6,020 research outputs found
Numerical study on diverging probability density function of flat-top solitons in an extended Korteweg-de Vries equation
We consider an extended Korteweg-de Vries (eKdV) equation, the usual
Korteweg-de Vries equation with inclusion of an additional cubic nonlinearity.
We investigate the statistical behaviour of flat-top solitary waves described
by an eKdV equation in the presence of weak dissipative disorder in the linear
growth/damping term. With the weak disorder in the system, the amplitude of
solitary wave randomly fluctuates during evolution. We demonstrate numerically
that the probability density function of a solitary wave parameter
which characterizes the soliton amplitude exhibits loglognormal divergence near
the maximum possible value.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure
Determinants of a transcriptionally competent environment at the GM-CSF promoter
Granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor
(GM-CSF) is produced by T cells, but not B cells,
in response to immune signals. GM-CSF gene
activation in response to T-cell stimulation requires
remodelling of chromatin associated with the
gene promoter, and these changes do not occur in
B cells. While the CpG methylation status of the
murine GM-CSF promoter shows no correlation with
the ability of the gene to respond to activation, we
find that the basal chromatin environment of the
gene promoter influences its ability to respond to
immune signals. In unstimulated T cells but not B
cells, the GM-CSF promoter is selectively marked
by enrichment of histone acetylation, and association
of the chromatin-remodelling protein BRG1.
BRG1 is removed from the promoter upon activation
concomitant with histone depletion and BRG1
is required for efficient chromatin remodelling and
transcription. Increasing histone acetylation at
the promoter in T cells is paralleled by increased
BRG1 recruitment, resulting in more rapid chromatin
remodelling, and an associated increase in GM-CSF
mRNA levels. Furthermore, increasing histone
acetylation in B cells removes the block in chromatin
remodelling and transcriptional activation
of the GM-CSF gene. These data are consistent
with a model in which histone hyperacetylation
and BRG1 enrichment at the GM-CSF promoter,
generate a chromatin environment competent
to respond to immune signals resulting in gene
activation
Optical Microreflectometry and Microscopy of Chalcopyrite Specimens: Reflectance Calculation and Comparison to Backscattered Electron Microscopy
A model was developed to calculate the optical reflectance of an absorbing substrate covered by multiple thin layers of absorbing materials. Both multiple homogeneous thin layers and thin surface layers of mixed phases were modeled. Reflectance versus wavelength was measured for polished chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) and compared to calculated data. The identity and thickness of surface compounds used to calculate reflectance curves were partially determined using X-ray photoelectron and Auger electron spectroscopies. Very good agreement between theoretical and experimental reflectance curves were observed as a function of surface composition. The hue (color) and luminosity (brightness) of the polished surface were also calculated from both experimental and theoretical curves and were found to also be valuable for evaluating surface composition. Contrast in optical photomicrographs resulting from both luminosity and hue was illustrated.
Secondary and backscattered electron microscopy were also used to image chalcopyrite polished surfaces which were naturally oxidized by an exposure before and after ion etching. For a substrate covered with thin layers, the resulting backscattered coefficient was calculated as a function of the backscattered coefficient for the surface and the substrate, respectively.
The variations of the relative difference between the effective backscattered coefficients vs the primary beam energy exhibited a maximum for a critical thickness difference of the surface layer. The dependence of the variations in thickness of the oxidized layer with the crystallographic orientation changes of the substrate as well as the resulting contrasts of the optical and electron images were discussed
The Lore of Low Methane Livestock:Co-Producing Technology and Animals for Reduced Climate Change Impact
Methane emissions from sheep and cattle production have gained increasing profile in the context of climate change. Policy and scientific research communities have suggested a number of technological approaches to mitigate these emissions. This paper uses the concept of co-production as an analytical framework to understand farmers’ evaluation of a 'good animal’. It examines how technology and sheep and beef cattle are co-produced in the context of concerns about the climate change impact of methane. Drawing on 42 semi-structured interviews, this paper demonstrates that methane emissions are viewed as a natural and integral part of sheep and beef cattle by farmers, rather than as a pollutant. Sheep and beef cattle farmers in the UK are found to be an extremely heterogeneous group that need to be understood in their specific social, environmental and consumer contexts. Some are more amenable to appropriating methane reducing measures than others, but largely because animals are already co-constructed from the natural and the technical for reasons of increased production efficiency
Energy efficient engine: Flight propulsion system preliminary analysis and design
The characteristics of an advanced flight propulsion system (FPS), suitable for introduction in the late 1980's to early 1990's, was more fully defined. It was determined that all goals for efficiency, environmental considerations, and economics could be met or exceeded with the possible exception of NOx emission. In evaluating the FPS, all aspects were considered including component design, performance, weight, initial cost, maintenance cost, engine system integration (including nacelle), and aircraft integration considerations. The current FPS installed specific fuel consumption was reduced 14.2% from that of the CF6-50C reference engine. When integrated into an advanced, subsonic, study transport, the FPS produced a fuel burn savings of 15 to 23% and a direct operating cost reduction of 5 to 12% depending on the mission and study aircraft characteristics relative to the reference engine
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'Open Marxism' against and beyond the 'Great Enclosure'? Reflections on How (Not) to Crack Capitalism
The main purpose of this article is to provide an in-depth discussion of John Holloway’s recent book, Crack Capitalism. To this end, the paper offers a detailed account of the key strengths and weaknesses of Holloway’s version of ‘open Marxism’. The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on six significant strengths of Crack Capitalism: (1) its insistence upon the importance of autonomous forms of agenda-setting for both individual and collective emancipation; (2) its emphasis on the ordinary constitution of social struggles; (3) its fine-grained interpretation of the socio-ontological conditions underlying human agency; (4) its processual conception of radical social transformation; (5) its recognition of the elastic, adaptable, and integrative power of capitalism; and (6) its proposal for an alternative critical theory, commonly known as ‘open Marxism’ or ‘autonomous Marxism’. The second part of the study examines the principal weaknesses of Crack Capitalism: (1) the counterproductive implications of the preponderance of negativity, owing to a one-sided concern with critique, cracks, and crises; (2) conceptual vagueness; (3) an overuse of poetic and metaphorical language; (4) the absence of a serious engagement with the question of normativity; (5) a lack of substantive evidence; (6) a residual economic reductionism; (7) a simplistic notion of gender; (8) the continuing presence of various problematic ‘isms’; (9) the misleading distinction between ‘doing’ and ‘labour’; (10) a reductive understanding of capitalism; (11) an unrealistic view of society; and (12) socio-ontological idealis
"Driven to distraction?" Children's experiences of car travel
This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in volume, 4, issue 1, pages 59-76 in Mobilities 2009. Copyright @ 2009 Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17450100802657962.Cars have become increasingly significant features in the lives of many children and adults in the UK and elsewhere. Whilst there is a growing body of research considering how adults experience automobility, that is the increasingly central role of cars within societies, there has been little equivalent research exploring children's perspectives. Drawing upon a variety of methods including personal diaries, photographs, in‐depth interviews and surveys amongst schools within Buckinghamshire and North London, the paper contributes to filling this gap in existing research through exploring how cars are not only journey spaces for children, but are also sites for play, relaxation, homework, companionship, technology and the consumption of commodities. Using a Foucauldian analysis of power, insights into wider familial processes relating to mobility are provided by exploring how cars are sites of conflicting power relations between parents and children. The paper also explores how children's everyday experiences of cars were framed by wider sets of power relations, including car corporations which design and manufacture these spaces, and the role of capital which commodifies everyday activities in cars. In doing so, the paper challenges existing research on automobility for only focusing upon adults' experiences of cars and begins to theorise a more inclusive account of automobility which incorporates children and young people
The Origin of X-shaped Radio Galaxies: Clues from the Z-symmetric Secondary Lobes
Existing radio images of a few X-shaped radio galaxies reveal Z-symmetric
morphologies in their weaker secondary lobes which cannot be naturally
explained by either the galactic merger or radio-lobe backflow scenarios, the
two dominant models for these X-shaped radio sources. We show that the merger
picture can explain these morphologies provided one takes into account that,
prior to the coalescence of their supermassive black holes, the smaller galaxy
releases significant amounts of gas into the ISM of the dominant active galaxy.
This rotating gas, whose angular momentum axis will typically not be aligned
with the original jets, is likely to provide sufficient ram pressure at a
distance ~10 kpc from the nucleus to bend the extant jets emerging from the
central engine, thus producing a Z-symmetry in the pair of radio lobes. Once
the two black holes have coalesced some 10^7 yr later, a rapid reorientation of
the jets along a direction close to that of the orbital angular momentum of the
swallowed galaxy relative to the primary galaxy would create the younger
primary lobes of the X-shaped radio galaxy. This picture naturally explains why
such sources typically have powers close to the FR I/II break. We suggest that
purely Z-symmetric radio sources are often en route to coalescence and the
concomitant emission of substantial gravitational radiation, while X-shaped
ones have already merged and radiated.Comment: 12 pages, 1 compressed figure; accepted for publication in ApJ
Letter
Diffusive counter dispersion of mass in bubbly media
We consider a liquid bearing gas bubbles in a porous medium. When gas bubbles
are immovably trapped in a porous matrix by surface-tension forces, the
dominant mechanism of transfer of gas mass becomes the diffusion of gas
molecules through the liquid. Essentially, the gas solution is in local
thermodynamic equilibrium with vapor phase all over the system, i.e., the
solute concentration equals the solubility. When temperature and/or pressure
gradients are applied, diffusion fluxes appear and these fluxes are faithfully
determined by the temperature and pressure fields, not by the local solute
concentration, which is enslaved by the former. We derive the equations
governing such systems, accounting for thermodiffusion and gravitational
segregation effects which are shown not to be neglected for geological
systems---marine sediments, terrestrial aquifers, etc. The results are applied
for the treatment of non-high-pressure systems and real geological systems
bearing methane or carbon dioxide, where we find a potential possibility of the
formation of gaseous horizons deep below a porous medium surface. The reported
effects are of particular importance for natural methane hydrate deposits and
the problem of burial of industrial production of carbon dioxide in deep
aquifers.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, Physical Review
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