Foamed glass-ceramic materials based on oil shale by-products

The feasibility and features of the production of foamed glass-ceramic materials based on oil shale ash were investigated. The optimal regime of synthesis found involved the following steps: glass fusion at 1400 °C, preparation of the glass powders and blending with the foaming agent. The foaming was carried out at 900 to 920 °C with a further one-stage crystallization at 790 to 820 °C. It was noted that the admixture of calcium carbonate, as a foaming agent, changed the phase composition of the resulting glass-ceramics by an increased rate of the crystallization process and the intensive formation of gehlenite simultaneously with diopside

Fossil Systems in the 400d Cluster Catalog

We report the discovery of seven new fossil systems in the 400d cluster survey. Our search targets nearby, $z\le0.2$, and X-ray bright, $L_X\ge 10^{43}$ erg sec$^{-1}$, clusters of galaxies. Where available, we measure the optical luminosities from Sloan Digital Sky Survey images, thereby obtaining uniform sets of both X-ray and optical data. Our selection criteria identify 12 fossil systems, out of which five are known from previous studies. While in general agreement with earlier results, our larger sample size allows us to put tighter constraints on the number density of fossil clusters. It has been previously reported that fossil groups are more X-ray bright than other X-ray groups of galaxies for the same optical luminosity. We find, however, that the X-ray brightness of massive fossil systems is consistent with that of the general population of galaxy clusters and follows the same $L_X-L_{\rm opt}$ scaling relation.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Ap

FLOating-Window Projective Separator (FloWPS): A Data Trimming Tool for Support Vector Machines (SVM) to Improve Robustness of the Classifier

Here, we propose a heuristic technique of data trimming for SVM termed FLOating Window Projective Separator (FloWPS), tailored for personalized predictions based on molecular data. This procedure can operate with high throughput genetic datasets like gene expression or mutation profiles. Its application prevents SVM from extrapolation by excluding non-informative features. FloWPS requires training on the data for the individuals with known clinical outcomes to create a clinically relevant classifier. The genetic profiles linked with the outcomes are broken as usual into the training and validation datasets. The unique property of FloWPS is that irrelevant features in validation dataset that don’t have significant number of neighboring hits in the training dataset are removed from further analyses. Next, similarly to the k nearest neighbors (kNN) method, for each point of a validation dataset, FloWPS takes into account only the proximal points of the training dataset. Thus, for every point of a validation dataset, the training dataset is adjusted to form a floating window. FloWPS performance was tested on ten gene expression datasets for 992 cancer patients either responding or not on the different types of chemotherapy. We experimentally confirmed by leave-one-out cross-validation that FloWPS enables to significantly increase quality of a classifier built based on the classical SVM in most of the applications, particularly for polynomial kernels

Energy Response and Longitudinal Shower Profiles Measured in CMS HCAL and Comparison With Geant4

The response of the CMS combined electromagnetic and hadron calorimeter to beams of pions with momenta in the range 5-300 GeV/c has been measured in the H2 test beam at CERN. The raw response with the electromagnetic compartment calibrated to electrons and the hadron compartment calibrated to 300 GeV pions may be represented by sigma = (1.2) sqrt{E} oplus (0.095) E. The fraction of energy visible in the calorimeter ranges from 0.72 at 5 GeV to 0.95 at 300 GeV, indicating a substantial nonlinearity. The intrinsic electron to hadron ratios are fit as a function of energy and found to be in the range 1.3-2.7 for the electromagnetic compartment and 1.4-1.8 for the hadronic compartment. The fits are used to correct the non-linearity of the e pi response to 5% over the entire measured range resulting in a substantially improved resolution at low energy. Longitudinal shower profile have been measured in detail and compared to Geant4 models, LHEP-3.7 and QGSP-2.8. At energies below 30 GeV, the data, LHEP and QGSP are in agreement. Above 30 GeV, LHEP gives a more accurate simulation of the longitudinal shower profile

Synchronization and Timing in CMS HCAL

The synchronization and timing of the hadron calorimeter (HCAL) for the Compact Muon Solenoid has been extensively studied with test beams at CERN during the period 2003-4, including runs with 40 MHz structured beam. The relative phases of the signals from different calorimeter segments are timed to 1 ns accuracy using a laser and equalized using programmable delay settings in the front-end electronics. The beam was used to verify the timing and to map out the entire range of pulse shapes over the 25 ns interval between beam crossings. These data were used to make detailed measurements of energy-dependent time slewing effects and to tune the electronics for optimal performance

Design, Performance, and Calibration of the CMS Hadron-Outer Calorimeter

The CMS hadron calorimeter is a sampling calorimeter with brass absorber and plastic scintillator tiles with wavelength shifting fibres for carrying the light to the readout device. The barrel hadron calorimeter is complemented with an outer calorimeter to ensure high energy shower containment in the calorimeter. Fabrication, testing and calibration of the outer hadron calorimeter are carried out keeping in mind its importance in the energy measurement of jets in view of linearity and resolution. It will provide a net improvement in missing \et measurements at LHC energies. The outer hadron calorimeter will also be used for the muon trigger in coincidence with other muon chambers in CMS

Design, Performance, and Calibration of CMS Hadron-Barrel Calorimeter Wedges

Extensive measurements have been made with pions, electrons and muons on four production wedges of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) hadron barrel (HB) calorimeter in the H2 beam line at CERN with particle momenta varying from 20 to 300 GeV/c. Data were taken both with and without a prototype electromagnetic lead tungstate crystal calorimeter (EB) in front of the hadron calorimeter. The time structure of the events was measured with the full chain of preproduction front-end electronics running at 34 MHz. Moving-wire radioactive source data were also collected for all scintillator layers in the HB. These measurements set the absolute calibration of the HB prior to first pp collisions to approximately 4%

Design and analysis of the digital phased antennas characteristics using modern systems of the atomized design (CAD)

There are discussed methods of the digital phased antennas design using the modern (computer aided design) CAD. There are given examples of digital antenna blocks and elements design using different CADs