Quick-closing valve is actuated by explosive discharge

Remotely controlled plug-type valve shuts off a high-pressure, high-temperature gas flow in a few milliseconds. The valve is actuated by a commercially available electrically initiated squib of low explosive power. More rapid closure is attainable with squibs containing heavier explosive changes

Military spending and economic growth in China: a regime-switching analysis

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.This article investigates the impact of military spending changes on economic growth in China over the period 1953 to 2010. Using two-state Markov-switching specifications, the results suggest that the relationship between military spending changes and economic growth is state dependent. Specifically, the results show that military spending changes affect the economic growth negatively during a slower growth-higher variance state, while positively within a faster growth-lower variance one. It is also demonstrated that military spending changes contain information about the growth transition probabilities. As a policy tool, the results indicate that increases in military spending can be detrimental to growth during slower growth-higher growth volatility periods. © 2014 © 2014 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis

Different reactions to adverse neighborhoods in games of cooperation

In social dilemmas, cooperation among randomly interacting individuals is often difficult to achieve. The situation changes if interactions take place in a network where the network structure jointly evolves with the behavioral strategies of the interacting individuals. In particular, cooperation can be stabilized if individuals tend to cut interaction links when facing adverse neighborhoods. Here we consider two different types of reaction to adverse neighborhoods, and all possible mixtures between these reactions. When faced with a gloomy outlook, players can either choose to cut and rewire some of their links to other individuals, or they can migrate to another location and establish new links in the new local neighborhood. We find that in general local rewiring is more favorable for the evolution of cooperation than emigration from adverse neighborhoods. Rewiring helps to maintain the diversity in the degree distribution of players and favors the spontaneous emergence of cooperative clusters. Both properties are known to favor the evolution of cooperation on networks. Interestingly, a mixture of migration and rewiring is even more favorable for the evolution of cooperation than rewiring on its own. While most models only consider a single type of reaction to adverse neighborhoods, the coexistence of several such reactions may actually be an optimal setting for the evolution of cooperation.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figures; accepted for publication in PLoS ON

A False Start in the Race Against Doping in Sport: Concerns With Cycling’s Biological Passport

Professional cycling has suffered from a number of doping scandals. The sport’s governing bodies have responded by implementing an aggressive new antidoping program known as the biological passport. Cycling’s biological passport marks a departure from traditional antidoping efforts, which have focused on directly detecting prohibited substances in a cyclist’s system. Instead, the biological passport tracks biological variables in a cyclist’s blood and urine over time, monitoring for fluctuations that are thought to indirectly reveal the effects of doping. Although this method of indirect detection is promising, it also raises serious legal and scientific concerns. Since its introduction, the cycling community has debated the reliability of indirect biological-passport evidence and the clarity, consistency, and transparency of its use in proving doping violations. Such uncertainty undermines the legitimacy of finding cyclists guilty of doping based on this indirect evidence alone. Antidoping authorities should address these important concerns before continuing to pursue doping sanctions against cyclists solely on the basis of their biological passports

Evaporated Lithium Surface Coatings in NSTX

Two lithium evaporators were used to evaporate more than 100 g of lithium on to the NSTX lower divertor region. Prior to each discharge, the evaporators were withdrawn behind shutters, where they also remained during the subsequent HeGDC applied for periods up to 9.5 min. After the HeGDC, the shutters were opened and the LITERs were reinserted to deposit lithium on the lower divertor target for 10 min, at rates of 10-70 mg/min, prior to the next discharge. The major improvements in plasma performance from these lithium depositions include: 1) plasma density reduction as a result of lithium deposition; 2) suppression of ELMs; 3) improvement of energy confinement in a low-triangularity shape; 4) improvement in plasma performance for standard, high-triangularity discharges; 5) reduction of the required HeGDC time between discharges; 6) increased pedestal electron and ion temperature; 7) reduced SOL plasma density; and 8) reduced edge neutral density

Physics Design Requirements for the National Spherical Torus Experiment Liquid Lithium Divertor

Recent NSTX high power divertor experiments have shown significant and recurring benefits of solid lithium coatings on PFC's to the performance of divertor plasmas in both L- and H- mode confinement regimes heated by high-power neutral beams. The next step in this work is installation of a liquid lithium divertor (LLD) to achieve density control for inductionless current drive capability (e.g., about a 15-25% ne decrease from present highest non-inductionless fraction discharges which often evolve toward the density limit, ne/nGW~1), to enable ne scan capability (x2) in the H-mode, to test the ability to operate at significantly lower density for future ST-CTF reactor designs (e.g., ne/nGW = 0.25), and eventually to investigate high heat-flux power handling (10 MW/m2) with longpulse discharges (>1.5s). The first step (LLD-1) physics design encompasses the desired plasma requirements, the experimental capabilities and conditions, power handling, radial location, pumping capability, operating temperature, lithium filling, MHD forces, and diagnostics for control and characterization