Results of magnetospheric barium ion cloud experiment of 1971

The barium ion cloud experiment involved the release of about 2 kg of barium at an altitude of 31 482 km, a latitude of 6.926 N., and a longitude of 74.395 W. Significant erosion of plasma from the main ion core occurred during the initial phase of the ion cloud expansion. From the motion of the outermost striational filaments, the electric field components were determined to be 0.19 mV/m in the westerly direction and 0.68 mV/m in the inward direction. The differences between these components and those measured from balloons flown in the proximity of the extremity of the field line through the release point implied the existence of potential gradients along the magnetic field lines. The deceleration of the main core was greater than theoretically predicted. This was attributed to the formation of a polarization wake, resulting in an increase of the area of interaction and resistive dissipation at ionospheric levels. The actual orientation of the magnetic field line through the release point differed by about 10.5 deg from that predicted by magnetic field models that did not include the effect of ring current

Wall-liquid and wall-crystal interfacial free energies via thermodynamic integration: A molecular dynamics simulation study

A method is proposed to compute the interfacial free energy of a Lennard-Jones system in contact with a structured wall by molecular dynamics simulation. Both the bulk liquid and bulk face-centered-cubic crystal phase along the (111) orientation are considered. Our approach is based on a thermodynamic integration scheme where first the bulk Lennard-Jones system is reversibly transformed to a state where it interacts with a structureless flat wall. In a second step, the flat structureless wall is reversibly transformed into an atomistic wall with crystalline structure. The dependence of the interfacial free energy on various parameters such as the wall potential, the density and orientation of the wall is investigated. The conditions are indicated under which a Lennard-Jones crystal partially wets a flat wall.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figure

THE TRANSCRIPTIONAL FACTOR EGR-1 IS SYNTHESIZED BY BACULOVIRUS-INFECTED INSECT CELLS IN AN ACTIVE, DNA-BINDING FORM

The Egr-1 (zfp-6) gene encodes a zinc-finger-containing nuclear protein that is rapidly and transiently induced in quiescent cells treated with mitogens. We have constructed baculovirus vectors that synthesize mouse Egr-1 protein initiating at two putative ATG start sites. The ATG site producing the larger protein (M(r), 80,000) is similar, if not identical, to Egr-1 synthesized by serum-stimulated quiescent mouse fibroblasts, thus identifying the likely site for translation. The protein synthesized by the insect cells is active as assayed by its ability to bind to a specific DNA sequence that has been identified as an Egr-1 binding site. The insect cell system will allow further studies of the structure and function of the Egr-1 product, a protein that appears to be an important "master switch" for other genes

Search for the disappearance of muon antineutrinos in the NuMI neutrino beam

We report constraints on muon antineutrino oscillation parameters that were obtained by using the two MINOS detectors to measure the 7% antineutrino component of the NuMI neutrino beam. In the Far Detector, we select 130 events in the charged-current muon antineutrino sample, compared to a prediction of 136.4 +/- 11.7(stat) ^{+10.2}_{-8.9}(syst) events under the assumption |dm2bar|=2.32x10^-3 eV^2, snthetabar=1.0. A fit to the two-flavor oscillation approximation constrains |dm2bar|<3.37x10^-3 eV^2 at the 90% confidence level with snthetabar=1.0

Identifying the Neutrino mass Ordering with INO and NOvA

The relatively large value of $\theta_{13}$ established recently by the Daya Bay reactor experiment opens the possibility to determine the neutrino mass ordering with experiments currently under construction. We investigate synergies between the NOvA long-baseline accelerator experiment with atmospheric neutrino data from the India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO). We identify the requirements on energy and direction reconstruction and detector mass for INO necessary for a significant sensitivity. If neutrino energy and direction reconstruction at the level of 10% and 10 degree can be achieved by INO a determination of the neutrino mass ordering seems possible around 2020.Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, minor improvements and clarifications, new panel in fig. 7, version to appear in JHEP, typo in eq. 4 correcte

Deformation of a nearly hemispherical conducting drop due to an electric field: theory and experiment

We consider, both theoretically and experimentally, the deformation due to an electric field of a pinned nearly-hemispherical static sessile drop of an ionic fluid with a high conductivity resting on the lower substrate of a parallel plate capacitor. Using both numerical and asymptotic approaches we find solutions to the coupled electrostatic and augmented Young–Laplace equations which agree very well with the experimental results. Our asymptotic solution for the drop interface extends previous work in two ways, namely to drops that have zero-field contact angles that are not exactly π/2 and to higher order in the applied electric field, and provides useful predictive equations for the changes in the height, contact angle and pressure as functions of the zero-field contact angle, drop radius, surface tension and applied electric field. The asymptotic solution requires some numerical computations, and so a surprisingly accurate approximate analytical asymptotic solution is also obtained

Dewetting, partial wetting and spreading of a two-dimensional monolayer on solid surface

We study the behavior of a semi-infinite monolayer, which is placed initially on a half of an infinite in both directions, ideal crystalline surface, and then evolves in time due to random motion of the monolayer particles. Particles dynamics is modeled as the Kawasaki particle-vacancy exchange process in the presence of long-range attractive particle-particle interactions. In terms of an analytically solvable mean-field-type approximation we calculate the mean displacement X(t) of the monolayer edge and discuss the conditions under which such a monolayer spreads (X(t) > 0), partially wets (X(t) = 0) or dewets from the solid surface (X(t) < 0).Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in PRE (RC