533 research outputs found
Geology of the Tertiary Sediments in the Northwestern End of the Wind River Basin
The lithology of the majority of the beds of the northwestern end of the Wind River Basin varies greatly within short distances. A few individual beds retain their character over a comparatively large area. These beds were traced for more than ten miles along the north side of Wind River Valley. The topography of the area is strikingly different at various locations, due to glaciation, changes in lithology, and elevation above the Wind River. Eleven stratigraphic sections were carefully measured and described. These sections were correlated on the basis of trigonometric projection, Stratigraphic sequence, and lithologic similarity. Measurements and traverses were made with a transit to insure accuracy. It is the writer\u27s hope that this article will prove of value to future students of the area
Optimizing Collection of Trace Biological Samples from Vehicle Headrests
Tape-lifting and swabbing are two methods commonly used for collecting biological samples in the United Kingdom and United States to investigate vehicle crimes. Determining the optimal collection method may lead to an increase in generating DNA profiles and crime-solving. The objective of this study is to evaluate the efficiency of adhesive tape and the double-swab collection methods for investigating vehicle crimes with possible touch DNA samples. Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the use of tape-lifts and swabs on spiked common vehicle fabric materials. The efficiency of recovery between the two collection methods was performed using qPCR. The results from the collection of fabric materials indicated tape-lifts outperformed swabbing on cloth and vinyl substrates, while swabbing resulted in comparable recovery on leather substrates. By optimizing sample collection techniques, we aim to aid not only investigations involving vehicles but also other crimes with touch DNA evidence present
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Summary of scientific investigations for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant
The scientific issues concerning disposal of radioactive wastes in salt formations have received 40 years of attention since the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) first addressed this issue in the mid-50s. For the last 21 years, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) have directed site specific studies for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). This paper will focus primarily on the WIPP scientific studies now in their concluding stages, the major scientific controversies regarding the site, and some of the surprises encountered during the course of these scientific investigations. The WIPP project`s present understanding of the scientific processes involved continues to support the site as a satisfactory, safe location for the disposal of defense-related transuranic waste and one which will be shown to be in compliance with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards. Compliance will be evaluated by incorporating data from these experiments into Performance Assessment (PA) models developed to describe the physical and chemical processes that could occur at the WIPP during the next 10,000 years under a variety of scenarios. The resulting compliance document is scheduled to be presented to the EPA in October 1996 and all relevant information from scientific studies will be included in this application and the supporting analyses. Studies supporting this compliance application conclude the major period of scientific investigation for the WIPP. Further studies will be of a ``confirmatory`` and monitoring nature
Some thoughts on theoretical physics
Some thoughts are presented on the inter-relation between beauty and truth in
science in general and theoretical physics in particular. Some conjectural
procedures that can be used to create new ideas, concepts and results are
illustrated in both Boltzmann-Gibbs and nonextensive statistical mechanics. The
sociological components of scientific progress and its unavoidable and benefic
controversies are, mainly through existing literary texts, briefly addressed as
well.Comment: Short essay based on the plenary talk given at the International
Workshop on Trends and Perspectives in Extensive and Non-Extensive
Statistical Mechanics, held in November 19-21, 2003, in Angra dos Reis,
Brazil. To appear in a Physica A special volume (2004) edited by E.M.F.
Curado, H.J. Herrmann and M. Barbosa. 23 pages, including 3 figures. The new
version has 25 pages and the same figures. The texts by Saramago and by
Bersanelli are now translated into English. A few typos and minor
improvements are included as wel
Revision of Solar Spicule Classification
Solar spicules are the fundamental magnetic structures in the chromosphere
and considered to play a key role in channelling the chromosphere and corona.
Recently, it was suggested by De Pontieu et al. that there were two types of
spicules with very different dynamic properties, which were detected by space-
time plot technique in the Ca ii H line (3968 A) wavelength from Hinode/SOT
observations. 'Type I' spicule, with a 3-7 minute lifetime, undergoes a cycle
of upward and downward motion; in contrast, 'Type II' spicule fades away within
dozens of seconds, without descending phase. We are motivated by the fact that
for a spicule with complicated 3D motion, the space-time plot, which is made
through a slit on a fixed position, could not match the spicule behavior all
the time and might lose its real life story. By revisiting the same data sets,
we identify and trace 105 and 102 spicules in quiet sun (QS) and coronal hole
(CH), respectively, and obtain their statistical dynamic properties. First, we
have not found a single convincing example of 'Type II' spicules. Secondly,
more than 60% of the identified spicules in each region show a complete cycle,
i.e., majority spicules are 'Type I'. Thirdly, the lifetime of spicules in QS
and CH are 148 s and 112 s, respectively, but there is no fundamental lifetime
difference between the spicules in QS and CH reported earlier. Therefore, the
suggestion of coronal heating by 'Type II' spicules should be taken with
cautions. Subject headings: Sun: chromosphere Sun:transition region Sun:coronaComment: accepted by Ap
The Peaceful Atom Comes to Campus
Youthful idealism, institutional ambition, and Cold War sensibilities all helped shape the Michigan Memorial–Phoenix Project, the University of Michigan’s tribute to fallen World War II soldiers.</jats:p
On increasing global temperatures: 75 years after Callendar
In 1938, Guy Stewart Callendar was the first to demonstrate that the Earth’s land surface was warming. Callendar also suggested that the production of carbon dioxide by the combustion of fossil fuels was responsible for much of this modern change in climate. This short note marks the 75th anniversary of Callendar’s landmark study and demonstrates that his global land temperature estimates agree remarkably well with more recent analyses
The Code of Protest. Images of Peace in the West German Peace Movements, 1945-1990
The article examines posters produced by the peace movements in the Federal Republic of
Germany during the ColdWar, with an analytical focus on the transformation of the iconography
of peace in modernity. Was it possible to develop an independent, positive depiction of peace
in the context of protests for peace and disarmament? Despite its name, the pictorial selfrepresentation
of the campaign ‘Fight against Nuclear Death’ in the late 1950s did not draw
on the theme of pending nuclear mass death. The large-scale protest movement in the 1980s
against NATO’s 1979 ‘double-track’ decision contrasted female peacefulness with masculine
aggression in an emotionally charged pictorial symbolism. At the same time this symbolism
marked a break with the pacifist iconographic tradition that had focused on the victims of war.
Instead, the movement presented itself with images of demonstrating crowds, as an anticipation
of its peaceful ends. Drawing on the concept of asymmetrical communicative ‘codes’ that has
been developed in sociological systems theory, the article argues that the iconography of peace in
peace movement posters could not develop a genuinely positive vision of peace, since the code of
protest can articulate the designation value ‘peace’ only in conjunction with the rejection value
‘war’
The 'law of requisite variety' may assist climate change negotiations:a review of the Kyoto and Durban meetings
Ashby wrote about cybernetics, during which discourse he described a Law that attempts to resolve difficulties arising in complex situations – he suggested using variety to combat complexity. In this paper, we note that the delegates to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Kyoto, 1997, were offered a ‘simplifying solution’ to cope with the complexity of discussing multiple pollutants allegedly contributing to ‘climate change’. We assert that the adoption of CO2eq has resulted in imprecise thinking regarding the ‘carbon footprint’ – that is, ‘CO2’ – to the exclusion of other pollutants. We propose, as Ashby might have done, that the CO2eq and other factors within the ‘climate change’ negotiations be disaggregated to allow careful and specific individual solutions to be agreed on each factor. We propose a new permanent and transparent ‘action group’ be in charge of agenda setting and to manage the messy annual meetings. This body would be responsible for achieving accords at these annual meetings, rather than forcing this task on national hosts. We acknowledge the task is daunting and we recommend moving on from Ashby's Law to Beer's Viable Systems approach
Eutectic Colony Formation: A Stability Analysis
Experiments have widely shown that a steady-state lamellar eutectic
solidification front is destabilized on a scale much larger than the lamellar
spacing by the rejection of a dilute ternary impurity and forms two-phase cells
commonly referred to as `eutectic colonies'. We extend the stability analysis
of Datye and Langer for a binary eutectic to include the effect of a ternary
impurity. We find that the expressions for the critical onset velocity and
morphological instability wavelength are analogous to those for the classic
Mullins-Sekerka instability of a monophase planar interface, albeit with an
effective surface tension that depends on the geometry of the lamellar
interface and, non-trivially, on interlamellar diffusion. A qualitatively new
aspect of this instability is the occurence of oscillatory modes due to the
interplay between the destabilizing effect of the ternary impurity and the
dynamical feedback of the local change in lamellar spacing on the front motion.
In a transient regime, these modes lead to the formation of large scale
oscillatory microstructures for which there is recent experimental evidence in
a transparent organic system. Moreover, it is shown that the eutectic front
dynamics on a scale larger than the lamellar spacing can be formulated as an
effective monophase interface free boundary problem with a modified
Gibbs-Thomson condition that is coupled to a slow evolution equation for the
lamellar spacing. This formulation provides additional physical insights into
the nature of the instability and a simple means to calculate an approximate
stability spectrum. Finally, we investigate the influence of the ternary
impurity on a short wavelength oscillatory instability that is already present
at off-eutectic compositions in binary eutectics.Comment: 26 pages RevTex, 14 figures (28 EPS files); some minor changes;
references adde
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