Effect of the Centrifugal Force on Domain Chaos in Rayleigh-B\'enard convection

Experiments and simulations from a variety of sample sizes indicated that the centrifugal force significantly affects rotating Rayleigh-B\'enard convection-patterns. In a large-aspect-ratio sample, we observed a hybrid state consisting of domain chaos close to the sample center, surrounded by an annulus of nearly-stationary nearly-radial rolls populated by occasional defects reminiscent of undulation chaos. Although the Coriolis force is responsible for domain chaos, by comparing experiment and simulation we show that the centrifugal force is responsible for the radial rolls. Furthermore, simulations of the Boussinesq equations for smaller aspect ratios neglecting the centrifugal force yielded a domain precession-frequency $f\sim\epsilon^\mu$ with $\mu\simeq1$ as predicted by the amplitude-equation model for domain chaos, but contradicted by previous experiment. Additionally the simulations gave a domain size that was larger than in the experiment. When the centrifugal force was included in the simulation, $\mu$ and the domain size closely agreed with experiment.Comment: 8 pages, 11 figure

Quantitative Comparison of Abundance Structures of Generalized Communities: From B-Cell Receptor Repertoires to Microbiomes

The \emph{community}, the assemblage of organisms co-existing in a given space and time, has the potential to become one of the unifying concepts of biology, especially with the advent of high-throughput sequencing experiments that reveal genetic diversity exhaustively. In this spirit we show that a tool from community ecology, the Rank Abundance Distribution (RAD), can be turned by the new MaxRank normalization method into a generic, expressive descriptor for quantitative comparison of communities in many areas of biology. To illustrate the versatility of the method, we analyze RADs from various \emph{generalized communities}, i.e.\ assemblages of genetically diverse cells or organisms, including human B cells, gut microbiomes under antibiotic treatment and of different ages and countries of origin, and other human and environmental microbial communities. We show that normalized RADs enable novel quantitative approaches that help to understand structures and dynamics of complex generalize communities

Submillimetric spectroscopic observations of volatiles in comet C/2004 Q2 (Machholz)

We aim to determine the production rates of several parent and product volatiles and the 12C/13C isotopic carbon ratio in the long-period comet C/2004 Q2 (Machholz), which is likely to originate from the Oort Cloud. The line emission from several molecules in the coma was measured with high signal-to-noise ratio in January 2005 at heliocentric distance of 1.2 AU by means of high-resolution spectroscopic observations using the Submillimeter Telescope (SMT). We have obtained production rates of several volatiles (CH3OH, HCN, H13CN, HNC, H2CO, CO and CS) by comparing the observed and simulated line-integrated intensities. Furthermore, multiline observations of the CH3OH (7-6) series allow us to estimate the rotational temperature using the rotation diagram technique. We find that the CH3OH population distribution of the levels sampled by these lines can be described by a rotational temperature of 40 \pm 3 K. Derived mixing ratios relative to hydrogen cyanide are CO/CH3OH/H2CO/CS/HNC/H13CN/HCN = 30.9/24.6/4.8/0.57/0.031/0.013/1 assuming a pointing offset of 8" due to the uncertain ephemeris at the time of the observations and the telescope pointing error. The measured relative molecular abundances in C/2004 Q2 (Machholz) are between low- to typical values of those obtained in Oort Cloud comets, suggesting that it has visited the inner solar system previously and undergone thermal processing. The HNC/HCN abundance ratio of ~3.1% is comparable to that found in other comets, accounting for the dependence on the heliocentric distance, and could possibly be explained by ion-molecule chemical processes in the low-temperature atmosphere. From a tentative H13CN detection, the measured value of 97 \pm 30 for the H12CN/H13CN isotopologue pair is consistent with a telluric value.Comment: 14 pages with 11 figures, abridged abstrac

A survey of volatile species in Oort cloud comets C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) and C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) at millimeter wavelengths

The line emission in the coma was measured in the comets C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) and C/2002 T7 (LINEAR), that were observed on five consecutive nights, 7-11 May 2004, at heliocentric distances of 1.0 and 0.7 AU, respectively, by means of high-resolution spectroscopy using the 10-m Submillimeter Telescope (SMT). We present a search for six parent- and product-volatile species (HCN, H2CO, CO, CS, CH3OH, and HNC) in both comets. Multiline observations of the CH3OH J = 5-4 series allow us to estimate the rotational temperature using the rotation diagram technique. We derive rotational temperatures of 54(9) K for C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) and 119(34) K for C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) that are roughly consistent with observations of other comets at similar distances from the Sun. The gas production rates of material are computed using a spherically symmetric molecular excitation code that includes collisions between neutrals and electrons. We find an HCN production rate of 2.96(5)e26 molec.s-1 for comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT), corresponding to a mixing ratio with respect to H2O of 1.12(2)e-3. The mean HCN production rate during the observing period is 4.54(10)e26 molec.s-1 for comet C/2002 T7 (LINEAR), which gives a Q_HCN/Q_H2O mixing ratio of 1.51(3)e-3. With systematically lower mixing ratios in comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT), production rate ratios of the observed species with respect to H2O lie within the typical ranges of dynamically new comets in both objects. We find a relative low abundance of CO in C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) compared to the observed range in other comets based on millimeter/submillimeter observations, and a significant upper limit on the CO production in C/2002 T7 (LINEAR) is derived. Depletion of CO suggests partial evaporation from the surface layers during previous visits to the outer Solar System and agrees with previous measurements of dynamically new comets.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figures. Minor changes to match the published versio

The Domain Chaos Puzzle and the Calculation of the Structure Factor and Its Half-Width

The disagreement of the scaling of the correlation length xi between experiment and the Ginzburg-Landau (GL) model for domain chaos was resolved. The Swift-Hohenberg (SH) domain-chaos model was integrated numerically to acquire test images to study the effect of a finite image-size on the extraction of xi from the structure factor (SF). The finite image size had a significant effect on the SF determined with the Fourier-transform (FT) method. The maximum entropy method (MEM) was able to overcome this finite image-size problem and produced fairly accurate SFs for the relatively small image sizes provided by experiments. Correlation lengths often have been determined from the second moment of the SF of chaotic patterns because the functional form of the SF is not known. Integration of several test functions provided analytic results indicating that this may not be a reliable method of extracting xi. For both a Gaussian and a squared SH form, the correlation length xibar=1/sigma, determined from the variance sigma^2 of the SF, has the same dependence on the control parameter epsilon as the length xi contained explicitly in the functional forms. However, for the SH and the Lorentzian forms we find xibar ~ xi^1/2. Results for xi determined from new experimental data by fitting the functional forms directly to the experimental SF yielded xi ~ epsilon^-nu} with nu ~= 1/4 for all four functions in the case of the FT method, but nu ~= 1/2, in agreement with the GL prediction, in the the case of the MEM. Over a wide range of epsilon and wave number k, the experimental SFs collapsed onto a unique curve when appropriately scaled by xi.Comment: 15 pages, 26 figures, 1 tabl

Finite Size Scaling of Domain Chaos

Numerical studies of the domain chaos state in a model of rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection suggest that finite size effects may account for the discrepancy between experimentally measured values of the correlation length and the predicted divergence near onset

Ammonia and other parent molecules in comet 10P/Tempel 2 from Herschel/HIFI and ground-based radio observations

The Jupiter-family comet 10P/Tempel 2 was observed during its 2010 return with the Herschel Space Observatory. We present here the observation of the (J, K) = (1, 0)-(0, 0) transition of ammonia at 572 GHz in this comet with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) of Herschel. We also report on radio observations of other molecules (HCN, CH3OH, H2S and CS) obtained during the 1999 return of the comet with the CSO telescope and the JCMT, and during its 2010 return with the IRAM 30-m telescope. Molecular abundances relative to water are 0.09%, 1.8%, 0.4%, and 0.08% for HCN, CH3OH, H2S, and CS, respectively. An abundance of 0.5% for NH3 is obtained, which is similar to the values measured in other comets. The hyperfine structure of the ammonia line is resolved for the first time in an astronomical source. Strong anisotropy in the outgassing is present in all observations from 1999 to 2010 and is modelled to derive the production rates.Comment: 6 pages and 8 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Square patterns in Rayleigh-Benard convection with rotation about a vertical axis

We present experimental results for Rayleigh-Benard convection with rotation about a vertical axis at dimensionless rotation rates in the range 0 to 250 and upto 20% above the onset. Critical Rayleigh numbers and wavenumbers agree with predictions of linear stability analysis. For rotation rates greater than 70 and close to onset, the patterns are cellular with local four-fold coordination and differ from the theoretically expected Kuppers-Lortz unstable state. Stable as well as intermittent defect-free square lattices exist over certain parameter ranges. Over other ranges defects dynamically disrupt the lattice but cellular flow and local four-fold coordination is maintained.Comment: ReVTeX, 4 pages, 7 eps figures include