A Repaid Procedure for Preparing Oxyen-18 Determination in Water Samples

An equipment for the speed δ¹⁸O analysis of water samples is described. It used the equilibrium isotopic exchange reaction between water and CO₂ gas. Outgasing of samples through capillary without freezing down the samples, together with shaking during the equilibrium time, reduced considerably time for sample preparation.

Apparatus is air termostated with hand valves. Measured δ values are not very sensitive to precision of preparation work and reaction conditions, except of temperature. With good temperature control the standard reproducibility of single measurement is better than 0,1‰     

Analysis of a meshless solver for high Reynolds number flow

In this paper, the extension of an upwind least‐square based meshless solver to high Reynolds number flow is explored, and the properties of the meshless solver are analyzed both theoretically and numerically. Existing works have verified the meshless solver mostly with inviscid flows and low Reynolds number flows, and in this work, we are interested in the behavior of the meshless solver for high Reynolds number flow, especially in the near‐wall region. With both theoretical and numerical analysis, the effects of two parameters on the meshless solver are identified. The first one is the misalignment effect caused by the significantly skewed supporting points, and it is found that the meshless solver still yields accurate prediction. It is a very interesting property and is opposite to the median‐dual control volume based vertex‐centered finite volume method, which is known to give degraded result with stretched triangular/tetrahedral cells in the near‐wall region. The second parameter is the curvature, and according to theoretical analysis, it is found in the region with both large aspect ratio and curvature, and the streamwise residual is less affected; however, the wall‐normal counterpart suffers from accuracy degradation. In this paper, an improved method that uses a meshless solver for the streamwise residual and finite difference for wall‐normal residual is developed. This method is proved to be less sensitive to the curvature and provides improved accuracy. This work presents an understanding of the meshless solver for high Reynolds number flow computation, and the analysis in this paper is verified with a series of numerical experiments. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reflective mode of deformed-helix ferroelectric liquid crystal cells for sensing applications

We present a detailed theoretical and experimental study of the reflectance response of a deformed-helix ferroelectric (DHF) liquid crystal (LC) cell to an applied voltage under cross-polarisers. Using a model based on the effective dielectric tensor approximation, we derive simple analytical formulas to design a LC cell with maximum modulation depth and optimal linearity of the electro-optical response intensity versus the electric field. Our experimental results show that the cell works at frequencies up to 10 kHz and exhibits excellent linearity, with a total harmonic distortion as low as ?70 dB. These findings suggest that DHF-LCs can be exploited to develop simple and accurate optical sensors.     

Internal radiocesium contamination of adults and children in Fukushima 7 to 20 months after the Fukushima NPP accident as measured by extensive whole-body-counter surveys

The Fukushima Dai-ichi NPP accident contaminated the soil of densely-populated regions in Fukushima Prefecture with radioactive cesium, which poses significant risks of internal and external exposure to the residents. If we apply the knowledge of post-Chernobyl accident studies, internal exposures in excess of a few mSv/y would be expected to be frequent in Fukushima.Extensive whole-body-counter surveys (n = 32,811) carried out at the Hirata Central Hospital between October, 2011 and November, 2012, however show that the internal exposure levels of residents are much lower than estimated. In particular, the first sampling-bias-free assessment of the internal exposure of children in the town of Miharu, Fukushima, shows that the ¹³⁷Cs body burdens of all children (n = 1,383, ages 6–15, covering 95% of children enrolled in town-operated schools) were below the detection limit of 300 Bq/body in the fall of 2012. These results are not conclusive for the prefecture as a whole, but are consistent with results obtained from other municipalities in the prefecture, and with prefectural data.     

Effects of initial crystal size of diamond powder on surface residual stress and morphology in polycrystalline diamond (PCD) layer

Polycrystalline diamond compacts (PDC) were synthesized using diamond powder of average crystal size 3-20 μm by the Ni 70 Mn 25 Co 5 alloy infiltration technique at high temperature and high pressure (HPHT).The surface residual stress of polycrystalline diamond (PCD) layer was measured using micro-Raman spectroscopy with hydrostatic stress model and X-ray diffraction (XRD).Measurements of the stress levels of PCDs show that the residual compressive stresses range from 0.12 to 0.22 GPa,which increase with th...     

Study of Ganga River – Groundwater Interaction Using Environmental Oxygen-18

The influent and effluent characteristics of river Ganga in the Hardwar-Narora sector in Uttar Pradesh, India was studied using environmental oxygen-18. δ¹⁸O of river water and also of groundwater close to the river course was monitored at 8 stations along the 220 km stretch for a period of ten months. δ¹⁸O of the river during the monsoon months (June to September) was about – 10 at all the stations. However, during the dry months from October to April, the δ¹⁸O of the river was enriched progressively from Hardwar to Narora. The enrichment indicated groundwater contribution to the river during the non-monsoon months. The contribution was comuted using the principle of isotope balance.     

INVESTIGATION OF A QUASI-STEADY LIQUID CRYSTAL TECHNIQUE FOR FILM COOLING HEAT TRANSFER MEASUREMENTS

A quasi-steady technique to simultaneously measure the local heat transfer coefficient and cooling effectiveness on surfaces involving film cooling situations is investigated. The method employs a composite slab consisting of a very thin laminate layer of low-thermal-conductivity material superposed upon a highly conductive metal substrate. The resulting heat transfer in the thin laminate is described by one-dimensional conduction. A very thin coating of thermochromic liquid crystals sprayed onto the surface of the laminate is used in conjunction with a computer image processing procedure to provide local surface temperature data. This information, combined with the substrate and mainstream gas temperatures, provides highly detailed (90 video pixels/cm²) local convection heat transfer distributions. The method is used to conduct flat-plate film cooling experiments consisting of a single row of discrete holes inclined at 35 to the mainstream flow. The local surface temperature is influenced by the combination of two interacting fluid streams at different temperatures. A numerical analysis was performed to assess the assumptions underlying the data reduction procedure. The experimental uncertainty of 7% in the heat transfer coefficient is comparable to prior studies. Furthermore, the uncertainty of 5% in the film cooling effectiveness, coupled with the negligible lateral conduction errors, indicates the present technique offers a unique capability for accurate measurement of the local film cooling effectiveness.     

Lower bound for the ratios of eigenvalues of Schrödinger with nonpositive single‐barrier potentials

Horváth and Kiss (Proc. Amer. Math. Soc., 2005) proved the upper bound estimate for Dirichlet eigenvalue ratios of the Schrödinger problem ?y^′′ + q(x)y = λy with nonnegative and single‐well potential q. In this paper, we prove that if q(x) is a nonpositive, continuous, and single‐barrier potential, then for λ_n > λ_m≥ ? 2q^?, where . In particular, if q(x) satisfies the additional condition , then λ₁ > 0 and for n > m ≥ 1. For this result, we develop a new approach to study the monotonicity of the modified Prüfer angle function.