15,128 research outputs found
Hardening electronic devices against very high total dose radiation environments
The possibilities and limitations of hardening silicon semiconductor devices to the high neutron and gamma radiation levels and greater than 10 to the eighth power rads required for the NERVA nuclear engine development are discussed. A comparison is made of the high dose neutron and gamma hardening potential of bipolar, metal insulator semiconductors and junction field effect transistors. Experimental data is presented on device degradation for the high neutron and gamma doses. Previous data and comparisons indicate that the JFET is much more immune to the combined neutron displacement and gamma ionizing effects than other transistor types. Experimental evidence is also presented which indicates that p channel MOS devices may be able to meet the requirements
Heuristic Refinement Method for the Derivation of Protein Solution Structures: Validation on Cytochrome B562
A method is described for determining the family of protein structures compatible with solution data obtained primarily from nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Starting with all possible conformations, the method systematically excludes conformations until the remaining structures are only those compatible with the data. The apparent computational intractability of this approach is reduced by assembling the protein in pieces, by considering the protein at several levels of abstraction, by utilizing constraint satisfaction methods to consider only a few atoms at a time, and by utilizing artificial intelligence methods of heuristic control to decide which actions will exclude the most conformations. Example results are presented for simulated NMR data from the known crystal structure of cytochrome b562 (103 residues). For 10 sample backbones an average root-mean-square deviation from the crystal of 4.1 A was found for all alpha-carbon atoms and 2.8 A for helix alpha-carbons alone. The 10 backbones define the family of all structures compatible with the data and provide nearly correct starting structures for adjustment by any of the current structure determination methods
Developing Health Information Literacy in Disadvantaged and Dependent Circumstances: The Everyday Role of Family Nurses
This paper examines the challenges of developing health information literacy (HIL) amongst disadvantaged and dependent populations from the perspective of non-information professionals occupying everyday support roles. Our participants were a team of UK Family Nurses providing outreach support to vulnerable young mothers from areas of multiple deprivations. Our data collection methods were observation, interviews, and focus groups. Our participants all believe that they have an important role in developing HIL in clients but are unfamiliar with fundamental overarching information literacy (IL) concepts and models. Consequently, their confidence in their own ability to develop HIL skills in clients is limited. We discuss that to extend primary healthcare practices beyond HIL support to HIL education requires not only IL training, but also an appropriate pedagogical approach adaptable to semi-structured problematic situations. We raise important questions regarding approaches to developing HIL in disadvantaged population
Environmental Impacts of Multi-Storey Buildings Using Different Construction Materials
The Research Goals and Objectives for this project were set out in the Ministry of Agriculture
and Forestry (MAF) RFP POR/7811, April 2007. The University of Canterbury responded
with a collaborative research programme âto fill the information gap about what is the greatest
amount of wood that can be used in the construction and fit-out of commercial, large-scale
buildings in New Zealand (and) âŠâŠ to provide Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) information
about the benefits of maximising the use of wood in sustainable buildingsâ.
This research project modelled the performance of four similar office building designs â
Concrete, Steel, Timber and TimberPlus â all based on an actual six-storey 4,200m2 building,
to investigate the influence of construction materials on life cycle energy use and global
warming potential (GWP).
All four buildings were designed for a 60 year lifetime, with very similar low operational
energy consumption. The Concrete and Steel buildings employed conventional structural
design and construction methods. The Timber buildings were designed with an innovative
post-tensioned timber structure using laminated veneer lumber (LVL). The TimberPlus design
further increased the use of timber in architectural features such as exterior cladding, windows
and ceilings. All timber materials are renewable and durable, sourced from sustainably
managed forests. Predicted construction times for all four buildings are similar.
The LCA study by Scion considered the full life cycle of the buildings including initial
embodied energy of the materials, and maintenance, transport, operational energy and two endof-
life scenarios, where deconstructed materials were either landfilled or reutilised.
Increasing the amount of timber in the buildings decreased the initial embodied energy and
GWP of materials and also decreased the total energy consumption and GWP over the 60 year
lifetime. The TimberPlus design clearly had the lowest environmental impacts, whilst the Steel
building had the highest impacts. A significant benefit could be obtained in the Steel, Concrete
and Timber buildings by replacing high embodied energy components (especially aluminium
windows and louvres) with timber.
The final destination of deconstruction waste at the end of the 60 year life-cycle is extremely
important. Landfilling of timber waste, with the permanent storage of most of the carbon in
the timber, was slightly more beneficial than burning of wood waste for energy. The benefits of
landfilling timber waste will increase as modern and future landfill construction and
management capture and utilise more of the methane generated by decomposition. Recycling
of steel and concrete is more beneficial than landfilling.
It is important to note that looking at a single environmental indicator, such as GWP, could
lead to unintended outcomes. For example, for the TimberPlus building the landfilling scenario
would be slightly better in terms of climate change. However, looking at the energy results
alongside the GWP results, the reutilisation scenario shows both an energy reutilisation benefit,
as well as still being beneficial to climate change. Therefore, the use of multiple indicators
may be necessary to inform the environmental decision-making process.An alternative end-of-life scenario which assumed permanent storage of carbon in wood
materials showed that net total GWP for the materials in the TimberPlus building is negative,
because the long-term storage of over 630 tonnes of carbon dioxide removed from the
atmosphere more than cancels out all the greenhouse gases emitted in the manufacture of all
the other building materials. In this scenario, the TimberPlus building could be considered to
be âcarbon-neutralâ for at least the first 12 years of its operation.
With NZ-specific energy and GWP coefficients now available, a simple model can be
developed for assessing the energy and GWP impacts of individual buildings. This study
shows that the Green Star Office rating tool does not capture all the benefits of using more
wood in buildings which are identified by the simple model or a full LCA study.
Support of on-going research is essential to further develop the potential for Timber buildings
to be more widely used in NZ, with subsequent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions
UCLA Space-Time Area Law Model: A Persuasive Foundation for Hadronization
From the studies of rates and distributions of heavy quark mesons we have
developed additional evidence that hadron formation is dominantly controlled by
a Space-Time Area Law, an approach suggested by both non-perturbative QCD and
Relativistic String Models.Comment: 37 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables, Accepted for publication in Eur.
Phys. J.
Power-law random walks
We present some new results about the distribution of a random walk whose
independent steps follow a Gaussian distribution with exponent
. In the case we show that a stochastic
representation of the point reached after steps of the walk can be
expressed explicitly for all . In the case we show that the random
walk can be interpreted as a projection of an isotropic random walk, i.e. a
random walk with fixed length steps and uniformly distributed directions.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Magnetic Vortex Resonance in Patterned Ferromagnetic Dots
We report a high-resolution experimental detection of the resonant behavior
of magnetic vortices confined in small disk-shaped ferromagnetic dots. The
samples are magnetically soft Fe-Ni disks of diameter 1.1 and 2.2 um, and
thickness 20 and 40 nm patterned via electron beam lithography onto microwave
co-planar waveguides. The vortex excitation spectra were probed by a vector
network analyzer operating in reflection mode, which records the derivative of
the real and the imaginary impedance as a function of frequency. The spectra
show well-defined resonance peaks in magnetic fields smaller than the
characteristic vortex annihilation field. Resonances at 162 and 272 MHz were
detected for 2.2 and 1.1 um disks with thickness 40 nm, respectively. A
resonance peak at 83 MHz was detected for 20-nm thick, 2-um diameter disks. The
resonance frequencies exhibit weak field dependence, and scale as a function of
the dot geometrical aspect ratio. The measured frequencies are well described
by micromagnetic and analytical calculations that rely only on known properties
of the dots (such as the dot diameter, thickness, saturation magnetization, and
exchange stiffness constant) without any adjustable parameters. We find that
the observed resonance originates from the translational motion of the magnetic
vortex core.Comment: submitted to PRB, 17 pages, 5 Fig
Testing the Rule with Exclusive Semi-Leptonic Kaon Decays
We consider the possibility of violations of the selection rule at an appreciable level in {\it exclusive} semi-leptonic decays of
Kaons. At -Factories, intense Kaon beams will be available and will probe
among others, the semi-leptonic decays and in addition
to and could provide novel testing grounds for the
rule. In particular, the branching ratio of is non-negligible
and could be used to probe new phenomena associated with the violation of this
selection rule. Furthermore, we modify certain di-lepton event rate ratios and
asymmetries and time asymmetries that have been constructed by Dass and Sarma
for di-lepton events from Beon decays to test the at the
, to the Kaon system at the . We find that the large
width of the relative to that of plays an important role in
enhancing some of the time asymmetries.Comment: 10 pages, Plain Latex, To be run twice
Search for antiproton decay at the Fermilab Antiproton Accumulator
A search for antiproton decay has been made at the Fermilab Antiproton
Accumulator. Limits are placed on thirteen antiproton decay modes. The results
include the first explicit experimental limits on the muonic decay modes of the
antiproton, and the first limits on the decay modes e- gamma gamma, and e-
omega. The most stringent limit is for the decay mode pbar-> e- gamma. At 90%
C.L. we find that tau/B(pbar-> e- gamma) > 7 x 10^5 yr. The most stringent
limit for decay modes with a muon in the final state is for the decay pbar->
mu- gamma. At 90% C.L. we find that tau/B(pbar-> mu- gamma) > 5 x 10^4 yr.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev. D. Final results on 13
channels (was 15) are presente
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