A methodological proposal to investigate the long term storage of pollutants in freshwater sediment biofilms and their response to environmental disturbances.

This research will review novel methodologies for understanding the behaviour of microbial communities and their role in pollution storage. Freshwater sediments are inhabited by attached microbial communities (biofilms) which are responsible for the majority of a river's metabolic activity. Biofilms thus provide valuable information on the environmental quality of the river and its surrounding areas. Despite remediation of freshwater sediments, biofilms can still store large quantities of pollutants. Biofilms have the exceptional capacity to adjust to new conditions including natural and anthropogenic environmental disturbances. Gaining a more comprehensive understanding of biofilm behaviour is therefore fundamental to developing improved management strategies. The initial focus of this research will be in the River Doe Lea in North East Derbyshire. The River Doe Lea extends 18km from the South at its source near Tibshelf, to the North at its discharge at the River Rother. In the 1990s the River was famed for having the highest level of dioxins in the world, 27 times higher than the second most polluted. The acute cause of this was a single pollutant event, however the river has also been subjected to long term anthropogenic pollution through industry, agriculture, transport (railways, M1) and wastewater pollution. While previous studies by the Environment Agency have focused on the flow, chemical, biological and ecological quality of the river, no research has been conducted into the role and behaviour of biofilms

Robust active magnetic dearing control using stabilizing dynamical compensators

The robust control of active magnetic bearings, based on a linearised interval model, is considered. Through robust stability analysis, all the first-order robust stabilizing dynamical compensators for the interval system are obtained. Disturbance attenuation and minimum control effort are also addressed. The approach is applied to a high-speed flywheel supported by two active and two passive magnetic bearings. Simulation and experimental results both show that it is simple, effective, and robust

Robust magnetic bearing control using stabilizing dynamical compensators

Abstract—This paper considers the robust control of an active radial magnetic bearing system, having a homopolar, external rotor topology, which is used to support an annular fiber composite flywheel rim. A first-order dynamical compensator, which uses only position feedback information, is used for control, its design being based on a linearized one-dimensional second-order model which is treated as an interval system in order to cope with parameter uncertainties. Through robust stability analysis, a parameterization of all first-order robustly stabilizing dynamical compensators for the interval system is initially obtained. Then, by appropriate selection of the free parameters in the robust controller, the H2 norm of the disturbance-output transfer function is made arbitrarily small over the system parameter intervals, and the norm of the input–output transfer function is made arbitrarily close to a lower bound. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate both stability and performance robustness of the developed controller

Influence of uniaxial tensile stress on the mechanical and piezoelectric properties of short-period ferroelectric superlattice

Tetragonal ferroelectric/ferroelectric BaTiO3/PbTiO3 superlattice under uniaxial tensile stress along the c axis is investigated from first principles. We show that the calculated ideal tensile strength is 6.85 GPa and that the superlattice under the loading of uniaxial tensile stress becomes soft along the nonpolar axes. We also find that the appropriately applied uniaxial tensile stress can significantly enhance the piezoelectricity for the superlattice, with piezoelectric coefficient d33 increasing from the ground state value by a factor of about 8, reaching 678.42 pC/N. The underlying mechanism for the enhancement of piezoelectricity is discussed

Generally Covariant Conservative Energy-Momentum for Gravitational Anyons

We obtain a generally covariant conservation law of energy-momentum for gravitational anyons by the general displacement transform. The energy-momentum currents have also superpotentials and are therefore identically conserved. It is shown that for Deser's solution and Clement's solution, the energy vanishes. The reasonableness of the definition of energy-momentum may be confirmed by the solution for pure Einstein gravity which is a limit of vanishing Chern-Simons coulping of gravitational anyons.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, no figure

Topological Bose-Mott Insulators in a One-Dimensional Optical Superlattice

We study topological properties of the Bose-Hubbard model with repulsive interactions in a one-dimensional optical superlattice. We find that the Mott insulator states of the single-component (two-component) Bose-Hubbard model under fractional fillings are topological insulators characterized by a nonzero charge (or spin) Chern number with nontrivial edge states. For ultracold atomic experiments, we show that the topological Chern number can be detected through measuring the density profiles of the bosonic atoms in a harmonic trap.Comment: 5 pages, published versio

Robust Quantum State Transfer in Random Unpolarized Spin Chains

We propose and analyze a new approach for quantum state transfer between remote spin qubits. Specifically, we demonstrate that coherent quantum coupling between remote qubits can be achieved via certain classes of random, unpolarized (infinite temperature) spin chains. Our method is robust to coupling strength disorder and does not require manipulation or control over individual spins. In principle, it can be used to attain perfect state transfer over arbitrarily long range via purely Hamiltonian evolution and may be particularly applicable in a solid-state quantum information processor. As an example, we demonstrate that it can be used to attain strong coherent coupling between Nitrogen-Vacancy centers separated by micrometer distances at room temperature. Realistic imperfections and decoherence effects are analyzed.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. V2: Modified discussion of disorder, added references - final version as published in Phys. Rev. Let

The extraction of nuclear sea quark distribution and energy loss effect in Drell-Yan experiment

The next-to-leading order and leading order analysis are performed on the differential cross section ratio from Drell-Yan process. It is found that the effect of next-to-leading order corrections can be negligible on the differential cross section ratios as a function of the quark momentum fraction in the beam proton and the target nuclei for the current Fermilab and future lower beam proton energy. The nuclear Drell-Yan reaction is an ideal tool to study the energy loss of the fast quark moving through cold nuclei. In the leading order analysis, the theoretical results with quark energy loss are in good agreement with the Fermilab E866 experimental data on the Drell-Yan differential cross section ratios as a function of the momentum fraction of the target parton. It is shown that the quark energy loss effect has significant impact on the Drell-Yan differential cross section ratios. The nuclear Drell-Yan experiment at current Fermilab and future lower energy proton beam can not provide us with more information on the nuclear sea quark distribution.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figure