The bilinear method:a new stability-preserving order reduction approach

A new way of reducing the order of linear system transfer functions is presented. It guarantees stability in the approximation of stable systems and differs from existing stability-preserving methods by taking into account whole system parameter information when obtaining the approximate poles, not just that of the system poles. It uses a bilinear transformation in the process, which renders the method more flexible than traditional techniques. Examples are given to highlight the advantages of the new approach

Shift-and-scale model reduction:an alternative stability-preserving approach

A new stability-preserving model order-reduction method is presented for continuous-time systems. It makes use of the relatively new idea of transformed whole-system parameter matching for calculating the poles of the reduced-order transfer function. This has the advantage of using more of the system information than traditional methods in the approximation of the poles. The method is seen to be flexible and computationally attractive, relying only on readily available algorithms. It is based on a shift-and-scale transformation of the transfer function before applying the order-reduction process. Further, it is shown to be a viable alternative to existing stability-preserving techniques. Some examples illustrate the method

Issues Related to Incorporating Northern Peatlands into Global Climate Models

Northern peatlands cover ~3–4 million km2 (~10% of the land north of 45°N) and contain ~200–400 Pg carbon (~10–20% of total global soil carbon), almost entirely as peat (organic soil). Recent developments in global climate models have included incorporation of the terrestrial carbon cycle and representation of several terrestrial ecosystem types and processes in their land surface modules. Peatlands share many general properties with upland, mineral-soil ecosystems, and general ecosystem carbon, water, and energy cycle functions (productivity, decomposition, water infiltration, evapotranspiration, runoff, latent, sensible, and ground heat fluxes). However, northern peatlands also have several unique characteristics that will require some rethinking or revising of land surface algorithms in global climate models. Here we review some of these characteristics, deep organic soils, a significant fraction of bryophyte vegetation, shallow water tables, spatial heterogeneity, anaerobic biogeochemistry, and disturbance regimes, in the context of incorporating them into global climate models. With the incorporation of peatlands, global climate models will be able to simulate the fate of northern peatland carbon under climate change, and estimate the magnitude and strength of any climate system feedbacks associated with the dynamics of this large carbon pool

Flag manifolds and the Landweber-Novikov algebra

We investigate geometrical interpretations of various structure maps associated with the Landweber-Novikov algebra S^* and its integral dual S_*. In particular, we study the coproduct and antipode in S_*, together with the left and right actions of S^* on S_* which underly the construction of the quantum (or Drinfeld) double D(S^*). We set our realizations in the context of double complex cobordism, utilizing certain manifolds of bounded flags which generalize complex projective space and may be canonically expressed as toric varieties. We discuss their cell structure by analogy with the classical Schubert decomposition, and detail the implications for Poincare duality with respect to double cobordism theory; these lead directly to our main results for the Landweber-Novikov algebra.Comment: 23 pages. Published copy, also available at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/gt/GTVol2/paper5.abs.htm

Fireside corrosion degradation of ferritic alloys at 600°C in oxy-fired conditions

This paper reports the results of a study carried out to investigate the effects of simulated coal/biomass combustion conditions on the fireside corrosion. The 1000 h deposit recoat exposure (5 × 200 h cycles) was carried out at 600 °C. In these tests ferritic alloys were used 15Mo3, T22, T23 and T91. Kinetics data were generated for the alloys exposed using both traditional weight change methods and metal loss measurements. The highest rate of corrosion based on EDX results occurred under D1 deposit where provoke mainly by the formation of alkali iron tri-sulphate phase