47,263 research outputs found
Self-assembled granular walkers
Mechanisms of locomotion in microscopic systems are of great interest not
only for technological applications, but also for the sake of understanding,
and potentially harnessing, processes far from thermal equilibrium.
Down-scaling is a particular challenge, and has led to a number of interesting
concepts including thermal ratchet systems and asymmetric swimmers. Here we
present a system which is particularly intriguing, as it is self-assembling and
uses a robust mechanism which can be implemented in various settings. It
consists of small spheres of different size which adhere to each other, and are
subject to an oscillating (zero average) external force eld. An inherent
nonlinearity in the mutual force network leads to force rectication and hence
to locomotion. We present a model that accounts for the observed behaviour and
demonstrates the wide applicability and potential scalability of the concept.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure
A Non-Scaling FFAG Gantry Design for the PAMELA Project
A gantry is required for the PAMELA project using non-scaling Fixed Field Alternating Gradient (NS-FFAG) magnets. The NS-FFAG principle offers the possibility of a gantry much smaller, lighter and cheaper than conventional designs, with the added ability to accept a wide range of fast changing energies. This paper will build on previous work to investigate a design which could be used for the PAMELA project
Detection and predictive modeling of chaos in finite hydrological time series
International audienceThe ability to detect the chaotic signal from a finite time series observation of hydrologic systems is addressed in this paper. The presence of random and seasonal components in hydrological time series, like rainfall or runoff, makes the detection process challenging. Tests with simulated data demonstrate the presence of thresholds, in terms of noise to chaotic-signal and seasonality to chaotic-signal ratios, beyond which the set of currently available tools is not able to detect the chaotic component. The investigations also indicate that the decomposition of a simulated time series into the corresponding random, seasonal and chaotic components is possible from finite data. Real streamflow data from the Arkansas and Colorado rivers are used to validate these results. Neither of the raw time series exhibits chaos. While a chaotic component can be extracted from the Arkansas data, such a component is either not present or can not be extracted from the Colorado data. This indicates that real hydrologic data may or may not have a detectable chaotic component. The strengths and limitations of the existing set of tools for the detection and modeling of chaos are also studied
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