Natural radioactivity is the main source of radiation which affects the human body [1]. Anthropogenic activities (e.g. high-altitude fl ights, mining and living in buildings) have increased the exposure to these sources [2]. In particular, the problem of natural radioactivity in buildings is of great interest since the building materials are of terrestrial origin and they consequently contain s...

Abstract Enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) offer the potential for a much larger energy source than conventional hydrothermal systems. Hot, low-permeability rocks are prevalent at depth around world, but challenge of extracting thermal depends on ability to create and sustain open fracture networks. Laboratory experiments were conducted using suite selected rock cores (granite, metasediment, rh...

Alongside volcanic eruptions in the middle and late Permian, sedimentary environment process changed, lithofacies characteristics varied conspicuously marine deposits of Sichuan Basin (China). The tuffaceous rocks, as a new type unconventional reservoir, provide strong evidence for influences on lithology reservoir potential rocks. With experimental studies relying field outcrops, thin sections...

The area under study is located in northern Iran at 36° 47’ latitude and 50° 12' longitude. It is 15 km from southeastern Deylaman. Petrological study of the kaolin mother rock (Eocene age) under a microscope shows that the rock is vitric tuff with a rhyolitic combination containing falcated and embowed glass shards. The thickness of the layer is approximately 20 meters, formed unconformably on...

We use an integrated approach consisting of experiments and complementary pore-scale network modeling to investigate the occurrence of sparsely connected pore spaces in rock matrices at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and their implications for matrix diffusion. Imbibition results indicate that pore spaces in devitrified tuff are not well-connected, and that this lack of connectivity is further compoun...

A segmentation framework is proposed to trace neurons from confocal microscopy images. With an increasing demand for high throughput neuronal image analysis, we propose an automated scheme to perform segmentation in a variational framework. Our segmentation technique, called tubularity flow field (TuFF) performs directional regional growing guided by the direction of tubularity of the neurites....

The origins of South America's exceptional plant diversity are poorly known from the fossil record. We report on unbiased quantitative collections of fossil floras from Laguna del Hunco (LH) and Río Pichileufú (RP) in Patagonia, Argentina. These sites represent a frost-free humid biome in South American middle latitudes of the globally warm Eocene. At LH, from 4,303 identified specimens, we rec...