A new cryostat cooled by a closed-cycle Cryomech GB-37 cryocooler for superconductor measurements at temperatures down to 20 K is described. The sample is conductively coupled to the cold stage so as to minimize vibration and thermal stresses. AC losses have been measured calorimetrically in several HTSC coils that have been wound to simulate sub-scale transformer winding pairs. Stable temperatures down to 20 K were reached on these coils, allowing measurements at practical levels of ac current and I{sub c}. By using short ac current pulses, losses on individual turns could be resolved. Results are reported mainly to showcase the apparatus, measurement procedure and analytical approach.

Weathering of rocks as a result of exposure to water and the atmosphere can cause significant changes in their chemistry and porosity. In low-porosity rocks, such as basalts, changes in porosity, resulting from chemical weathering, are likely to modify the rock's effective diffusivity and permeability, affecting the rate of solute transport and thus potentially the rate of overall weathering to the extent that transport is the rate limiting step. Changes in total porosity as a result of mineral dissolution and precipitation have typically been used to calculate effective diffusion coefficients through Archie's law for reactive transport simulations of chemical weathering, but this approach fails to account for unconnected porosity that does not contribute to transport. In this study, we combine synchrotron X-ray microcomputed tomography ({mu}CT) and laboratory and numerical diffusion experiments to examine changes in both total and effective porosity and effective diffusion coefficients across a weathering interface in a weathered basalt clast from Costa Rica. The {mu}CT data indicate that below a critical value of {approx}9%, the porosity is largely unconnected in the basalt clast. The {mu}CT data were further used to construct a numerical pore network model to determine upscaled, effective diffusivities as a function of total porosity …