20,256 research outputs found
An assembly-oriented novel low-carbon masonry building method with unfired 3D printed earthen blocks
Conventional earthen building methods such as cob and adobe are relevant for developing countries but labour-intensive, expensive and slow for developed countries. Automation in construction has been increasingly favourable in developed countries, especially buildings constructed with 3D printed cementitious materials. 3D printed earthen materials demonstrate a better environmental performance compared to 3D printed cementitious materials due to the energy intensive manufacturing of cement. Moreover, conventional earthen methods, such as cob, create earthen buildings with solid sections while 3D printing allows a hollow section and various infill designs using less material. Despite the benefits, the research on the mechanical strength of 3D-printed earthen structures is still limited. The lack of data on the mechanical performance of 3D printed earthen structures, is one of the obstacles preventing the mainstream construction industry from approaching this novel building method. Our research investigates an assembly-oriented novel low-carbon masonry building method with unfired 3D-printed earthen blocks and explores its adaptability to the mainstream construction industry with a critical comparison based on mechanical properties
Gauge-Higgs Unification and Radiative Electroweak Symmetry Breaking in Warped Extra Dimensions
We compute the Coleman Weinberg effective potential for the Higgs field in RS
Gauge-Higgs unification scenarios based on a bulk SO(5) x U(1)_X gauge
symmetry, with gauge and fermion fields propagating in the bulk and a custodial
symmetry protecting the generation of large corrections to the T parameter and
the coupling of the Z to the bottom quark. We demonstrate that electroweak
symmetry breaking may be realized, with proper generation of the top and bottom
quark masses for the same region of bulk mass parameters that lead to good
agreement with precision electroweak data in the presence of a light Higgs. We
compute the Higgs mass and demonstrate that for the range of parameters for
which the Higgs boson has Standard Model-like properties, the Higgs mass is
naturally in a range that varies between values close to the LEP experimental
limit and about 160 GeV. This mass range may be probed at the Tevatron and at
the LHC. We analyze the KK spectrum and briefly discuss the phenomenology of
the light resonances arising in our model.Comment: 31 pages, 9 figures. Corrected typo in boundary condition for gauge
bosons and top mass equation. To appear in PR
Infrared Sources in the Small Magellanic Cloud: First Results
We have imaged the entire Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), one of the two nearest star-forming dwarf galaxies, in all seven IRAC and MIPS bands. The low mass and low metallicity (1/6 solar) of the SMC make it the best local analog for primitive galaxies at high redshift. By studying the properties of dust and star formation in the SMC at high resolution, we can gain understanding of similar distant galaxies that can only be observed in much less detail.
In this contribution, we present a preliminary analysis of the properties of point sources detected in the Spitzer Survey of the Small Magellanic Cloud (S^(3)MC). We find ∼400,000 unresolved or marginally resolved sources in our IRAC images, and our MIPS 24 μm mosaic contains ~17,000 point sources. Source counts decline rapidly at the longer MIPS wavelengths. We use colorcolor and color-magnitude diagrams to investigate the nature of these objects, cross-correlate their positions with those of known sources at other wavelengths, and show examples of how these data can be used to identify interesting classes of objects such as carbon stars and young stellar objects. For additional examples of some of the questions that can be studied with these data, please see the accompanying contributions by Alberto Bolatto (survey information and images), Adam Leroy (dust and gas in a low-metallicity environment), Karin Sandstrom (far infrared-radio continuum correlation), and Snezana Stanimirovic (on a young supernova remnant in the The SMC) mosaic images and point source catalogs we have made have been released to the public on our website (http://celestial.berkeley.edu/spitzer)
Optimal queue-size scaling in switched networks
We consider a switched (queuing) network in which there are constraints on
which queues may be served simultaneously; such networks have been used to
effectively model input-queued switches and wireless networks. The scheduling
policy for such a network specifies which queues to serve at any point in time,
based on the current state or past history of the system. In the main result of
this paper, we provide a new class of online scheduling policies that achieve
optimal queue-size scaling for a class of switched networks including
input-queued switches. In particular, it establishes the validity of a
conjecture (documented in Shah, Tsitsiklis and Zhong [Queueing Syst. 68 (2011)
375-384]) about optimal queue-size scaling for input-queued switches.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/13-AAP970 the Annals of
Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Qualitative properties of -fair policies in bandwidth-sharing networks
We consider a flow-level model of a network operating under an -fair
bandwidth sharing policy (with ) proposed by Roberts and
Massouli\'{e} [Telecomunication Systems 15 (2000) 185-201]. This is a
probabilistic model that captures the long-term aspects of bandwidth sharing
between users or flows in a communication network. We study the transient
properties as well as the steady-state distribution of the model. In
particular, for , we obtain bounds on the maximum number of flows
in the network over a given time horizon, by means of a maximal inequality
derived from the standard Lyapunov drift condition. As a corollary, we
establish the full state space collapse property for all . For the
steady-state distribution, we obtain explicit exponential tail bounds on the
number of flows, for any , by relying on a norm-like Lyapunov
function. As a corollary, we establish the validity of the diffusion
approximation developed by Kang et al. [Ann. Appl. Probab. 19 (2009)
1719-1780], in steady state, for the case where and under a local
traffic condition.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/12-AAP915 the Annals of
Applied Probability (http://www.imstat.org/aap/) by the Institute of
Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org
Robotic 3D printing with earth: A case study for optimisation of 3D printing building blocks
The interest in 3D printed earthen buildings in developed countries has increased due to the demand for healthy, comfortable and sustainable buildings constructed with low carbon materials and laboursaving methods. However, the amount of research about this field is still limited. Our research aims to contribute to this field by optimising the robotic 3D printing process by investigating issues such as buckling while printing, adequate soil mix recipe for printing, print and extrusion speed calibration. This paper illustrates the process and the results of the temporary research project and the Robotic Cob Printing Workshop with MSc Computational Methods in Architecture (CMA) students at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University, in March 2022. The project aims to achieve structural stability with less material by using the geometry and the infill of the building block while exploring the role of computational design, robotic extrusion and material understanding in robotic 3D printing with earth as a low-carbon novel building method
Structural and magnetic properties of Pr-alloyed MnBi nanostructures
The structural and magnetic properties of Pr-alloyed MnBi (short MnBi-Pr)
nanostructures with a range of Pr concentrations have been investigated. The
nanostructures include thin films having Pr concentrations 0, 2, 3, 5 and 9
atomic percent and melt-spun ribbons having Pr concentrations 0, 2, 4 and 6
percent respectively. Addition of Pr into the MnBi lattice has produced a
significant change in the magnetic properties of these nanostructures including
an increase in coercivity and structural phase transition temperature, and a
decrease in saturation magnetization and anisotropy energy. The highest value
of coercivity measured in the films is 23 kOe and in the ribbons is 5.6 kOe.
The observed magnetic properties are explained as the consequences of competing
ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions
The Spitzer Survey of the Small Magellanic Cloud: Discovery of Embedded Protostars in the HII Region NGC 346
We use Spitzer Space Telescope observations from the Spitzer Survey of the
Small Magellanic Cloud (S3MC) to study the young stellar content of N66, the
largest and brightest HII region in the SMC. In addition to large numbers of
normal stars, we detect a significant population of bright, red infrared
sources that we identify as likely to be young stellar objects (YSOs). We use
spectral energy distribution (SED) fits to classify objects as ordinary (main
sequence or red giant) stars, asymptotic giant branch stars, background
galaxies, and YSOs. This represents the first large-scale attempt at blind
source classification based on Spitzer SEDs in another galaxy. We firmly
identify at least 61 YSOs, with another 50 probable YSOs; only one embedded
protostar in the SMC was reported in the literature prior to the S3MC. We
present color selection criteria that can be used to identify a relatively
clean sample of YSOs with IRAC photometry. Our fitted SEDs indicate that the
infrared-bright YSOs in N66 have stellar masses ranging from 2 Msun to 17 Msun,
and that approximately half of the objects are Stage II protostars, with the
remaining YSOs roughly evenly divided between Stage I and Stage III sources. We
find evidence for primordial mass segregation in the HII region, with the most
massive YSOs being preferentially closer to the center than lower-mass objects.
Despite the low metallicity and dust content of the SMC, the observable
properties of the YSOs appear consistent with those in the Milky Way. Although
the YSOs are heavily concentrated within the optically bright central region of
N66, there is ongoing star formation throughout the complex and we place a
lower limit on the star formation rate of 3.2 x 10^-3 Msun/yr over the last ~1
Myr.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures (3 in color), 2 tables. Accepted for publication
in Ap
- …