Promoting green issues and sustainability in UK higher education libraries

Climate change affects us all. Individually and collectively, we must reduce our carbon footprint to protect the future of the planet. But how can higher education libraries contribute? In April of 2007, a request was made to SCONUL libraries – via LIS-SCONUL – for information on library green initiatives that they were taking forward. The responses highlighted that there is growing interest in the issue and that sustainability issues are beginning to be taken very seriously. This is partially driven by the greater awareness of the need to reduce carbon emissions throughout society. Specifically within higher education, it is also a result of encouragement by funding bodies, such as the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) (see http://www.hefce. ac.uk/lgm/sustain/), through pressure from groups such as People and Planet and their ‘green league’ of higher education institutions (http:// peopleandplanet.org/gogreen/greenleague2007), and through rewards for excellence such as the Times Higher Education and Higher Education Academy Awards for an outstanding contribution by a higher education institution to sustainable development. Library staff are often active in wider institutional sustainability initiatives and can act as ‘champions’ for environmental issues and initiatives. Most of the libraries that responded to the request for information have aligned their green initiatives/ policies with those of their host organisation. Some libraries have participated in a wider institutional initiative to apply for the environmental management standard, ISO 14001. However, there are many specific ways that libraries can become more environmentally friendly and can make a difference

Calculating the mass fraction of primordial black holes

We reinspect the calculation for the mass fraction of primordial black holes (PBHs) which are formed from primordial perturbations, finding that performing the calculation using the comoving curvature perturbation c in the standard way vastly overestimates the number of PBHs, by many orders of magnitude. This is because PBHs form shortly after horizon entry, meaning modes significantly larger than the PBH are unobservable and should not affect whether a PBH forms or not - this important effect is not taken into account by smoothing the distribution in the standard fashion. We discuss alternative methods and argue that the density contrast, Δ, should be used instead as super-horizon modes are damped by a factor k2. We make a comparison between using a Press-Schechter approach and peaks theory, finding that the two are in close agreement in the region of interest. We also investigate the effect of varying the spectral index, and the running of the spectral index, on the abundance of primordial black holes

Spin nutation and polarization in ballistic semiconductor nanostructures

The definitions of spin orientation and polarization vectors are introduced within the particle density matrix of scattering states in leads. It is shown that spin-density vector can be defined by the product of the spin orientation vector, being a unit direction vector, and the charge density, corresponding to the amplitude of the spin-density vector, experimentally observable by a spatial charge modulation measurement. When an electron transports through a ballistic semiconductor nanostructure, due to quantum interference of two spin eigenmodes, the electron spin generally undergoes nutation on its precession around the effective magnetic field resulting from spin-orbit interactions. The nutation of electron spin is found to be crucial for spin polarization in the quantum transport. When one of two spin-dependent channels in leads is evanescent, electron spin is shown to be fully polarized for distance from the interface larger than the spin precession length

Dynamics of Energy Transport in a Toda Ring

We present results on the relationships between persistent currents and the known conservation laws in the classical Toda ring. We also show that perturbing the integrability leads to a decay of the currents at long times, with a time scale that is determined by the perturbing parameter. We summarize several known results concerning the Toda ring in 1-dimension, and present new results relating to the frequency, average kinetic and potential energy, and mean square displacement in the cnoidal waves, as functions of the wave vector and a parameter that determines the non linearity.Comment: 34 pages, 11 figures. Small changes made in response to referee's comment

The Molecular Gas in the Circumnuclear Region of Seyfert Galaxies

Sub-arcsecond IRAM Plateau de Bure mm-interferometric observations of the 12CO (2-1) line emission in the Seyfert~1 NGC 3227 and the Seyfert~2 NGC 1068 have revealed complex kinematic systems in the inner 100 pc to 300 pc that are not consistent with pure circular motion in the host galaxies. Modeling of these kinematic systems with elliptical orbits in the plane of the host galaxy (representing gas motion in a bar potential) is a possible solution but does not reproduce all features observed. A better description of the complex kinematics is achieved by circular orbits which are tilted out of the plane of the host galaxy. This could indicate that the thin circumnuclear gas disk is warped. In the case of NGC 1068 the warp model suggests that at a radius of about 70 pc, the gas disk is oriented edge-on providing material for the obscuration of the AGN nucleus. The position-velocity diagrams show rising rotation curves at r 2 x 10^7 M_solar for NGC 3227 and > 10^8 M_solar for NGC 1068 within the central 25 pc.Comment: 14 pages, Ap.J. letter, accepte

B749: Pulping, Biomass, and Nutrient Studies of Woody Shrub and Shrub Sizes of Tree Species

The research described in this report was a further effort to determine the potential of woody plants and forest waste not normally used commercially as a source of wood pulp. The results of previous studies of this subject have been reported in several technical journals and as LSA Experiment Station Bulletins over a period of several years. It was concluded that the only feasible way of harvesting this type of material for pulping would be as a whole plant. The small size and large proportions of bark and small branches would preclude any kind of barkwood separation process. If species of this kind and size could be grown and harvested as a crop, it might be possible to improve pulping yield and pulp characteristics by selectively pulping species, using optimum pulping conditions which might vary with the species.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1091/thumbnail.jp