The spatial variation of Asian dust and marine aerosol contributions to glaciochemical signals in central Asia

Short-term (6 months to 17 years) glaciochemical records have been collected from several glacier basins in the mountains of central Asia. The spatial distribution of snow chemistry in central Asia is controlled by the influx of dust from the large expanse of arid and semiarid regions in central Asia. Glaciers in the Northern and Western Tibetan Plateau show elevated concentrations and elevated annual fluxes of calcium, sodium, chloride, sulphate and nitrate due to the influx of desert dust from nearby arid and semi-arid regions. Glaciers in the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau show lower concentrations and lower annual fluxes of major ions due to longer transport distances of dust from the arid and semi-arid regions of Western China. Snow from the Karakoram and Western Himalaya show ion concentrations similar to those in Southeastern Tibetan Plateau, but much higher annual fluxes suggesting that much of the aerosol and moisture transported with the westerly jet stream is removed as it ascends the Southwest margin of the Tibetan Plateau. Snow from the Southern slopes of the Eastern Himalayas shows very low concentrations and very low annual fluxes of major ions, indicating that this region is relatively free from the chemical influence of Asian dust. The glaciochemical data suggest that glaciers which are removed from large source areas of mineral aerosol, such as those in the Himalaya, the Karakoram, and the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau, are the ones most likely to contain longer-term glaciochemical records which detail annual to decadal variation in the strength of the Asian monsoon and long-range transport of Asian dust

Understanding decreases in land relative humidity with global warming: conceptual model and GCM simulations

Climate models simulate a strong land-ocean contrast in the response of near-surface relative humidity to global warming: relative humidity tends to increase slightly over oceans but decrease substantially over land. Surface energy balance arguments have been used to understand the response over ocean but are difficult to apply over more complex land surfaces. Here, a conceptual box model is introduced, involving moisture transport between the land and ocean boundary layers and evapotranspiration, to investigate the decreases in land relative humidity as the climate warms. The box model is applied to idealized and full-complexity (CMIP5) general circulation model simulations, and it is found to capture many of the features of the simulated changes in land relative humidity. The box model suggests there is a strong link between fractional changes in specific humidity over land and ocean, and the greater warming over land than ocean then implies a decrease in land relative humidity. Evapotranspiration is of secondary importance for the increase in specific humidity over land, but it matters more for the decrease in relative humidity. Further analysis shows there is a strong feedback between changes in surface-air temperature and relative humidity, and this can amplify the influence on relative humidity of factors such as stomatal conductance and soil moisture.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Climate on May 1st, 201

In the absence of CD154, administration of interleukin-12 restores Th1 responses but not protective immunity to Schistosoma mansoni

The cytokine interplay during the development of protective immunity to the radiation-attenuated (RA) schistosome vaccine has been extensively characterized over recent years, yet the role of costimulatory molecules in the development of cell-mediated immunity is much less well understood. Here we demonstrate the importance of CD40/CD154 in vaccine-induced immunity, as CD154(-/-) mice exposed to RA schistosomes develop no protection to challenge infection. We showed that vaccinated CD154(-/-) mice have defective Th1-associated immune responses in the skin-draining lymph nodes and the lungs, with reduced or absent levels of interleukin-12p40 (IL-12p40), gamma interferon, and nitric oxide, but elevated levels of lung IL-4 and IL-5. The expression of major histocompatibility complex II (MHC-II) on antigen-presenting cells recovered from the lungs of vaccinated CD154(-/-) mice was also severely compromised. The administration of anti-CD40 monoclonal antibody (MAb) to CD154(-/-) mice did not reconstitute sustained Th1 responses in the lymph nodes or the lungs, nor did the MAb restore anti-parasite immunoglobulin G production or protective immunity. On the other hand, the administration of recombinant IL-12 (rIL-12) to CD154(-/-) mice shortly after vaccination caused elevated and sustained levels of Th1-associated cytokines, rescued MHC-II expression by lung CD11c(+) cells, and restored the appearance of inflammatory effector foci in the lungs. However, the treatment of CD154(-/-) mice with rIL-12 did not restore protection. We conclude that protective immunity to the RA schistosome vaccine is CD154 dependent but is independent of IL-12-orchestrated cellular immune mechanisms in the lungs

Detection and emotional evaluation of an electric vehicle’s exterior sound in a simulated environment

Electric vehicles are quiet at low speeds and thus potentially pose a threat to pedestrians’ safety. Laws are formulating worldwide that mandate these vehicles emit sounds to alert the pedestrians of the vehicles’ approach. It is necessary that these sounds promote a positive perception of the vehicle brand, and understanding their impact on soundscapes is also important. Detection time of the vehicle sounds is an important measure to assess pedestrians’ safety. Emotional evaluation of these sounds influences assessment of the vehicle brand. Laboratory simulation is a new approach for evaluating exterior automotive sounds. This study describes the implementation of laboratory simulation to compare the detection time and emotional evaluation of artificial sounds for an electric vehicle. An Exterior Sound Simulator simulated audio-visual stimuli of an electric car passing a crossroad of a virtual town at 4.47 ms-1 (10 mph), from the perspective of a pedestrian standing at the crossroad. In this environment, 15 sounds were tested using experiments where participants detected the car and evaluated its sound using perceptual dimensions. Results show that these sounds vary significantly in their detection times and emotional evaluations, but crucially that traditional metrics like dB(A) do not always relate to the detection of these sounds. Detection time and emotional evaluation do not have significant correlation. Hence, sounds of a vehicle could be detected quickly, but may portray negative perceptions of the vehicle. Simulation provides a means to more fully evaluate potential electric vehicle sounds against the competing criteria

Solvable Critical Dense Polymers on the Cylinder

A lattice model of critical dense polymers is solved exactly on a cylinder with finite circumference. The model is the first member LM(1,2) of the Yang-Baxter integrable series of logarithmic minimal models. The cylinder topology allows for non-contractible loops with fugacity alpha that wind around the cylinder or for an arbitrary number ell of defects that propagate along the full length of the cylinder. Using an enlarged periodic Temperley-Lieb algebra, we set up commuting transfer matrices acting on states whose links are considered distinct with respect to connectivity around the front or back of the cylinder. These transfer matrices satisfy a functional equation in the form of an inversion identity. For even N, this involves a non-diagonalizable braid operator J and an involution R=-(J^3-12J)/16=(-1)^{F} with eigenvalues R=(-1)^{ell/2}. The number of defects ell separates the theory into sectors. For the case of loop fugacity alpha=2, the inversion identity is solved exactly for the eigenvalues in finite geometry. The eigenvalues are classified by the physical combinatorics of the patterns of zeros in the complex spectral-parameter plane yielding selection rules. The finite-size corrections are obtained from Euler-Maclaurin formulas. In the scaling limit, we obtain the conformal partition functions and confirm the central charge c=-2 and conformal weights Delta_t=(t^2-1)/8. Here t=ell/2 and t=2r-s in the ell even sectors with Kac labels r=1,2,3,...; s=1,2 while t is half-integer in the ell odd sectors. Strikingly, the ell/2 odd sectors exhibit a W-extended symmetry but the ell/2 even sectors do not. Moreover, the naive trace summing over all ell even sectors does not yield a modular invariant.Comment: 44 pages, v3: minor correction

Rethinking Regional Energy Policy Do Threats Matter in Supply and Generation Process?

The study investigates potential threats to energy security and sustainable electricity production from a regional perspective, after identifying a host of factors that are likely to affect sustainable energy production and supply using seemingly unrelated regression estimation, which produces efficient estimates. Our results show that energy security which we described as the level of diversification in regional specific energy generating sources is probably being affected by regional specific level of industrialization and domestic energy consumption. Issues of over dependence on specific sources of energy supply (particularly nuclear production sources) were also found to have a negative effect on energy security and probably increase the risk of future failure in energy supply. Energy policy was also found to have a significant effect on energy security. The impacts of various constraints on electricity production were also considered. It was found that many factors affect electricity output production in regions particularly environmental factors that affect consumption and generation

Dynamical Disentanglement across a Point Contact in a Non-Abelian Quantum Hall State

We analyze tunneling of non-Abelian quasiparticles between the edges of a quantum Hall droplet at Landau level filling fraction nu=5/2, assuming that the electrons in the first excited Landau level organize themselves in the non-Abelian Moore-Read Pfaffian state. We formulate a bosonized theory of the modes at the two edges of a Hall bar; an effective spin-1/2 degree of freedom emerges in the description of a point contact. We show how the crossover from the high-temperature regime of weak quasiparticle tunneling between the edges of the droplet, with 4-terminal R_{xx} scaling as T^{-3/2}, to the low-temperature limit, with R_{xx} - h/(10 e^2) scaling as -T^4, is closely related to the two-channel Kondo effect. We give a physical interpretation for the entropy of \ln(2\sqrt{2}) which is lost in the flow from the ultraviolet to the infrared.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Metamodelling of multivariable engine models for real-time flight simulation.

Sophisticated real-time distributed flight simulation environments may be constructed from a wide range of modelling and simulation tools. In this way accuracy, detail and model flexibility may be incorporated into the simulator. Distributed components may be constructed by a wide range of methods, from high level environments such as Matlab, through coded environments such as C or Fortran to hardware-in-the- loop. In this paper the Response Surface Methodology is combined with a hyper-heuristic (evolutionary algorithm) and applied to the representation of computationally intensive non-linear multivariable engine modelling. The paper investigates the potential for metamodelling (models of models) dynamic models which were previously too slow to be included in multi-component, high resolution real-time simulation environments. A multi-dimensional gas turbine model with five primary control inputs, six environmental inputs and eleven outputs is considered. An investigation has been conducted to ascertain to what extent these systems can be approximated by response surfaces with experiments which have been designed by hyper-heuristics as a first step towards automatic modelling methodology