Noise effects of reducing traffic flow through a Spanish city

Towards the end of 1999, the building of one of the main communication routes in Spain was finished, the A-3 motorway, which connects Madrid and Valencia. So far, this road was running through the town Motilla de Palancar, province of Cuenca. The opening of the last section of the motorway on 3 December 1999, re-routes all the traffic passing through the town. This study makes a comparative of the noise levels before and after the opening of the motorway that goes through Motilla de Palancar.     

High‐energy‐resolution diced spherical quartz analyzers for resonant inelastic X‐ray scattering

A novel diced spherical quartz analyzer for use in resonant inelastic X‐ray scattering (RIXS) is introduced, achieving an unprecedented energy resolution of 10.53 meV at the Ir L₃ absorption edge (11.215 keV). In this work the fabrication process and the characterization of the analyzer are presented, and an example of a RIXS spectrum of magnetic excitations in a Sr₃Ir₂O₇ sample is shown.     

Boundary crisis and suppression of Fermi acceleration in a dissipative two-dimensional non-integrable time-dependent billiard

Some dynamical properties for a dissipative time-dependent oval-shaped billiard are studied. The system is described in terms of a four-dimensional nonlinear mapping. Dissipation is introduced via inelastic collisions of the particle with the boundary, thus implying that the particle has a fractional loss of energy upon collision. The dissipation causes profound modifications in the dynamics of the particle as well as in the phase space of the non-dissipative system. In particular, inelastic collisions can be assumed as an efficient mechanism to suppress Fermi acceleration of the particle. The dissipation also creates attractors in the system, including chaotic. We show that a slightly modification of the intensity of the damping coefficient yields a drastic and sudden destruction of the chaotic attractor, thus leading the system to experience a boundary crisis. We have characterized such a boundary crisis via a collision of the chaotic attractor with its own basin of attraction and confirmed that inelastic collisions do indeed suppress Fermi acceleration in two-dimensional time-dependent billiards.     

Scaling Cosmology

We show that with the help of a suitable coupling between dark energy and cold dark matter it is possible to reproduce any scaling solution _{X M} a , where _X and _M are the densities of dark energy and dark matter, respectively. We demonstrate how the case = 1 alleviates the coincidence problem. Future observations of supernovae at high redshift as well as quasar pairs which are planned to discriminate between different cosmological models will also provide direct constraints on the coupling between dark matter and dark energy.     

GPU accelerated simulations of bluff body flows using vortex particle methods

We present a GPU accelerated solver for simulations of bluff body flows in 2D using a remeshed vortex particle method and the vorticity formulation of the Brinkman penalization technique to enforce boundary conditions. The efficiency of the method relies on fast and accurate particle-grid interpolations on GPUs for the remeshing of the particles and the computation of the field operators. The GPU implementation uses OpenGL so as to perform efficient particle-grid operations and a CUFFT-based solver for the Poisson equation with unbounded boundary conditions. The accuracy and performance of the GPU simulations and their relative advantages/drawbacks over CPU based computations are reported in simulations of flows past an impulsively started circular cylinder from Reynolds numbers between 40 and 9500. The results indicate up to two orders of magnitude speed up of the GPU implementation over the respective CPU implementations. The accuracy of the GPU computations depends on the Re number of the flow. For Re up to 1000 there is little difference between GPU and CPU calculations but this agreement deteriorates (albeit remaining to within 5% in drag calculations) for higher Re numbers as the single precision of the GPU adversely affects the accuracy of the simulations.     

Approximate chemical analysis of volcanic glasses using Raman spectroscopy

The effect of chemical composition on the Raman spectra of a series of natural calcalkaline silicate glasses has been quantified by performing electron microprobe analyses and obtaining Raman spectra on glassy filaments (~450 µm) derived from a magma mingling experiment. The results provide a robust compositionally‐dependent database for the Raman spectra of natural silicate glasses along the calcalkaline series. An empirical model based on both the acquired Raman spectra and an ideal mixing equation between calcalkaline basaltic and rhyolitic end‐members is constructed enabling the estimation of the chemical composition and degree of polymerization of silicate glasses using Raman spectra. The model is relatively insensitive to acquisition conditions and has been validated using the MPI‐DING geochemical standard glasses 1 as well as further samples. The methods and model developed here offer several advantages compared with other analytical and spectroscopic methods such as infrared spectroscopy, X‐ray fluorescence spectroscopy, electron and ion microprobe analyses, inasmuch as Raman spectroscopy can be performed with a high spatial resolution (1 µm²) without the need for any sample preparation as a nondestructive technique. This study represents an advance in efforts to provide the first database of Raman spectra for natural silicate glasses and yields a new approach for the treatment of Raman spectra, which allows us to extract approximate information about the chemical composition of natural silicate glasses using Raman spectroscopy. We anticipate its application in handheld in situ terrestrial field studies of silicate glasses under extreme conditions (e.g. extraterrestrial and submarine environments). © 2015 The Authors Journal of Raman Spectroscopy Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd     

Boundary crisis and transient in a dissipative relativistic standard map

Some dynamical properties for a problem concerning the acceleration of particles in a wave packet are studied. The model is described in terms of a two-dimensional nonlinear map obtained from a Hamiltonian which describes the motion of a relativistic standard map. The phase space is mixed in the sense that there are regular and chaotic regions coexisting. When dissipation is introduced, the property of area preservation is broken and attractors emerge. We have shown that a tiny increase of the dissipation causes a change in the phase space. A chaotic attractor as well as its basin of attraction are destroyed thereby leading the system to experience a boundary crisis. We have characterized such a boundary crisis via a collision of the chaotic attractor with the stable manifold of a saddle fixed point. Once the chaotic attractor is destroyed, a chaotic transient described by a power law with exponent −1 is observed.     

Shrimp-shape domains in a dissipative kicked rotator

Some dynamical properties for a dissipative kicked rotator are studied. Our results show that when dissipation is taken into account a drastic change happens in the structure of the phase space in the sense that the mixed structure is modified and attracting fixed points and chaotic attractors are observed. A detailed numerical investigation in a two-dimensional parameter space based on the behavior of the Lyapunov exponent is considered. Our results show the existence of infinite self-similar shrimp-shaped structures corresponding to periodic attractors, embedded in a large region corresponding to the chaotic regime.