Coupling strength control in photonic crystal/photonic wire multiple cavity devices

Resonance splitting has been demonstrated for two coupled micro-cavities with control of the free spectral range between the resonance peaks, together with a normalised transmission level of approximately 60%. Coupled micro-cavity-based structures that were separated by two closely spaced in-line coupler sections between the two micro-cavities have also been successfully fabricated and measured. The coupling strength of the two cavities was controlled via the use of hole tapering in the middle section between the two cavities. 2D finite-difference time-domain simulation shows close agreement with the results of measurements

Constraints on Neutrino Parameters from Neutral-Current Solar Neutrino Measurements

We generalize the pull approach to define the $\chi^2$ function to the analysis of the data with correlated statistical errors. We apply this method to the analysis of the Sudbury Neutrino Collaboration data obtained in the salt-phase. In the global analysis of all the solar neutrino and KamLAND data we find the best fit (minimum $\chi^2$) values of neutrino parameters to be $\tan^2 \theta_{12} \sim 0.42$ and $\delta m_{12}^2 \sim 7.1 \times 10^{-5}$ eV$^2$. We confirm that the maximal mixing is strongly disfavored while the bounds on $\delta m_{12}^2$ are significantly strengthened.Comment: 6 figures. Some typos are corrected, figures are visually improve

New Adaptive Data Transmission Scheme Over HF Radio

Acceptable Bit Error rate can be maintained by adapting some of the design parameters such as modulation, symbol rate, constellation size, and transmit power according to the channel state.<br />An estimate of HF propagation effects can be used to design an adaptive data transmission system over HF link. The proposed system combines the well known Automatic Link Establishment (ALE) together with variable rate transmission system. The standard ALE is modified to suite the required goal of selecting the best carrier frequency (channel) for a given transmission. This is based on measuring SINAD (Signal plus Noise plus Distortion to Noise plus Distortion), RSL (Received Signal Level), multipath phase distortion and BER (Bit Error Rate) for each channel in the frequency list. Channel condition evaluation is done by two arrangements. In the first an FFT analysis is used where a pilot signal is transmitted over the channel, while the data itself is used in the second arrangement. Passive channel assessment is used to avoid bad channels hence limiting the frequency pool size to be used in the point to point communication and the time required for scanning and linking. An exchange of channel information between the transmitting and receiving stations is considered to select the modulation scheme for transmission. Mainly MPSK and MFSK are considered with different levels giving different data rate according to the channel condition. The results of the computer simulation have shown that when transmitting at a fixed channel symbol rate of 1200 symbol/sec, the information rate ranges from 2400 bps using 4FSK up to 3600 bps using 8PSK for SNR ranges from 11dB up to 26dB.<br /

Diversity of weed communities under different water regimes in bertam irrigated direct seeded rice field.

Experiments were initiated at MARDI Bertam Rice Research Station in Penang in the dry season of 2004 and main season 2004/2005 to study the effect of different water regimes on diversity of weed species. Plots receiving continuous flooded treatment (T1) and flooding up to panicle initiation (T2) significantly suppressed weed population to approximately 18 – 58% and reduced weed biomass to 14 – 57% as compared to the highest values in continuous field capacity treatment (T5) at all sampling dates (30, 60 and 90 DAS) in both planting seasons. Across water regime treatments the weed composition comprised of 11 weed species in the dry season and 10 weed species in the main season. Broadleaved weeds, especially Monochoria vaginalis and Limnocharis flava were the most dominant weeds in most water regime treatments. The SDR values of broadleaved weeds in the dry season were 48.7, 46.4, 44.2, 40.7 and 35.8% for T2, T1, T3 (flooding for the first month), T5 and T4 (continuous saturation), respectively. In the main season, the SDR values for the broadleaved weeds increased to 79.5, 68.2, 62.4, 62.2, and 50.57% for T2, T1, T3, T4 and T5, respectively. Fimbristylis miliacea and Cyperus iria were dominant in the dry season with SDR values of more than 34% in all water regime treatments, but decreased to less than 23% in the main season. For grasses, comprising of mostly Echinochloa crus-galli, Echinochloa colona and Leptochloa chinensis, SDR values of more than 20% were recorded in T4 and T5 in the dry season, while in the main season SDR values of between 21 – 34% were observed in treatments T1, T3and T5

Socioeconomic Inequality in Malnutrition in Developing Countries

Epidemiological evidence points to a small set of primary causes of child mortality that are the main killers of children aged less than 5 years: pneumonia, diarrhoea, low birth weight, asphyxia and, in some parts of the world, HIV and malaria. Malnutrition is the underlying cause of one out of every two such deaths. The evidence also shows that child death and malnutrition are not equally distributed throughout the world. They cluster in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, and in poor communities within these regions. Disparities in health outcomes between the poor and the rich are increasingly attracting attention from researchers and policy-makers, thereby fostering a substantial growth in the literature on health equity. “Socioeconomic inequality” in malnutrition refers to the degree to which childhood malnutrition rates differ between more and less socially and economically advantaged groups. This is different from “pure inequality”, which takes into account all factors influencing childhood malnutrition. The available literature documenting socioeconomic inequality in malnutrition focuses mainly on individual countries or regions. At a more global level, Wagstaff and Watanabe provided evidence on socioeconomic inequality in malnutrition across 20 developing countries. Other relevant cross-country studies include those of Pradhan et al., who describe total inequality, and Smith et al., who describe inequalities between urban and rural populations. The latter two studies, however, provide no evidence on socioeconomic inequality within developing countries

Asymptotic normalization coefficients for 8B->7Be+p from a study of 8Li->7Li+n

Asymptotic normalization coefficients (ANCs) for 8Li->7Li+n have been extracted from the neutron transfer reaction 13C(7Li,8Li)12C at 63 MeV. These are related to the ANCs in 8B->7Be+p using charge symmetry. We extract ANCs for 8B that are in very good agreement with those inferred from proton transfer and breakup experiments. We have also separated the contributions from the p_1/2 and p_3/2 components in the transfer. We find the astrophysical factor for the 7Be(p,gamma)8B reaction to be S_17(0)=17.6+/-1.7 eVb. This is the first time that the rate of a direct capture reaction of astrophysical interest has been determined through a measurement of the ANCs in the mirror system.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

A log analysis study of 10 years of ebook consumption in academic library collections

Even though libraries have been offering eBooks for more than a decade, very little is known about eBook access and consumption in academic library collections. This paper addresses this gap with a log analysis study of eBook access at the library of the University of Waikato. This in-depth analysis covers a period spanning 10 years of eBook use at this university. We draw conclusions about the use of eBooks at this institution and compare the results with other published studies of eBook usage at tertiary institutes

Constraining neutrino oscillation parameters with current solar and atmospheric data

We analyze the impact of recent solar, atmospheric and reactor data in the determination of the neutrino oscillation parameters, taking into account that both the solar nu_e and the atmospheric nu_mu may convert to a mixture of active and sterile neutrinos. We use the most recent global solar neutrino data, including the 1496-day Super-K neutrino data sample, and we investigate in detail the impact of the SNO neutral current, spectral and day/night data by performing also an analysis using only the charged current rate from SNO. The implications of the first 145.1 days of KamLAND data on the determination of the solar neutrino parameters are also discussed in detail. We confirm the clear preference of solar+reactor data for the pure active LMA-MSW solution of the solar neutrino problem, and obtain that the LOW, VAC, SMA and Just-So^2 solutions are disfavored with a Delta_chi^2 = 22, 22, 36, 44, respectively. Furthermore, we find that the global solar data constrains the admixture of a sterile neutrino to be less than 43% at 99% CL. By performing an improved fit of the atmospheric data, we also update the corresponding regions of oscillation parameters. We find that the recent atmospheric Super-K (1489-day) and MACRO data have a strong impact on constraining a sterile component in atmospheric oscillations: if the nu_mu is restricted to the atmospheric mass states only a sterile admixture of 16% is allowed at 99% CL, while a bound of 35% is obtained in the unconstrained case. Pure sterile oscillations are disfavored with a Delta_chi^2 = 34.6 compared to the pure active case.Comment: 28 pages, LaTeX file using RevTEX4, 12 figures and 3 tables included. Improved version including the new KamLAND dat

Do solar neutrinos decay?

Despite the fact that the solar neutrino flux is now well-understood in the context of matter-affected neutrino mixing, we find that it is not yet possible to set a strong and model-independent bound on solar neutrino decays. If neutrinos decay into truly invisible particles, the Earth-Sun baseline defines a lifetime limit of \tau/m \agt 10^{-4} s/eV. However, there are many possibilities which must be excluded before such a bound can be established. There is an obvious degeneracy between the neutrino lifetime and the mixing parameters. More generally, one must also allow the possibility of active daughter neutrinos and/or antineutrinos, which may partially conceal the characteristic features of decay. Many of the most exotic possibilities that presently complicate the extraction of a decay bound will be removed if the KamLAND reactor antineutrino experiment confirms the large-mixing angle solution to the solar neutrino problem and measures the mixing parameters precisely. Better experimental and theoretical constraints on the $^8$B neutrino flux will also play a key role, as will tighter bounds on absolute neutrino masses. Though the lifetime limit set by the solar flux is weak, it is still the strongest direct limit on non-radiative neutrino decay. Even so, there is no guarantee (by about eight orders of magnitude) that neutrinos from astrophysical sources such as a Galactic supernova or distant Active Galactic Nuclei will not decay.Comment: Very minor corrections, corresponds to published versio

A Costing Analysis For Decision Making Grid Model In Failure-Based Maintenance

In current economic downturn, industries have to set good control on production cost, to maintain their profit margin. Maintenance department as an imperative unit in industries should attain all maintenance data, process information instantaneously, and subsequently transform it into a useful decision. Then act on the alternative to reduce production cost. Decision Making Grid model is used to identify strategies for maintenance decision. However, the model has limitation as it consider two factors only, that is, downtime and frequency of failures. We consider third factor, cost, in this study for failure-based maintenance. The objective of this paper is to introduce the formulae to estimate maintenance cost. Methods. Fish bone analysis conducted with Ishikawa model and Decision Making Grid methods are used in this study to reveal some underlying risk factors that delay failure-based maintenance. The goal of the study is to estimate the risk factor that is, repair cost to fit in the Decision Making Grid model. Decision Making grid model consider two variables, frequency of failure and downtime in the analysis. This paper introduces third variable, repair cost for Decision Making Grid model. This approaches give better result to categorize the machines, reduce cost, and boost the earning for the manufacturing plant. Results. We collected data from one of the food processing factories in Malaysia. From our empirical result, Machine C, Machine D, Machine F, and Machine I must be in the Decision Making Grid model even though their frequency of failures and downtime are less than Machine B and Machine N, based on the costing analysis. The case study and experimental results show that the cost analysis in Decision Making Grid model gives more promising strategies in failure-based maintenance. Conclusions. The improvement of Decision Making Grid model for decision analysis with costing analysis is our contribution in this paper for computerized maintenance management system