Systematic errors in global air-sea CO2 flux caused by temporal averaging of sea-level pressure

International audienceLong-term temporal averaging of meteorological data, such as wind speed and air pressure, can cause large errors in air-sea carbon flux estimates. Other researchers have already shown that time averaging of wind speed data creates large errors in flux due to the non-linear dependence of the gas transfer velocity on wind speed (Bates and Merlivat, 2001). However, in general, wind speed is negatively correlated with air pressure, and a given fractional change in the pressure of dry air produces an equivalent fractional change in the atmospheric partial pressure of carbon dioxide (<i>p</i>CO_2air). Thus low pressure systems cause a drop in <i>p</i>CO_2air, which together with the associated high winds, promotes outgassing/reduces uptake of CO₂ from the ocean. Here we quantify the errors in global carbon flux estimates caused by using monthly or climatological pressure data to calculate <i>p</i>CO_2air (and thus ignoring the covariance of wind and pressure) over the period 1990?1999, using two common parameterisations for gas transfer velocity (Wanninkhof, 1992 (W92) and Wanninkhof and McGillis, 1999 (WM99)). Results show that on average, compared with estimates made using 6 hourly pressure data, the global oceanic sink is systematically overestimated by 7% (W92) and 10% (WM99) when monthly mean pressure is used, and 9% (W92) and 12% (WM99) when climatological pressure is used

‘I Can’t Settle if It’s Not Tidy; I Blame That on My Mum’: Exploring Women’s Relational Household Work Narratives

Household work literature has highlighted the importance of mothers to their daughters' accounts of their household work practice, arguing that women can both aim to emulate and avoid particular practices in their own household work. This paper further explores this topic, drawing on a small-scale qualitative study to explore the self-narratives that two generations of mothers construct around the theme of household work. It looks particularly at how accounts of household work practices are incorporated into broader stories of growing up and taking responsibility, and the relevance of discourses of individualisation, and the notion of reflexive biographies to these explanations. This article also draws on theories of connectedness to show how self-narratives around the theme of household work reflect different forms of relationality, and to argue that a concept of relational selves is useful for making sense of these narratives

Effects of J-gate potential and interfaces on donor exchange coupling in the Kane quantum computer architecture

We calculate the electron exchange coupling for a phosphorus donor pair in silicon perturbed by a J-gate potential and the boundary effects of the silicon host geometry. In addition to the electron-electron exchange interaction we also calculate the contact hyperfine interaction between the donor nucleus and electron as a function of the varying experimental conditions. Donor separation, depth of the P nuclei below the silicon oxide layer and J-gate voltage become decisive factors in determining the strength of both the exchange coupling and the hyperfine interaction - both crucial components for qubit operations in the Kane quantum computer. These calculations were performed using an anisotropic effective-mass Hamiltonian approach. The behaviour of the donor exchange coupling as a function of the device parameters varied provides relevant information for the experimental design of these devices.Comment: 15 pages, 15 figures. Accepted for Journal of Physics: Condensed Matte

B-meson decay constants: a more complete picture from full lattice QCD

We extend the picture of $B$-meson decay constants obtained in lattice QCD beyond those of the $B$, $B_s$ and $B_c$ to give the first full lattice QCD results for the $B^*$, $B^*_s$ and $B^*_c$. We use improved NonRelativistic QCD for the valence $b$ quark and the Highly Improved Staggered Quark (HISQ) action for the lighter quarks on gluon field configurations that include the effect of $u/d$, $s$ and $c$ quarks in the sea with $u/d$ quark masses going down to physical values. For the ratio of vector to pseudoscalar decay constants, we find $f_{B^*}/f_B$ = 0.941(26), $f_{B^*_s}/f_{B_s}$ = 0.953(23) (both $2\sigma$ less than 1.0) and $f_{B^*_c}/f_{B_c}$ = 0.988(27). Taking correlated uncertainties into account we see clear indications that the ratio increases as the mass of the lighter quark increases. We compare our results to those using the HISQ formalism for all quarks and find good agreement both on decay constant values when the heaviest quark is a $b$ and on the dependence on the mass of the heaviest quark in the region of the $b$. Finally, we give an overview plot of decay constants for gold-plated mesons, the most complete picture of these hadronic parameters to date.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures. Minor updates to the discussion in several places and some additional reference

Voltage Control of Exchange Coupling in Phosphorus Doped Silicon

Motivated by applications to quantum computer architectures we study the change in the exchange interaction between neighbouring phosphorus donor electrons in silicon due to the application of voltage biases to surface control electrodes. These voltage biases create electro-static fields within the crystal substrate, perturbing the states of the donor electrons and thus altering the strength of the exchange interaction between them. We find that control gates of this kind can be used to either enhance, or reduce the strength of the interaction, by an amount that depends both on the magnitude and orientation of the donor separation.Comment: 5 Pages, 5 Figure

Process-based modelling of Microbial community dynamics in the human colon

Acknowledgments We thank the Scottish Goverment’s Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS) for funding this research. Funding Statement The Scottish Goverment’s Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Ser581 vices Division (RESAS) funded this researchPeer reviewedPostprin