Assessment of siltation rate and sediment transport in Bombay harbour based on Cesium-137 distribution

Low level aqueous radioactive wastes from the nuclear complex at Trombay are discharged into the Bombay harbour. Of the 6 principal radionuclides comprising the discharge, cesium-137 is most predominantly taken up by silt from the sea water. Isoactivity contours show that activity levels just off the point of discharge, and further south to Pir Pau, were between 50 and 100 pCi/g. Activity in the main channel of the harbour remained below 10 pCi/g, while further north (below the Thane Creek bridge) it was around 20 pCi/g. Activity in the top 6 cm of a core off Trombay naval jetty was <5 pCi/g, reaching a maximum of 178 pCi/g at 14cm below the surface. Thereafter, it tapered off to 5 pCi/g down to a metre.

Techniques for the transport and maintenance of scleractinian coral

Several small scleractinian coral colonies were collected from a remote reef and transferred [to] the Louisiana Universities Marine Center (LUMCON) for in vitro reproductive and larval studies. The species used here were Porites astreoides and Diploria strigosa. Colony size was ~20 cm in diameter. Colonies were brought to the surface by liftbag and stored in modified ice coolers. They were transported from Freeport, TX to Cocodrie, LA by truck for nearly 15 hours where field conditions were simulated in waiting aquaria. This document describes the techniques and equipment that were used, how to outfit such aquaria, proper handling techniques for coral colonies, and several eventualities that the mariculturist should be prepared for in undertaking this endeavor. It will hopefully prevent many mistakes from being made.

Tracing sediment transport and bed regime in Nha Trang Bay

Three spatial structure groups of radionuclides in U and Th series, 210Pb-excess and 137Cs, and 40K were found based on analyzing temporal and spatial datum of their content by factor analysis with oblique rotation in Nhatrang bay. U and Th spatial structure with their contours decreased toward the offshore, ran longshore and divided seawater of bay into two parts with strong gradient on both sides. Inside part located from center of Nhatrang bay toward the seashore with three main deposit centers of their contents higher than 23 Bq/kg.dry for 238U and 40 Bq/kg.dry for 232Th, indicated unstability of shoreline. Almost sediments coming from river extended toward the offshore, were stopped and transported toward southeastern. The outside part was less than above mentioned content. The boundary line between two parts superposed with the constantly limit line of turbid plume in the rainy season. Direct influence of the continental runoff was limited by the 9 Bq/kg.dry contour of 238U, 19 Bq/kg.dry contour of 232Th. Longshore current was a predominant process whereas lateral transport as sifting and winnowing process of finer grains in sediments of Nhatrang bay. Areas that had very low content of 137Cs and 210 Pb-excess adjoining shoreline showed areas being eroded. Accumulation of 137Cs and 210 Pbexcess nearby river mouth characterized for fine compositions of sediments controlled by seasonal plumes and sites further toward the south indicated finer materials transported from river and accumulated in lack of hydrodynamic process. Near shore accumulation of 40K revealed the sediments there originated from bed erosion.

Viability of Penaeus monodon eggs after simulated transport conditions

P. monodon spawners, transported from maturation pens suffer from stress which in turn may lead to lowered spawning rate or fertility. Spawning the females in the maturation site and transporting the eggs to the hatchery site is being considered as an alternative. Egg transport costs may be reduced to a minimum by using eggs from ablated spawners, transported at high density with no aeration. Experiments on higher egg densities as well as on transport of nauplii should, however, be undertaken.

Transport of sugpo, Penaeus monodon juveniles

This study was made as an attempt to investigate the optimum packing density and the ice quantity suitable for the transport of Penaeus monodon juveniles. The results revealed that prawns of 40 mg size can be packed to as much as 3,000 per bag. While packing densities above 3,000 per bag containing 8 L seawater and 16 L oxygen can be used only for short transport periods. On the other hand in the ice-quantity experiment, mortality rate was less than 1% in all the bags containing 300 g, 600 g, 900 g and 1200 g of ice. A packing temperature of 20~’C must be maintained hence, 50 g of ice per hour should be allowed per box, counting from the moment the box is sealed to the time it is estimated to be opened.

Spin-dependent current noises in transport through coupled quantum dots

Current fluctuations can provide additional insight into quantum transport in mesoscopic systems. The present work is carried out for the fluctuation properties of transport through a pair of coupled quantum dots which are connected with ferromagnetic electrodes. Based on an efficient particle-number-resolved master equation approach, we are concerned with not only fluctuations of the total charge and spin currents, but also of each individual spin-dependent component. As a result of competition among the spin polarization, Coulomb interaction, and dot-dot tunnel coupling, rich behaviors are found for the self- and mutual-correlation functions of the spin-dependent currents.

Anisotropic transport in quantum waveguides due to the spin-orbit interactions

We theoretically investigate the charge transport in the quantum waveguides in the presence of the Rashba spin-orbit interaction and the Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction. We find that the interplay between the Rashba spin-orbit interaction and Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction can induce a symmetry breaking and consequently leads to the anisotropic charge transport in the quantum waveguides, the conductance through the quantum waveguides depends sensitively on the crystallographic orientations of the quantum waveguides. The anisotropy of the charge transport can even survive in the presence of disorder effect in realistic systems.

Quantum mechanical simulation of nanosized metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor using empirical pseudopotentials: A comparison for charge density occupation methods

The atomistic pseudopotential quantum mechanical calculations are used to study the transport in million atom nanosized metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors. In the charge self-consistent calculation, the quantum mechanical eigenstates of closed systems instead of scattering states of open systems are calculated. The question of how to use these eigenstates to simulate a nonequilibrium system, and how to calculate the electric currents, is addressed. Two methods to occupy the electron eigenstates to yield the charge density in a nonequilibrium condition are tested and compared. One is a partition method and another is a quasi-Fermi level method. Two methods are also used to evaluate the current: one uses the ballistic and tunneling current approximation, another uses the drift-diffusion method. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3248262]

Carrier transport assisted by dopants in doped poly(N-vinylcarbozole) light-emitting diodes

We have investigated the transient electroluminescence (EL) onset of the double-layer light-emitting devices made from poly(N-vinylcarbozole) (PVK) doped with 4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-t-butyl-6(1,1,7,7-tetramethyljulolidyl-9-enyl)-4H-pyran (DCJTB) and tris(8-hydroxy-quinoline) aluminium (Alq(3)). For the double-layered device in which PVK was doped with 0.1 wt% DCJTB, the EL onset of PVK lags that of DCJTB and Alq(3), while the EL onset of DCJTB and Alq(3) is simultaneous. However, the EL emission of the double-layered device of PVK/Alq(3) originates only from Alq(3). The results show that DCJTB dopants can not only help to tunnel electrons from Alq(3) zone to PVK but can also assist electrons transfer in PVK under high electric field by hopping between DCJTB molecules or from DCJTB to PVK sites at a low doping concentration of 0.1 wt%. When the DCJTB doping concentration is 4.0 wt%, the EL onset of Alq(3) lags that of DCJTB. The difference in the EL onsets of DCJTB, Alq(3) and PVK is attributed to the slow build-up of the internal space charge in the vicinity of the interface between PVK and Alq(3). The electron potential difference of the interface between Alq(3) and PVK doped by DCJTB can be adjusted by changing the DCJTB doping concentration in double-layer devices.

Space-charge-limited currents in GaN Schottky diodes

Unusual dark current voltage (I-V) characteristics were observed in GaN Schottky diodes. I-V characteristics of the GaN Schottky diodes were measured down to the magnitude of 10(-14) A. Although these Schottky diodes were clearly rectifying, their I-V characteristics were non-ideal which can be judged from the non-linearity in the semi-logarithmic plots. Careful analysis of the forward bias I-V characteristics on log-log scale indicates space-charge-limited current (SCLC) conduction dominates the current transport in these GaN Schottky diodes. The concentration of the deep trapping centers was estimated to be higher than 10(15) cm(-3). In the deep level transient spectra (DLTS) measurements for the GaN Schottky diodes, deep defect levels around 0.20 eV below the bottom of the conduction band were identified, which may act as the trapping centers. The concentration of the deep centers obtained from the DLTS data is about 5 x 10(15) cm(-3). SCLC measurements may be used to probe the properties of deep levels in wide bandgap GaN-AlGaN compound semiconductors, as is the case with insulators in the presence of trapping centers. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effect of implantation of nitrogen into SIMOX buried oxide on its fixed positive charge density

In order to obtain greater radiation hardness for SIMOX (separation by implanted oxygen) materials, nitrogen was implanted into SIMOX BOX (buried oxide). However, it has been found by the C-V technique employed in this work that there is an obvious increase of the fixed positive charge density in the nitrogen-implanted BOX with a 150 out thickness and 4 x 10(15) cm(-2) nitrogen implantation dose, compared with that unimplanted with nitrogen. On the other hand, for the BOX layers with a 375 nm thickness and implanted with 2 x 10(15) and 3 x 10(15) cm(-2) nitrogen doses respectively, the increase of the fixed positive charge density induced by implanted nitrogen has not been observed. The post-implantation annealing conditions are identical for all the nitrogen-implanted samples. The increase in fixed positive charge density in the nitrogen-implanted 150 nm BOX is ascribed to the accumulation of implanted nitrogen near the BOX/Si interface due to the post-implantation annealing process according to SIMS results. In addition, it has also been found that the fixed positive charge density in initial BOX is very small. This means SIMOX BOX has a much lower oxide charge density than thermal SiO2 which contains a lot of oxide charges in most cases.

Effects of phase-breaking on long-range charge transfer in DNA: Partially-coherent-tunneling model study

The mechanism of hole charge transfer in DNA of various lengths and sequences is investigated based on a partially coherent tunneling theory (Zhang et al., J Chem Phys 117:4578, 2002), where the effects of phase-breaking in adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine base pairs are treated on equal foot. This work aims at providing a self-consistent microscopic interpretation for rate experiments on various DNA systems. We will also clarify the condition under which the simple superexchange-mediated-hopping picture is valid, and make some comments on the further development of present theory.

A partially incoherent rate theory of long-range charge transfer in deoxyribose nucleic acid

A quantum chemistry based Green's function formulation of long-range charge transfer in deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) double helix is proposed. The theory takes into account the effects of DNA's electronic structure and its incoherent interaction with aqueous surroundings. In the implementation, the electronic tight-binding parameters for unsolvated DNA molecules are determined at the HF/6-31G* level, while those for individual nucleobase-water couplings are at a semiempirical level by fitting with experimental redox potentials. Numerical results include that: (i) the oxidative charge initially at the donor guanine site does hop sequentially over all guanine sites; however, the revealed rates can be of a much weaker distance dependence than that described by the ordinary Ohm's law; (ii) the aqueous surroundings-induced partial incoherences in thymine/adenine bridge bases lead them to deviate substantially from the superexchange regime; (iii) the time scale of the partially incoherent hole transport through the thymine/adenine pi stack in DNA is about 5 ps. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Interplay between partial incoherence, partial inelasticity, resonance, and heterogeneity in long-range electron transfer and transport

A generalized scattering matrix formalism is constructed to elucidate the interplay of electron resonance, coherence, dephasing, inelastic scattering, and heterogeneity, which play important roles in the physics of long-range electron transfer/transport. The theory consists of an extension of the standard Buttiker phase-breaking model and an analytical expression of the electron transmission coefficient for donor-bridge-acceptor systems with arbitrary length and sequence. The theory incorporates the following features: Dephasing-assisted off-resonance enhancement, inelasticity-induced turnover, resonance enhancement and its dephasing-induced suppression, dephasing-induced smooth superexchange-hopping transition, and heterogeneity effects. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Electrical transport through individual DNA molecules

A theoretical model is presented to describe electrical transport through individual DNA molecules. By contacting the proposed model with the experimentally measured data, a variety of valuable quantities are identified. The partially decoherent nature on the guanine-cytosine (GC) pairs of DNA is also elaborated in contrast to the completely incoherent hopping mechanism discussed in the context of charge transfer experiments. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.