Investigation on ignition behaviors of pulverized coal particles in a tubular swirl burner

This paper intensively investigated the ignition of turbulent coal flames in a novel fully-mixed tubular swirl burner. The Nikon D300s digital camera was used to capture the statistical ignition behavior of dispersed coal particle streams in different ambiences. Meanwhile, the combustion dynamics of individual coal particles were also recorded by means of high-speed photography. Two low-rank coal samples, Hulunbel lignite and Zhundong coal, were tested in this study. The ignition delay times of coal particles in the swirl burner were compared with those in a flat-flame burner. In contrast to previous work on a laminar flat-flame burner, the current experimental results show that the turbulent ambience significantly enhances the ignition of all coal samples, which is exceptionally pronounced under high temperature and low oxygen conditions. In addition, the sensitivity analysis suggests that both the enhanced heat and mass transfer contribute to the early ignition in turbulence. The effect of elevated mass transfer coefficient turns prominent in low oxygen fraction ambience, wherein the volatile barrier effect is suppressed by the enhanced mixing process. The combined effect of turbulence favors the shifting of ignition modes to the heterogeneous-dominant region. Last but not least, the ceased volatile flame that visualized in turbulent low oxygen ambience further confirms the important role of heterogeneous ignition.     

Curvature of classifying spaces for Brieskorn lattices

We study tt^∗$t{t}^{\ast }$-geometry on the classifying space for regular singular TERP-structures, e.g., Fourier–Laplace transformations of Brieskorn lattices of isolated hypersurface singularities. We show that (a part of) this classifying space can be canonically equipped with a hermitian structure. We derive an estimate for the holomorphic sectional curvature of this hermitian metric, which is the analogue of a similar result for classifying spaces of pure polarized Hodge structures.     

Ant colony optimization: Introduction and recent trends

Ant colony optimization is a technique for optimization that was introduced in the early 1990's. The inspiring source of ant colony optimization is the foraging behavior of real ant colonies. This behavior is exploited in artificial ant colonies for the search of approximate solutions to discrete optimization problems, to continuous optimization problems, and to important problems in telecommunications, such as routing and load balancing. First, we deal with the biological inspiration of ant colony optimization algorithms. We show how this biological inspiration can be transfered into an algorithm for discrete optimization. Then, we outline ant colony optimization in more general terms in the context of discrete optimization, and present some of the nowadays best-performing ant colony optimization variants. After summarizing some important theoretical results, we demonstrate how ant colony optimization can be applied to continuous optimization problems. Finally, we provide examples of an interesting recent research direction: The hybridization with more classical techniques from artificial intelligence and operations research.     

Cumulative "roof effect" in high-resolution in vivo 31P NMR spectra of human calf muscle and the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients of ATP at 1.5 T

NMR spectra of non-weakly coupled spin systems exhibit asymmetries in line intensities known as "roof effect" in 1D spectroscopy. Due to limited spectral resolution, this effect has not been paid much attention so far in in vivo spectroscopy. But when high-quality spectra are obtained, this effect should be taken into account to explain the quantum-mechanical fine structure of the system. Adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) represents a 31P spin system with multiple line splittings which are caused by J-couplings of medium strength at 1.5 T. We analyzed the ATP roof effect in vivo, especially for the beta-ATP multiplet. The intensities of its outer resonances deviate by ca. 12.5% from a symmetrical triplet. As this asymmetry reflects the transition from Paschen-Back to Zeeman effect with total spin that is largely broken up, the Clebsch-Gordan coefficients of the system can be indicated in analogy to the hyperfine structure of hydrogen. Taking the roof effect into account, the chi2 of fitting in vivo ATP resonances is reduced by ca. 9% (p<0.005).     

Massively parallel ionization of extended atomic systems

Massively parallel ionization of many atoms in a cluster or biomolecule is identified as a new phenomenon of light-matter interaction which becomes feasible through short and intense FEL pulses. Almost simultaneously emitted from the illuminated target the photo-electrons can have such a high density that they interact substantially even after photoionization. This interaction results in a characteristic electron spectrum which can be interpreted as a convolution of a mean-field electron dynamics and binary electron-electron collisions. We demonstrate that this universal spectrum can be obtained analytically by summing synthetic two-body Coulomb collision events. Moreover, we propose an experiment with hydrogen clusters to observe massively parallel ionization.     

Field performance of an all-semiconductor laser coherent Doppler lidar

We implement and test what, to our knowledge, is the first deployable coherent Doppler lidar (CDL) system based on a compact, inexpensive all-semiconductor laser (SL). To demonstrate the field performance of our SL-CDL remote sensor, we compare a 36 h time series of averaged radial wind speeds measured by our instrument at an 80 m distance to those simultaneously obtained from an industry-standard sonic anemometer (SA). An excellent degree of correlation (R2=0.994 and slope=0.996) is achieved from a linear regression analysis of the CDL versus SA wind speed data. The lidar system is capable of providing high data availability, ranging from 85% to 100% even under varying outdoor (temperature and humidity) conditions during the test period. We also show the use of our SL-CDL for monitoring the dependence of aerosol backscatter on relative humidity. This work points to the feasibility of a more general class of low-cost, portable remote sensors based on all-SL emitters for applications that require demanding laser stability and coherence.     

Resummation for W and Z production at large p{T}

Soft-collinear effective theory is used to perform threshold resummation for W and Z production at large transverse momentum to next-to-next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy including matching to next-to-leading fixed-order results. The results agree very well with data from the Tevatron, and predictions are made for the high-p{T} spectra at the LHC. While the higher-log terms are of moderate size, their inclusion leads to a substantial reduction of the perturbative uncertainty. With these improvements, the parton distribution function uncertainties now dominate the error on the predicted cross section.     

Measuring the motions in the human middle ear by Laser Doppler Vibrometry

For the detection of tiny motions which are caused by the tympanic membrane under normal hearing conditions, the touch-free method of Laser Doppler Vibrometry was used. Spectra containing information about the motions of the middle ear bones were recorded within 1 min when the umbo was chosen as the detection point and acoustic stimulation was performed via white noise excitation. It was observed that these spectra correlate to middle ear diseases, which had been artificially induced by manipulations in the chain of the middle ear bones in human temporal bones. The dosimetry of the applied laser radiation was found to be harmless to the tympanic membrane, which opened the way for successful in vivo measurements.     

AgInS2–ZnS nanocrystals: Evidence of bistable states using light‐induced electron paramagnetic resonance and photoluminescence

The precursor (AgIn)_x Zn_2(1–x)(S₂CN(C₂H₅)₂)₄ was used to prepared AgInS₂–ZnS nanocrystals with different compositions (x = 0.4 and x = 0.7) and with different time of reaction (10 min and 75 min). The photoluminescence features of the nanocrystals were addressed by combining steady‐state spectroscopy and light‐induced electron paramagnetic resonance. Both techniques showed the contribution of at least two components for the emission, previously assigned to surface and intrinsic states. Light‐induced electron paramagnetic resonance allowed detection of the photocreation both of irreversible paramagnetic species that are likely responsible for the nano‐crystals degradation assigned to surface states and of reversible paramagnetic species assigned to intrinsic states. Moreover, reversible bistable paramagnetic states were observed. This Letter provides a scheme that might be useful in addressing the well‐known problem of aging of the nanocrystals. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Towards tender X‐rays with Zernike phase‐contrast imaging of biological samples at 50 nm resolution

X‐ray microscopy is a commonly used method especially in material science application, where the large penetration depth of X‐rays is necessary for three‐dimensional structural studies of thick specimens with high‐Z elements. In this paper it is shown that full‐field X‐ray microscopy at 6.2 keV can be utilized for imaging of biological specimens with high resolution. A full‐field Zernike phase‐contrast microscope based on diffractive optics is used to study lipid droplet formation in hepatoma cells. It is shown that the contrast of the images is comparable with that of electron microscopy, and even better contrast at tender X‐ray energies between 2.5 keV and 4 keV is expected.