Walking Access Distance of Metro Passengers and Relationship with Demographic Characteristics: A Case Study of Nanjing Metro

In the metropolises of China, the metro plays an increasingly important role in commuting because of its efficiency, affordability, and cleanliness. This paper attempts to explore the relationship between walking access distance to metro stations and the demographic characteristics of passengers, such as age, monthly income, travel frequency, gender, and travel purpose, as well as the influence of the urban context. Nanjing Metro Line 2 is selected as the case study. By using different methods such as a questionnaire survey, spatial decay function, analysis of covariance (ANOVA), network analysis of routes, and K-means cluster analysis, it is suggested that demographic characteristics have a significant impact on the pedestrian walking distance, with the exception of gender. Furthermore, the paper finds a spatial decay effect in walking access distance, the decay rate of which, however, varies across stations. Terminal stations have a larger pedestrian catchment area than in regular and exchange stations. Moreover, the passengers of Nanjing Metro Line 2 can be classified into six groups according to their demographic characteristics, among which education and occupation are vital indicators in determining their willingness to walk to the stations. Middle-class passengers have a higher dependence on the metro and tend to walk longer than other groups do. This study provides an important reference for planners and transport sectors to optimize land-use and transport infrastructures.     

On the energy integral for first post-Newtonian approximation

The post-Newtonian approximation for general relativity is widely adopted by the geodesy and astronomy communities. It has been successfully exploited for the inclusion of relativistic effects in practically all geodetic applications and techniques such as satellite/lunar laser ranging and very long baseline interferometry. Presently, the levels of accuracy required in geodetic techniques require that reference frames, planetary and satellite orbits and signal propagation be treated within the post-Newtonian regime. For arbitrary scalar W and vector gravitational potentials \(W^j (j=1,2,3)\), we present a novel derivation of the energy associated with a test particle in the post-Newtonian regime. The integral so obtained appears not to have been given previously in the literature and is deduced through algebraic manipulation on seeking a Jacobi-like integral associated with the standard post-Newtonian equations of motion. The new integral is independently verified through a variational formulation using the post-Newtonian metric components and is subsequently verified by numerical integration of the post-Newtonian equations of motion.     

Origin of Radio Enhancements in Type II Bursts in the Outer Corona

We study interplanetary (IP) solar radio type II bursts from 2011?–?2014 in order to determine the cause of the intense enhancements in their radio emission. Type II bursts are known to be due to propagating shocks that are often associated with fast halo-type coronal mass ejections (CMEs). We analysed the radio spectral data and the white-light coronagraph data from 16 selected events to obtain directions and heights for the propagating CMEs and the type II bursts. CMEs preceding the selected events were included in the analysis to verify whether CME interaction was possible. As a result, we were able to classify the events into five different groups. 1) Events where the heights of the CMEs and type II bursts are consistent, indicating that the shock is located at the leading front of the CME. The radio enhancements are superposed on the type II lanes, and they are probably formed when the shock meets remnant material from earlier CMEs, but the shock continues to propagate at the same speed. 2) Events where the type II heights agree with the CME leading front and an earlier CME is located at a height that suggests interaction. The radio enhancements and frequency jumps could be due to the merging process of the CMEs. 3) Events where the type II heights are significantly lower than the CME heights almost from the start. Interaction with close-by streamers is probably the cause for the enhanced radio emission, which is located at the CME flank region. 4) Events where the radio enhancements are located within wide-band type II bursts and the causes for the radio enhancements are not clear. 5) Events where the radio enhancements are associated with later-accelerated particles (electron beams, observed as type III bursts) that stop at the type II burst emission lane, and no other obvious reason for the enhancement can be identified.Most of the events (38%) were due to shock–streamer interaction, while one quarter of the events was due to possible CME–CME interaction. The drift rates, bandwidth characteristics, or cross-correlations of various characteristics did not reveal any clear association with particular category types. The chosen atmospheric density model causes the largest uncertainties in the derived radio heights, although in some cases, the emission bandwidths also lead to relatively large error margins.Our conclusion is that the enhanced radio emission associated with CMEs and propagating shocks can have different origins, depending on their overall configuration and the associated processes.     

Gulmarg,Kashmir, India: Potential Site for Optical Astronomical Observations

The site characteristics of Gulmarg, Kashmir at an altitude of about 2743.2 m above sea level is based on analysis of meteorological conditions, cloud cover, temperature, wind speed, wind direction, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure, etc. Analysis and characterization of meteorological conditions suggest that Gulmarg, Kashmir is a potential site for carrying out photometric as well as spectroscopic observations of celestial objects.     

Behaviour of physical parameters in extended gravity with hyperbolic function

In this paper, we have constructed the cosmological model of the universe in f(R, T) theory of gravity in a Bianchi type \(\mathrm{VI}_h\) universe for the functional f(R, T) in the form \(f(R,T)=\mu R+\mu T\), where R and T are respectively Ricci scalar and trace of energy momentum tensor and \(\mu \) is a constant. We have made use of the hyperbolic scale factor to find the physical parameters and metric potentials defined in the space-time. The physical parameters are constrained from different representative values to build up a realistic cosmological model aligned with the observational behaviour. The state finder diagnostic pair is found to be in the acceptable range. The energy conditions of the model are also studied.     

Propagation and Damping of a Localized Impulsive Longitudinal Perturbation in Coronal Loops

We use linear analysis to simulate the evolution of a coronal loop in response to a localized impulsive event. The disturbance is modeled by injecting a narrow Gaussian velocity pulse near one footpoint of a loop in equilibrium. Three different damping mechanisms, namely viscosity, thermal conduction, and optically thin radiation, are included in the loop calculations. We consider homogeneous and gravitationally stratified, isothermal loops of varying length (50≤L≤400 Mm) and temperature (2≤T≤10 MK). We find that a localized pulse can effectively excite slow magnetoacoustic waves that propagate up along the loop. The amplitudes of the oscillations increase with decreasing loop temperature and increasing loop length and size of the pulse width. At T≥4 MK, the waves are dissipated by the combined effects of viscosity and thermal conduction, whereas at temperatures of 2 MK, or lower, wave dissipation is governed by radiative cooling. We predict periods in the range of 4.6?–?41.6 minutes. The wave periods remain unaltered by variations of the pulse size, decrease with the loop temperature, and increase almost linearly with the loop length. In addition, gravitational stratification results in a small reduction of the periods and amplification of the waves as they propagate up along the loop.     

Extracting information from the gravitational redshift of compact rotating objects

Essential macroscopic internal properties of compact objects can be related to each other with the help of General Relativity. A somewhat familiar example is the relationship between the compactness M/R and the gravitational redshift for nonrotating bodies. Rotation poses new challenges when trying to relate observed or potentially observed quantities such as the graviational redshift, mass, radius, and angular velocity. Using a perturbative approach, we present an analytical approximation whose purpose is to relate these quantities. Two main results are highlighted: Derivation of a new maximal angular velocity depending only on the mass of the object and a possible estimate of the radius from a measurement of the gravitational redshift.     

Solar Prominences – An Intriguing Phenomenon

The article starts with an autobiographical account, where the author relates how his several study-trips abroad gradually led him to the study of solar physics in general, and prominences particularly.     

Numerical Simulation of a Solar Active Region. I: Bastille Day Flare

We present three-dimensional unsteady modeling and numerical simulations of a coronal active region, carried out within the compressible single-fluid MHD approximation. We focus on AR 9077 on 14 July 2000, and the triggering of the X5.7 GOES X-ray class “Bastille Day” flare. We simulate only the lower corona, although we include a virtual photosphere and chromosphere below. The boundary conditions at the base of this layer are set using temperature maps from line intensities and line-of-sight magnetograms (SOHO/MDI). From the latter, we generate vector magnetograms using the force-free approximation; these vector magnetograms are then used to produce the boundary condition on the velocity field using a minimum energy principle (Longcope, Astrophys. J. 612, 1181, 2004). The reconnection process is modeled through a dynamical hyper-resistivity which is activated when the current exceeds a critical value (Klimas et al., J. Geophys. Res. 109, 2218, 2004). Comparing the time series of X-ray fluxes recorded by GOES with modeled time series of various mean physical variables such as current density, Poynting energy flux, or radiative loss inside the active region, we can demonstrate that the model properly captures the evolution of an active region over a day and, in particular, is able to explain the initiation of the flare at the observed time.     

Evolution of the Fine Structure of Magnetic Fields in the Quiet Sun: Observations from Sunrise/IMaX and Extrapolations

Observations with the balloon-borne Sunrise/Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX) provide high spatial resolution (roughly 100 km at disk center) measurements of the magnetic field in the photosphere of the quiet Sun. To investigate the magnetic structure of the chromosphere and corona, we extrapolate these photospheric measurements into the upper solar atmosphere and analyze a 22-minute long time series with a cadence of 33 seconds. Using the extrapolated magnetic-field lines as tracer, we investigate temporal evolution of the magnetic connectivity in the quiet Sun’s atmosphere. The majority of magnetic loops are asymmetric in the sense that the photospheric field strength at the loop foot points is very different. We find that the magnetic connectivity of the loops changes rapidly with a typical connection recycling time of about 3±1 minutes in the upper solar atmosphere and 12±4 minutes in the photosphere. This is considerably shorter than previously found. Nonetheless, our estimate of the energy released by the associated magnetic-reconnection processes is not likely to be the sole source for heating the chromosphere and corona in the quiet Sun.