Physics-Dynamics Coupling: Understanding Tropical Processes and Process Interactions in Weather and Climate Models

The tropics are an important area of uncertainty in weather and climate models with variation between models in the tropics often being larger than in the extra-tropics for example due to a lack of strong geostrophic balance. In this thesis, we consider atmospheric behaviour in the tropics with a focus on understanding the long-term balance regimes that arise when drag and heating interact in the tropical atmosphere. We will look at the dry and moist case as well as considering the adjustment to balance process. We outline a number of long-term balance regimes for the 2D dry and moist tropical atmosphere in the absence of Coriolis acceleration with heating and drag physics, deriving scalings for horizontal velocity, vertical velocity, potential temperature, Exner pressure, and where appropriate buoyancy frequency and total water. We then investigate the ability of a model to achieve or not achieve our hypothesised balances. We find in the dry case that the four regimes we outline are achievable within the model and produce distinct behaviours with scaling relationships that mostly match the theory. In the moist case however, only one balance regime can be achieved by the model, but the existence or not of long-term balance in the moist case has a notable effect on the triggering, sustaining and organisation of moist plumes. We also look at numerical constraints affecting the development of long-term balance regimes and we find that the horizontal gridlength has a strong effect on which long-term balance regime the model finds itself in and whether the model can achieve balance at all. We also consider the effect of horizontal gridlength on adjustment processes such as gravity waves

Superconducting Bearing Design for Outer Rotor Flywheel Using Lumped Parameter Techniques

This paper describes the application of lumped parameter modeling techniques to designing high temperature superconducting bearings for outer-rotor flywheel energy storage systems. The lumped parameter models decrease computational time by 99% compared to Finite Element Analysis (FEM) without compromising fidelity needed to capture the non-linear and hysteretic force-displacement behavior between a levitated permanent magnet and bulk superconductor. The techniques formulated can be used to quickly evaluate lifting capacity and translational stiffness for a superconducting bearing design. The validity of the modeling approach has been verified by comparing results from FEM studies and experimental tests.Center for Electromechanic

An analysis of the effects of secondary reflections on dual-frequency reflectometers

The error-producing mechanism involving secondary reflections in a dual-frequency, distance measuring reflectometer is examined analytically. Equations defining the phase, and hence distance, error are derived. The error-reducing potential of frequency-sweeping is demonstrated. It is shown that a single spurious return can be completely nullified by optimizing the sweep width

Estimating long-term growth-rate changes of southern bluefin tuna (Thunnus maccoyii) from two periods of tag-return data

Southern bluefin tuna (SBT) (Thunnus maccoyii) growth rates are estimated from tag-return data associated with two time periods, the 1960s and 1980s. The traditional von Bertalanffy growth model (VBG) and a two-phase VBG model were fitted to the data by maximum likelihood. The traditional VBG model did not provide an adequate representation of growth in SBT, and the two-phase VBG yielded a significantly better fit. The results indicated that significant change occurs in the pattern of growth in relation to a VBG curve during the juvenile stages of the SBT life cycle, which may be related to the transition from a tightly schooling fish that spends substantial time in near and surface shore waters to one that is found primarily in more offshore and deeper waters. The results suggest that more complex growth models should be considered for other tunas and for other species that show a marked change in habitat use with age. The likelihood surface for the two-phase VBG model was found to be bimodal and some implications of this are investigated. Significant and substantial differences were found in the growth for fish spawned in the 1960s and in the 1980s, such that after age four there is a difference of about one year in the expected age of a fish of similar length which persists over the size range for which meaningful recapture data are available. This difference may be a density-dependent response as a consequence of the marked reduction in the SBT population. Given the key role that estimates of growth have in most stock assessments, the results indicate that there is a need both for the regular monitoring of growth rates and for provisions for changes in growth over time (possibly related to changes in abundance) in the stock assessment models used for SBT and other species

A Feature-Augmented Grammar for Automated Media Production

The IST Polymnia project is creating a fully automated system for personalised video generation, including content creation, selection and composition. This paper presents a linguistically motivated solution using context-free feature-augmented grammar rules to describe editing tasks and hence automate video editing. The solution is media and application independent

Search for cosmic gamma radiation with a vidicon spark chamber Final report

Cosmic gamma radiation searched with vidicon spark chamber flown in high-altitude balloo

Inclusive Production of Four Charm Hadrons in e^+ e^- Annihilation at B Factories

Measurements by the Belle Collaboration of the exclusive production of two charmonia in e^+ e^- annihilation differ substantially from theoretical predictions. Till now, no conclusive explanation for this remarkable discrepancy has been provided. Even the origin of the discrepancy is not identified, yet. We suggest that the measurement of four-charm events in Belle data must provide a strong constraint in identifying the origin of this large discrepancy. Our prediction of the cross section for e^+e^- -> c c-bar c c-bar, in lowest order in strong coupling constant, at sqrt{s}=10.6 GeV is about 0.1 pb. If measured four-charm cross section is compatible with the prediction based on perturbative QCD, it is very likely that factorization of hadronization process from perturbative part may be significantly violated or there exists a new production mechanism. If the cross section for the four-charm event is also larger than the prediction like that for the exclusive J/psi+eta_c production, perturbative QCD expansion itself will be proved to be unreliable and loses predictive power.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, version published in Phys. Rev. D as a Rapid Communicatio

QSSR estimate of the BBB_B parameter at next-to-leading order

We compute the leading $\alpha_s$ corrections to the two-point correlator of the $O_{\Delta B=2}$ operator which controls the $B^0 \bar B^0$ mixing. Using this result within the QCD spectral sum rules approach and some phenomenologically reasonable assumptions in the parametrization of the spectral function, we conclude that the vacuum saturation values $B_B\simeq B_{B^*}\simeq 1$ are satisfied within 15\%.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, CERN-TH.7140/94, PM 93/16, and KEK Preprint 93-184, two figures appended as a PS fil