Numerical Investigation of Dynamic Pipe-Soil Interaction on Electrokinetic-Treated Soft Clay Soil

© 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers. Researchers have underscored the importance for a pipeline to safeguard against adverse effects resulting from its displacement in the vertical, axial, and lateral directions because of the low shear strength of the soil. The seabed may sometimes consist of soft or very soft clay soil with high water content and low shear strength. Dissipation of the water content from the soil void increases its effective stress, with a resultant increase in the soil shear strength. The electrokinetic (EK) concept has been applied to increase soil bearing capacity with barely any study conducted on its possible application on pipe-soil interaction. The need to explore more options merits further research. The EK process for the pipe-soil interaction consists of two main stages: the electroosmotic consolidation process and dynamic analyses of the pipe-soil interaction. The present study numerically investigated the impact of EK-treated soil on pipe-soil interaction over the non-EK process. The results of dynamic pipe-soil interaction on EK-treated soil when compared with non-EK-treated soil indicate a significant increase in the force required to displace a pipeline

Geostrophic convective turbulence: The effect of boundary layers

Rayleigh--B\'enard (RB) convection, the flow in a fluid layer heated from below and cooled from above, is used to analyze the transition to the geostrophic regime of thermal convection. In the geostrophic regime, which is of direct relevance to most geo- and astrophysical flows, the system is strongly rotated while maintaining a sufficiently large thermal driving to generate turbulence. We directly simulate the Navier--Stokes equations for two values of the thermal forcing, i.e. $Ra=10^{10}$ and $Ra=5\cdot10^{10}$, a constant Prandtl number~$Pr=1$, and vary the Ekman number in the range $Ek=1.3\cdot10^{-7}$ to $Ek=2\cdot10^{-6}$ which satisfies both requirements of super-criticality and strong rotation. We focus on the differences between the application of no-slip vs. stress-free boundary conditions on the horizontal plates. The transition is found at roughly the same parameter values for both boundary conditions, i.e. at~$Ek\approx 9\times 10^{-7}$ for~$Ra=1\times 10^{10}$ and at~$Ek\approx 3\times 10^{-7}$ for~$Ra=5\times 10^{10}$. However, the transition is gradual and it does not exactly coincide in~$Ek$ for different flow indicators. In particular, we report the characteristics of the transitions in the heat transfer scaling laws, the boundary-layer thicknesses, the bulk/boundary-layer distribution of dissipations and the mean temperature gradient in the bulk. The flow phenomenology in the geostrophic regime evolves differently for no-slip and stress-free plates. For stress-free conditions the formation of a large-scale barotropic vortex with associated inverse energy cascade is apparent. For no-slip plates, a turbulent state without large-scale coherent structures is found; the absence of large-scale structure formation is reflected in the energy transfer in the sense that the inverse cascade, present for stress-free boundary conditions, vanishes.Comment: Submitted to JF

Constructing three emotion knowledge tests from the invariant measurement approach

Background. Psychological constructionist models like the Conceptual Act Theory (CAT) postulate that complex states such as emotions are composed of basic psychological ingredients that are more clearly respected by the brain than basic emotions. The objective of this study was the construction and initial validation of Emotion Knowledge measures from the CAT frame by means of an invariant measurement approach, the Rasch Model (RM). Psychological distance theory was used to inform item generation. Methods. Three EK testsemotion vocabulary (EV), close emotional situations (CES) and far emotional situations (FES)were constructed and tested with the RM in a community sample of 100 females and 100 males (age range: 18-65), both separately and conjointly. Results. It was corroborated that data-RM fit was sufficient. Then, the effect of type of test and emotion on Rasch-modelled item difficulty was tested. Significant effects of emotion on EK item difficulty were found, but the only statistically significant difference was that between "happiness" and the remaining emotions; neither type of test, nor interaction effects on EK item difficulty were statistically significant. The testing of gender differences was carried out after corroborating that differential item functioning (DIF) would not be a plausible alternative hypothesis for the results. No statistically significant sex-related differences were found out in EV, CES, FES, or total EK. However, the sign of d indicate that female participants were consistently better than male ones, a result that will be of interest for future meta-analyses. Discussion. The three EK tests are ready to be used as components of a higher-level measurement process.Fil: Delgado, Ana R.. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Prieto, Gerardo. Universidad de Salamanca; EspañaFil: Burin, Debora Ines. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Psicología; Argentin

Finite-Size Bosonization of 2-Channel Kondo Model: a Bridge between Numerical Renormalization Group and Conformal Field Theory

We generalize Emery and Kivelson's (EK) bosonization-refermionization treatment of the 2-channel Kondo model to finite system size and on the EK-line analytically construct its exact eigenstates and finite-size spectrum. The latter crosses over to conformal field theory's (CFT) universal non-Fermi-liquid spectrum (and yields the most-relevant operators' dimensions), and further to a Fermi-liquid spectrum in a finite magnetic field. Our approach elucidates the relation between bosonization, scaling techniques, the numerical renormalization group (NRG) and CFT. All CFT's Green's functions are recovered with remarkable ease from the model's scattering states.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, Revte

Conspiracy and the Fantasy Defense: The Strange Case of the Cannibal Cop

In the notorious Cannibal Cop case, New York police officer Gilberto Valle was accused of conspiring to kidnap, kill, and eat various women of his acquaintance. Valle claimed a fantasy defense, arguing that his expression represented not conspiracy agreement, but fantasy role-play. His conviction and subsequent acquittal raised questions about the freedom of speech, thoughtcrime, and the nature of conspiracy law. Because the essence of conspiracy is agreement, it falls into the category of crimes in which pure speech is the actus reus of the offense. This Note argues that as a result, conspiracy cases in which the fantasy defense is implicated pose special due-process and First Amendment dangers, and concludes that these dangers can be mitigated by a strengthened overt-act requirement