Fluidized bed combustor modeling

A general mathematical model for the prediction of performance of a fluidized bed coal combustor (FBC) is developed. The basic elements of the model consist of: (1) hydrodynamics of gas and solids in the combustor; (2) description of gas and solids contacting pattern; (3) kinetics of combustion; and (4) absorption of SO2 by limestone in the bed. The model is capable of calculating the combustion efficiency, axial bed temperature profile, carbon hold-up in the bed, oxygen and SO2 concentrations in the bubble and emulsion phases, sulfur retention efficiency and particulate carry over by elutriation. The effects of bed geometry, excess air, location of heat transfer coils in the bed, calcium to sulfur ratio in the feeds, etc. are examined. The calculated results are compared with experimental data. Agreement between the calculated results and the observed data are satisfactory in most cases. Recommendations to enhance the accuracy of prediction of the model are suggested

A scheme for demonstration of fractional statistics of anyons in an exactly solvable model

We propose a scheme to demonstrate fractional statistics of anyons in an exactly solvable lattice model proposed by Kitaev that involves four-body interactions. The required many-body ground state, as well as the anyon excitations and their braiding operations, can be conveniently realized through \textit{dynamic}laser manipulation of cold atoms in an optical lattice. Due to the perfect localization of anyons in this model, we show that a quantum circuit with only six qubits is enough for demonstration of the basic braiding statistics of anyons. This opens up the immediate possibility of proof-of-principle experiments with trapped ions, photons, or nuclear magnetic resonance systems.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Possible role of spinal astrocytes in maintaining chronic pain sensitization: review of current evidence with focus on bFGF/JNK pathway

Although pain is regarded traditionally as neuronally mediated, recent progress shows an important role of spinal glial cells in persistent pain sensitization. Mounting evidence has implicated spinal microglia in the development of chronic pain (e.g. neuropathic pain after peripheral nerve injury). Less is known about the role of astrocytes in pain regulation. However, astrocytes have very close contact with synapses and maintain homeostasis in the extracellular environment. In this review, we provide evidence to support a role of spinal astrocytes in maintaining chronic pain. In particular, c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) is activated persistently in spinal astrocytes in a neuropathic pain condition produced by spinal nerve ligation. This activation is required for the maintenance of neuropathic pain because spinal infusion of JNK inhibitors can reverse mechanical allodynia, a major symptom of neuropathic pain. Further study reveals that JNK is activated strongly in astrocytes by basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), an astroglial activator. Intrathecal infusion of bFGF also produces persistent mechanical allodynia. After peripheral nerve injury, bFGF might be produced by primary sensory neurons and spinal astrocytes because nerve injury produces robust bFGF upregulation in both cell types. Therefore, the bFGF/JNK pathway is an important signalling pathway in spinal astrocytes for chronic pain sensitization. Investigation of signaling mechanisms in spinal astrocytes will identify new molecular targets for the management of chronic pain

An automated gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric method for the quantitative analysis of the odor-active molecules present in the vapors emanated from wine

An automated dynamic headspace (DHS) method combined with thermal desorption (TD) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) has been developed and applied to characterize the composition of the vapors emanating from wine during its consumption. The method provides a snapshot of the contents in the wine vapors of up to 40 relevant aroma compounds, including methanethiol, sulfur dioxide, aldehydes, fusel alcohols or volatile phenols. Leaving aside methanethiol, method repeatability was better than 15%, and better than 11% in 30 cases. Determination coefficients were better than 0.99 and detection limits, ranging from 0.1 to 1200 mu g/L, depending on the compound, were below normal ranges of occurrence or odor thresholds of those 40 compounds. The method has been applied to assess the changes in the wine headspaces with time, monitoring the levels of 34 odorants emitted to the headspace by 4 different wines during five consecutive time points. Levels of 15 polar aroma compounds remained constant, while levels of 14 non-polar and highly volatile compounds decayed very fast, which should have strong sensory changes in the odor perceived. The trends followed by methanethiol, dimethyl sulfide, ethyl decanoate, by aldehydes and dicarbonyls were significantly related to the wine, which suggests that prediction of the aroma impact in these cases should include an estimation of the odorant x wine matrix interaction. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Non-Newtonian gravity in finite nuclei

In this talk, we report our recent study of constraining the non-Newtonian gravity at femtometer scale. We incorporate the Yukawa-type non-Newtonian gravitational potential consistently to the Skyrme functional form using the exact treatment for the direct contribution and density-matrix expansion method for the exchange contribution. The effects from the non-Newtonian potential on finite nuclei properties are then studied together with a well-tested Skyrme force. Assuming that the framework without non-Newtonian gravity can explain the binding energies and charge radii of medium to heavy nuclei within 2% error, we set an upper limit for the strength of the non-Newtonian gravitational potential at femtometer scale.Comment: Talk given at the 11th International Conference on Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (NN2012), San Antonio, Texas, USA, May 27-June 1, 2012. To appear in the NN2012 Proceedings in Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS

Operator Algebra in Chern-Simons Theory on a Torus

We consider Chern-Simons gauge theory on a torus with both nonrelativistic and relativistic matter. It is shown that the Hamiltonian and two total momenta commute among themselves only in the physical Hilbert space. We also discuss relations among degenerate physical states, degenerate vacua, and the existence of multicomponent Schrodinger wavefunctions.Comment: 12 pages, TPI-Minn-92/41-T, UMN-TH-1105/9

Trust Region Policy Optimisation in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning

Trust region methods rigorously enabled reinforcement learning (RL) agents to learn monotonically improving policies, leading to superior performance on a variety of tasks. Unfortunately, when it comes to multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL), the property of monotonic improvement may not simply apply; this is because agents, even in cooperative games, could have conflicting directions of policy updates. As a result, achieving a guaranteed improvement on the joint policy where each agent acts individually remains an open challenge. In this paper, we extend the theory of trust region learning to cooperative MARL. Central to our findings are the multi-agent advantage decomposition lemma and the sequential policy update scheme. Based on these, we develop Heterogeneous-Agent Trust Region Policy Optimisation (HATPRO) and Heterogeneous-Agent Proximal Policy Optimisation (HAPPO) algorithms. Unlike many existing MARL algorithms, HATRPO/HAPPO do not need agents to share parameters, nor do they need any restrictive assumptions on decomposibility of the joint value function. Most importantly, we justify in theory the monotonic improvement property of HATRPO/HAPPO. We evaluate the proposed methods on a series of Multi-Agent MuJoCo and StarCraftII tasks. Results show that HATRPO and HAPPO significantly outperform strong baselines such as IPPO, MAPPO and MADDPG on all tested tasks, thereby establishing a new state of the art

Entanglement, subsystem particle numbers and topology in free fermion systems

We study the relationship between bipartite entanglement, subsystem particle number and topology in a half-filled free fermion system. It is proposed that the spin-projected particle numbers can distinguish the quantum spin Hall state from other states, and can be used to establish a new topological index for the system. Furthermore, we apply the new topological invariant to a disordered system and show that a topological phase transition occurs when the disorder strength is increased beyond a critical value. It is also shown that the subsystem particle number fluctuation displays behavior very similar to that of the entanglement entropy. This provides a lower-bound estimation for the entanglement entropy, which can be utilized to obtain an estimate of the entanglement entropy experimentally.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Gaussian Optical Ising Machines

It has recently been shown that optical parametric oscillator (OPO) Ising machines, consisting of coupled optical pulses circulating in a cavity with parametric gain, can be used to probabilistically find low-energy states of Ising spin systems. In this work, we study optical Ising machines that operate under simplified Gaussian dynamics. We show that these dynamics are sufficient for reaching probabilities of success comparable to previous work. Based on this result, we propose modified optical Ising machines with simpler designs that do not use parametric gain yet achieve similar performance, thus suggesting a route to building much larger systems.Comment: 6 page