30,399 research outputs found
Effects of crystal defects on stress-corrosion susceptibility in aluminum alloy 7075
Point defects were introduced into specimens of three heat-treated tempers of alloy 7075 by neutron irradiation. Continuous ultrasonic monitoring allowed crack growth to be observed. Effects on stress-corrosion susceptibility, elongation, hardness, and yield strength are noted and compared for the three tempers
Characterization of a new iron-on-zeolite Y Fischer-Tropsch catalyst
Iron pentacarbonyl adsorbed on dry Na-Y zeolite can be oxidized at subambient temperatures into Fe203 located in the zeolite supercages (catalyst I). When catalyst I is hydrogen reduced at 575 K most of the iron has agglomerated externally to the zeolite (catalyst 11). When the iron carbonyl is thermally decomposed in vacuo at 525 K, an iron phase with a very low degree of dispersion is again obtained (catalyst 111). During a Fischer-Tropsch reaction most of the iron is transformed into a Hagg-type carbide phase, located externally to the zeolite. Catalysts I1 and 111 rapidly reach steady state and show a Schulz-Flory-type of product distribution, the Hagg carbide being the active phase. Catalyst I slowly moves to steady state and Schulz-Flory behavior. Product selectivity is only found on this catalyst during transient conditions. The physical information on the three catalysts before and after reaction was obtained with transmission electron microscopy and Mossbauer and EXAFS spectroscopies. These techniques supplied consistent and complementary evidenc
Toward the next generation of research into small area effects on health : a synthesis of multilevel investigations published since July 1998.
To map out area effects on health research, this study had the following aims: (1) to inventory multilevel investigations of area effects on self rated health, cardiovascular diseases and risk factors, and mortality among adults; (2) to describe and critically discuss methodological approaches employed and results observed; and (3) to formulate selected recommendations for advancing the study of area effects on health. Overall, 86 studies were inventoried. Although several innovative methodological approaches and analytical designs were found, small areas are most often operationalised using administrative and statistical spatial units. Most studies used indicators of area socioeconomic status derived from censuses, and few provided information on the validity and reliability of measures of exposures. A consistent finding was that a significant portion of the variation in health is associated with area context independently of individual characteristics. Area effects on health, although significant in most studies, often depend on the health outcome studied, the measure of area exposure used, and the spatial scale at which associations are examined
Healthiness from Duality
Healthiness is a good old question in program logics that dates back to
Dijkstra. It asks for an intrinsic characterization of those predicate
transformers which arise as the (backward) interpretation of a certain class of
programs. There are several results known for healthiness conditions: for
deterministic programs, nondeterministic ones, probabilistic ones, etc.
Building upon our previous works on so-called state-and-effect triangles, we
contribute a unified categorical framework for investigating healthiness
conditions. We find the framework to be centered around a dual adjunction
induced by a dualizing object, together with our notion of relative
Eilenberg-Moore algebra playing fundamental roles too. The latter notion seems
interesting in its own right in the context of monads, Lawvere theories and
enriched categories.Comment: 13 pages, Extended version with appendices of a paper accepted to
LICS 201
Approximate theoretical performance evaluation for a diverging rocket
A simplified combustion model, which is motivated by available performance studies on the diverging rocket reactor, has been used as basis for an engine performance
evaluation. Comparison with conventional rocket configurations shows that an upper performance limit for the diverging reactor is comparable with performance
estimates for engines using an adiabatic work cycle. Development of the diverging reactor for engine applications may, however, offer some advantages for very hot, high-energy, propellant systems
Affective iconic words benefit from additional sound–meaning integration in the left amygdala
Recent studies have shown that a similarity between sound and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) can help more readily access the meaning of that word, but the neural mechanisms underlying this beneficial role of iconicity in semantic processing remain largely unknown. In an fMRI study, we focused on the affective domain and examined whether affective iconic words (e.g., high arousal in both sound and meaning) activate additional brain regions that integrate emotional information from different domains (i.e., sound and meaning). In line with our hypothesis, affective iconic words, compared to their non‐iconic counterparts, elicited additional BOLD responses in the left amygdala known for its role in multimodal representation of emotions. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that the observed amygdalar activity was modulated by an interaction of iconic condition and activations in two hubs representative for processing sound (left superior temporal gyrus) and meaning (left inferior frontal gyrus) of words. These results provide a neural explanation for the facilitative role of iconicity in language processing and indicate that language users are sensitive to the interaction between sound and meaning aspect of words, suggesting the existence of iconicity as a general property of human language
Phonon number quantum jumps in an optomechanical system
We describe an optomechanical system in which the mean phonon number of a
single mechanical mode conditionally displaces the amplitude of the optical
field. Using homodyne detection of the output field we establish the conditions
under which phonon number quantum jumps can be inferred from the measurement
record: both the cavity damping rate and the measurement rate of the phonon
number must be much greater than the thermalization rate of the mechanical
mode. We present simulations of the conditional dynamics of the measured system
using the stochastic master equation. In the good-measurement limit, the
conditional evolution of the mean phonon number shows quantum jumps as phonons
enter and exit the mechanical resonator via the bath.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures. minor revisions since first versio
Interaction of vortices in superconductors with kappa close to 2^(-1/2)
Using a perturbative approach to the infinitely degenerate Bogomolnyi vortex
state for a superconductor with kappa = 2^(-1/2), T -> T_c, we calculate the
interaction of vortices in a superconductor with kappa close to 2^(-1/2). We
find, numerically and analytically, that depending on the material the
interaction potential between the vortices varies with decreasing kappa from
purely repulsive (as in a type-II superconductor) to purely attractive (as in a
type-I superconductor) in two different ways: either vortices form a bound
state and the distance between them changes gradually from infinity to zero, or
this transition occurs in a discontinuous way as a result of a competition
between minima at infinity and zero. We study the discontinuous transition
between the vortex and Meissner states caused by the non-monotonous vortex
interaction and calculate the corresponding magnetization jump.Comment: v1:original submit v2:changed formate of images (gave problems to
some) v3:corrected fig v4v6 (was -v4v6) orthographic corrections (and
U_lat/int) mismatch v4:more small orthographic corrections v5:converted to
revtex4 and bibTex v6:Renamed images to submit to pr
Preliminary calibration of a generic scramjet combustor
The results of a preliminary investigation of the combustion of hydrogen fuel at hypersonic flow conditions are provided. The tests were performed in a generic, constant-area combustor model with test gas supplied by a free-piston-driven reflected-shock tunnel. Static pressure measurements along the combustor wall indicated that burning did occur for combustor inlet conditions of P(static) approximately equal to 19kPa, T(static) approximately equal to 1080 K, and U approximately equal to 3630 m/s with a fuel equivalence ratio approximately equal to 0.9. These inlet conditions were obtained by operating the tunnel with stagnation enthalpy approximately equal to 8.1 MJ/kg, stagnation pressure approximately equal to 52 MPa, and a contoured nozzle with a nominal exit Mach number of 5.5
Combinatorial models of rigidity and renormalization
We first introduce the percolation problems associated with the graph
theoretical concepts of -sparsity, and make contact with the physical
concepts of ordinary and rigidity percolation. We then devise a renormalization
transformation for -percolation problems, and investigate its domain of
validity. In particular, we show that it allows an exact solution of
-percolation problems on hierarchical graphs, for . We
introduce and solve by renormalization such a model, which has the interesting
feature of showing both ordinary percolation and rigidity percolation phase
transitions, depending on the values of the parameters.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure
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