Signatures of Energy Flux in Particle Production: A Black Hole Birth Cry and Death Gasp

It is recently argued that if the Hawking radiation process is unitary, then a black hole's mass cannot be monotonically decreasing. We examine the time dependent particle count and negative energy flux in the non-trivial conformal vacuum via the moving mirror approach. A new, exactly unitary solution is presented which emits a characteristic above-thermal positive energy burst, a thermal plateau, and negative energy flux. It is found that the characteristic positive energy flare and thermal plateau is observed in the particle outflow. However, the results of time dependent particle production show no overt indication of negative energy flux. Therefore, a black hole's birth cry is detectable by asymptotic observers via particle count, whereas its death gasp is not.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Giant Tortoise Coordinate

The giant tortoise coordinate is a moving mirror inspired generalization of the Regge-Wheeler counterpart that demonstrates a unitary evaporating black hole emitting a total finite energy.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Sprawling cities and transport: preliminary findings from Bristol, UK

As part of the Fifth Framework Programme, SCATTER (Sprawling Cities And TransporT : from Evaluation to Recommendations) is examining the mechanisms and impacts of urban sprawl in six case study cities. One of these is Bristol, UK (metropolitan population c. 700,000), where the effects of deregulation, competitive attempts to attract and create new enterprise and greater responsiveness to consumer preferences have all in recent years led to a weakening of the grip of regional and local planners upon urban development. In the country, despite changing government targets for the re-use of 'brownfields' land, this has frequently led to urban sprawl. During the 1960s and 1970s the locus of manufacturing activity shifted to suburban sites, and a growing population was accommodated in suburban developments. During the last 20 years, retailing activity has been allowed to follow these pervious movements, with the result that the UK has one of the highest incidences of out-of-centre retailing in the EU. During the late 1990s these centrifugal tendencies, coupled with a laissez-faire approach to urban planning, led to the development of a large number of peripheral out-of-centre shopping centres, similar in function (if not always in size) to the shopping malls of the USA. This paper will provide a progress report on the Bristol case study, and present some preliminary recommendations to prevent, mitigate or control urban sprawl. Our mandate is to consider, inter alia: evaluation of the impacts of the measures; possible difficulties or barriers to implementation (institutional barriers, low public acceptability, high cost, delay in the impacts, etc.); possible negative side effects; and recommendations concerning the efficient implementation of new public transport services. In addition, we hope to generalise these findings into practical recommendations and guidelines for cities faced with urban sprawl in general, and to devise measures that might inhibit further urban sprawl and the negative effects of existing developments. Finally, we hope to devise an 'urban sprawl monitoring tool' (i.e. a list of relevant indicators), so that local authorities might be empowered to monitor the evolution of sprawl and assess the effects of sprawl upon the environment, and hence devise a practical programme of palliative measures

Non-close-packed breath figures via ion-partitioning-mediated self-assembly

We report a one-step method of forming non-close-packed (NCP) pore arrays of micro- and sub-micropores using chloroform-based solutions of polystyrene acidified with hydrogen bromide for breath figure (BF) patterning. As BF patterning takes place, water vapor condenses onto the polystyrene solution, forming water droplets on the solution surface. Concurrently, preferential ion partitioning of hydrogen bromide leads to positively charged water droplets, which experience interdroplet electrostatic repulsion. Self-organization of charged water droplets because of surface flow and subsequent evaporation of the droplet templates result in ordered BF arrays with pore separation/diameter (L/D) ratios of up to 16.5. Evidence from surface potential scans show proof for preferential ion partitioning of HBr. Radial distribution functions and Voronoi polygon analysis of pore arrays show that they possess a high degree of conformational order. Past fabrication methods of NCP structures typically require multi-step processes. In contrast, we have established a new route for facile self-assembly of previously inaccessible patterns, which comprises of only a single operational step

Aerosol Comparisons Between Observations and Models: AeroCom and ABC

I will represent the AeroCom community to the Atmospheric Brown Cloud (ABC) workshop. I will summarize the activities and results from AeroCom Phase I activities in the past 8 years and introduce the new results and activities in the current AeroCom Phase II. We hope to coordinate some activities with the ABC community to share model output and data access for model evaluations, comparisons, and assessment