superconductor MgB. For the temperature
region of , the contribution of the bulk pinning to the
magnetization overwhelms that of the surface pinning. This was evident from the
fact that the magnetization curves, , were well described by the
critical-state model without considering the surface pinning effect. It was
also found that the curves at various temperatures scaled when the field
and the magnetization were normalized by the characteristic scaling factors
and , respectively. This feature suggests that the
pinning mechanism determining the hysteresis in is unique below .Comment: 4pages and 4 figures. Phys. Rev. B (accepted
Solution of a one-dimensional stochastic model with branching and coagulation reactions
We solve an one-dimensional stochastic model of interacting particles on a
chain. Particles can have branching and coagulation reactions, they can also
appear on an empty site and disappear spontaneously.
This model which can be viewed as an epidemic model and/or as a
generalization of the {\it voter} model, is treated analytically beyond the
{\it conventional} solvable situations. With help of a suitably chosen {\it
string function}, which is simply related to the density and the
non-instantaneous two-point correlation functions of the particles, exact
expressions of the density and of the non-instantaneous two-point correlation
functions, as well as the relaxation spectrum are obtained on a finite and
periodic lattice.Comment: 5 pages, no figure. To appear as a Rapid Communication in Physical
Review E (September 2001
The study of the negative pion production in neutron-proton collisions at beam momenta below 1.8 GeV/c
A detailed investigation of the reaction np -> pp\pi^{-} has been carried out
using the data obtained with the continuous neutron beam produced by charge
exchange scattering of protons off a deuterium target. A partial wave
event-by-event based maximum likelihood analysis was applied to determine
contributions of different partial waves to the pion production process. The
combined analysis of the np -> pp\pi^{-} and pp -> pp\pi^{0} data measured in
the same energy region allows us to determine the contribution of isoscalar
partial waves (I=0) in the momentum range from 1.1 up to 1.8 GeV/c. The decay
of isoscalar partial waves into (^1S_0)_{pp}\pi$ channel provides a good tool
for a determination of the pp S-wave scalar scattering length in the final
state which was found to be a_{pp}=-7.5\pm 0.3 fm.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure
Onset of magnetism in B2 transition metals aluminides
Ab initio calculation results for the electronic structure of disordered bcc
Fe(x)Al(1-x) (0.4<x<0.75), Co(x)Al(1-x) and Ni(x)Al(1-x) (x=0.4; 0.5; 0.6)
alloys near the 1:1 stoichiometry, as well as of the ordered B2 (FeAl, CoAl,
NiAl) phases with point defects are presented. The calculations were performed
using the coherent potential approximation within the Korringa-Kohn-Rostoker
method (KKR-CPA) for the disordered case and the tight-binding linear
muffin-tin orbital (TB-LMTO) method for the intermetallic compounds. We studied
in particular the onset of magnetism in Fe-Al and Co-Al systems as a function
of the defect structure. We found the appearance of large local magnetic
moments associated with the transition metal (TM) antisite defect in FeAl and
CoAl compounds, in agreement with the experimental findings. Moreover, we found
that any vacancies on both sublattices enhance the magnetic moments via
reducing the charge transfer to a TM atom. Disordered Fe-Al alloys are
ferromagnetically ordered for the whole range of composition studied, whereas
Co-Al becomes magnetic only for Co concentration >0.5.Comment: 11 pages with 9 embedded postscript figures, to be published in
Phys.Rev.
Actors and networks or agents and structures: towards a realist view of information systems
Actor-network theory (ANT) has achieved a measure of popularity in the analysis of information systems. This paper looks at ANT from the perspective of the social realism of Margaret Archer. It argues that the main issue with ANT from a realist perspective is its adoption of a `flat' ontology, particularly with regard to human beings. It explores the value of incorporating concepts from ANT into a social realist approach, but argues that the latter offers a more productive way of approaching information systems
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