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    Late Holocene mud sedimentation and diagenesis in the Firth of Thames: Bentonites in the making

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    Late Holocene mud sedimentation in the southern Firth of Thames has been described from analysis of a number of shallow marine sediment cores. Three distinct lithofacies are distinguished on the basis of sediment texture and mineralogy. A laterally extensive greenish grey mud, typically bioturbated and massive, with sporadic uncorrelatable interbedded shell layers is termed the Firth of Thames mud facies. Nearer shore sediments are usually coarser and are subdivided into two facies: a siliciclastic sand facies (river mouth sand facies) comprising more prominent interbeds of sand in mud and associated with sedimentation at the mouth of the Waihou River; and a mixed terrigenous-carbonate gravel facies (delta fan gravel facies) associated with deposition on small delta fans adjacent to streams draining the Coromandel Range. The areal distribution of all three facies over the late Holocene has been controlled largely by northward progradation of the coastal Hauraki Lowland associated with the rapid sediment infilling of the Firth of Thames since sea level reached its present height 6500 y B.P. From seismic evidence the Holocene muds are up to 10m thick. The cores in this study penetrated only to 5.5m sub-bottom depth and yielded an oldest radiocarbon age of 5000 y B.P. The age data indicate an average rate of offshore vertical sediment accumulation of 1.5 mm/y. Up to 15 km of progradation of the southern shoreline of the coastal Hauraki Lowland has occurred over the late Holocene at an average rate of up to 2.5 m/y, notably from 3500 y B.P to 1200 y B.P. Progradation is evidenced by the occurrence of coarsening-upward sequences in nearer shore cores of the Firth of Thames, as well as their changing faunal composition, particularly the upward increase in abundance of the foraminifer Ammonia beccarri, a good indicator of brackish water conditions, which suggests a gradual seaward encroachment of the freshwater influence of the Waihou River over the late Holocene. Basal muds which are similar in composition to marine sediments of the Firth of Thames are overlain by peat dated at 6025 y B.P in a peat core from Kopouatai Peat Bog, and suggest that marine conditions existed in this inland region of the Hauraki Depression prior to 6025 y B.P. Muds range from silty clays to clayey silts and consist principally of volcanic glass, smectite and halloysite, with smaller amounts of other volcanic-derived siliciclasts and allophane and illite, as well as skeletal carbonate (mainly aragonite) and organic matter. A contemporaneous decrease in the abundance of volcanic glass (55-15 wt % down-core) and an increase in smectite concentration (8-45 wt % down-core) occurs with sub-bottom depth. Specific mineralogical analyses (XRD and IR) and evidence from scanning electron microscopy suggest the smectite is montmorillonitic in composition and authigenic in nature. Moreover, the absence of smectite in the bottom sediments of rivers draining the Hauraki Lowland precludes a detrital origin. The diagenetic transformation of volcanic glass to smectite in sediments of the Firth of Thames is described by a sequential kinetic model which involves a parabolic dissolution coupled with a first order precipitation of smectite via the formation of an intermediate hydrated glass phase. The rate constant calculated from the sequential kinetic model is 3.35 x 10⁻⁴y⁻¹. The half-life of the glass is 1475 y, implying rapid early diagenetic alteration of volcanic glass to smectite to form late Holocene bentonitic deposits. Thermodynamic stability considerations imply that the first order precipitaion of smectite may be favoured by conditions of pH and Na⁺ activity typical of interstitial fluids having sea water salinity under mildly anoxic conditions

    Ordering of organic molecules on templated surfaces

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    This thesis describes the controlled growth of molecular nanostructures using modified metallic and semiconductor surfaces. The Ag/Si(lll)-(root3 x root3),the Sn/Cu(100) surface alloy system and the Bi/Si(100) nanolines and (2xn) surfaces were all investigated as suitable substrates for the controlled growth of pentacene, (C22H14) or trimesic acid, (C6H3(COOH)3) organic molecules. The following techniques were used in this study; Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy (STM), Low Energy Electron Diffraction (LEED), Normal Incident X-Ray Standing Waves (NIXSW) and Temperature Programmed Desorption (TPD). The room temperature growth and ordering of trimesic acid on the AgfSi(ll1)-(root3 x root3) surface was investigated. An oblique unit cell was determined and a model proposed for the highly ordered close-packed domains. The discovery of a new submonolayer phase on Sn/Cu(100) and the re-examined known phase are discussed. New models for these reconstructions are proposed. Adsorption of trimesic acid at room temperature on the clean substrate the lowest Sn coverage phase were studied. Two new Sn coverage dependent structures were discovered and bonding schemes in upright and flat orientations are discussed. BifSi(100)-(2xn) surface was exploited as a template for the ordered growth of pentacene, which exhibited orientation specific adsorption. The Bi/Si(100)-(2xn) single domain surface created on vicinal silicon was used to test the suitable of Daresbury 4.2 beamline for NIXSW Imaging experiments and the quality of the results are discussed

    Combination of Advanced Optical Modelling with Electrical Simulation for Performance Evaluation of Practical 4-terminal Perovskite/c-Si Tandem Modules

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    AbstractThe perovskite solar cell is considered a promising candidate as the top cell for high-efficiency tandem devices with crystalline silicon (c-Si) bottom cells, contributing to the cost reduction of photovoltaic energy. In this contribution, a simulation method, involving optical and electrical modelling, is established to calculate the performance of 4-terminal (4T) perovskite/c-Si tandem devices on a mini-module level. Optical and electrical characterization of perovskite and c-Si solar cells are carried out to verify the simulation parameters. With our method, the influence of transparent conductive oxide (TCO) layer thickness of perovskite top cells on the performance of tandem mini-modules is investigated in case of both tin-doped indium oxide (ITO) and hydrogen-doped indium oxide (IO:H). The investigation shows that optimization of TCO layer thickness and replacement of conventional ITO with highly transparent IO:H can lead to an absolute efficiency increase of about 1%. Finally, a practical assessment of the efficiency potential for the 4T perovskite/c-Si tandem mini-module is carried out, indicating that with a relatively simple 4T tandem module structure the efficiency of a single-junction c-Si mini-module (19.3%) can be improved by absolute 4.5%

    Parasitic copepods from Egyptian Red Sea fishes: Bomolochidae Claus, 1875

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    © The Author(s) 2015 Open Access - This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The attached file is the published version of the article.NHM Repositor

    "J.R. Firth as computational linguist : A description of the CLOC text analysis software package in its linguistic context"

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    Quand M. Phillips - bien connu des lecteurs des Cahiers de l'APLIUT (cf. No. 13, pp. 16-30) - a proposé cet article , "J.R. Firth linguiste computationnel : une description du progiciel d'analyse textuelle CLOC replacé dans son contexte linguistique", il s'est demandé si cet exposé n'était pas, selon ses propres termes, un peu trop "ésotérique". En fait, il suffit d'entrer dans le texte et de suivre le guide. La présentation des arguments est agencée de façon extrêmement claire : l'auteur ne craint pas de s'adresser directement à ses lecteurs. M. Phillips a divisé son exposé en deux grandes parties : 1) un rappel historique de l'oeuvre du grand linguiste britannique, J. R. FIRTH, titulaire de la chaire de linguistique générale à Londres presque jusqu'à sa mort en 1960, dont les travaux ont inspiré toute une école moderne de linguistes computationnels, 2) une description du progiciel d'analyse textuelle appelé CLOC - acronyme dérivé de CoLOCation - développé ensuite, à l'université de Birmingham, par un disciple de J.R. Firth, le linguiste J.Mc.H. Sinclair, et un informaticien, A. Reed. M. Phillips articule sa présentation de CLOC autour de trois grandes parties correspondant aux trois phases d'un traitement utilisant ce progiciel : 1. la description de l'ensemble des caractères à utiliser pour un traitement donné (ces caractères sont crées au cours de la phase de préparation des données, comme CLOC travaille sur des fichiers préalablement organisés en tableaux avec pointeurs), 2. la spécification de l'ensemble du vocabulaire à traiter, 3. la sélection de la tâche à effectuer. Chacune de ces trois étapes est illustrée par un tableau donnant les différentes options possibles. M. Phillips termine sa présentation de CLOC par un exemple de programme typique. Une bibliographie extrêmement détaillée vient compléter cet article important pour l'EAO et la linguistique computationnelle.Phillips Martin K. "J.R. Firth as computational linguist : A description of the CLOC text analysis software package in its linguistic context". In: Cahiers de l'APLIUT, volume 4, numéro 1, 1984. pp. 54-73

    High-efficiency black IBC c-Si solar cells with poly-Si as carrier-selective passivating contacts

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    In this work, we present the application of poly-Si carrier-selective passivating contacts (CSPCs) as both polarities in interdigitated back-contacted (IBC) solar cell architectures. We compared two approaches to form a gap between the back-surface field (BSF) and emitter fingers. It is proved that the gaps prepared by both approaches are efficient in preventing carriers’ recombination. To minimize the reflection losses, we developed a novel modulated surface texturing (MST) structure as anti-reflection coating (ARC). It is obtained by superposing a nano-textured SiO2 layer on the conventional micro-textured pyramids, which are passivated with a-Si:H / SiNx:H layers. This approach decouples the light harvesting from the Si surface passivation, which potentially results in the highest possible optical and electrical performances of the solar cells. The reflectance (R) of the MST-ARC is very close to that of the high-aspect ratio nano-structured silicon (black-Silicon), achieving R < 1% between 450 and 1000 nm. The J0 of MST-ARC passivated Si surface (6.3 fA/cm2) is the same as that of standard a-Si:H/SiNx:H layers passivated pyramidally-textured Si surface. By applying this novel MST-ARC in our IBC solar cell, the highest JSC observed in a device is 42.2 mA/cm2 with a VOC as high as 701 mV. A spectral response enhancement in case of the MST-ARC cell is observed over the whole wavelength range with respect to the cell with standard SiNx:H ARC. The highest efficiency achieved in this work is 23.0%, with the potential to reach 24.0% in short term by using more conductive metal fingers.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Photovoltaic Materials and DevicesElectrical Sustainable Energ

    Hybrid Si/SiC Switch Modulation with Minimum SiC MOSFET Conduction in Grid Connected Voltage Source Converters

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    In this article, a hybrid Si/Si carbide (SiC) switch (HyS) modulation with minimum SiC MOSFET conduction (mcHyS) is experimentally characterized, so as to derive its conduction and switching performance. These are later used to derive a silicon (Si) area analytical model for the HyS configuration. The chip area model is used to benchmark the mcHyS modulation concepts against single-technology switches and typical HyS modulation when considering the implementation of a 100-kW two-level voltage-source converter (VSC) deployed for three industrial applications: photovoltaic inverter, electric vehicle fast-charging station, and battery storage systems for grid ancillary service. The two additional switching events of the SiC MOSFET, which differentiate the mcHyS modulation from the typical HyS one, are proven to happen in soft switching; therefore, the mcHyS switching performances are not penalized. Furthermore, the analysis presented shows how the studied mcHyS modulation performs against the single semiconductor technology and the typical HyS solution in terms of cost and power conversion efficiency. More specifically, it is shown that the HyS solutions are particularly competitive versus the full Si-based VSCs when the application at hand often operates at low partial loads. Finally, a 10-kW two-level VSC assembled with mcHyS is tested, so as to compare its efficiency versus single-technology switches.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.DC systems, Energy conversion & StorageIntelligent Electrical Power Grid
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