Superconducting re-entrant cavity transducer for a resonant bar gravitational radiation antenna

Copyright @ American Institute of PhysicsA 10‐GHz superconducting niobium re‐entrant cavity parametric transducer was developed for use in a cryogenic 1.5‐tonne Nb resonant bar gravitational radiation antenna. The transducer has a very high electrical Q (6×105 at 4.2 K), and was operated at high cavity fields without degrading the Q. A very high electromechanical coupling between the antenna and the transducer was therefore achieved. The highest coupling attained, constrained by the available pump power, was 0.11. If the transducer were to be operated in conjunction with a wideband impedance matching element, an antenna bandwidth comparable to the frequency of the antenna would be attained. The temperature dependence of the Q of the transducer was in good agreement with theory. At temperatures above about 6 K the Q was degraded by the increase in the BCS surface resistance, while at lower temperatures the Q was limited by radiative losses

Parthenolide eliminates leukemia-initiating cell populations and improves survival in xenografts of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia

Key Points First report demonstrating in vivo elimination of multiple LIC populations from childhood ALL cases using animal models. In vivo models of leukemia are essential for drug evaluation studies.</jats:p

A Pilot Study on the Use of Nonlinguistic Concrete Materials and Drama to Aid Vocabulary Learning for Third-Grade Students

This article reports on the effects of the use of nonlinguistic concrete materials and dramatization on student vocabulary learning in eight third-grade classrooms. It follows a preceding study which determined that the use of nonlinguistic concrete materials and drama in K-3 classrooms for vocabulary instruction was minimal and varied across content areas. The results of the pilot study showed that the use of nonlinguistic materials significantly improved vocabulary learning for normally-progressing students (p=0.00185), but had little or no effect on students in reading intervention classrooms. The study was quasi-experimental in nature and utilized six third-grade classrooms of normally-progressing students and two third-grade reading intervention classrooms. Each set of classrooms was randomly divided between treatment and control groups. The study did not prescribe a vocabulary instructional method other than requiring that nonlinguistic concrete materials and drama were to be used in the treatment groups. The concept of augmenting vocabulary lessons with these materials was based on extending the preliterate method of learning names of objects by seeing, touching, hearing, smelling, and tasting them. Vocabulary instruction time was held constant throughout the study for both treatment and control groups

Vortex pairing in two-dimensional Bose gases

Recent experiments on ultracold Bose gases in two dimensions have provided evidence for the existence of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase via analysis of the interference between two independent systems. In this work we study the two-dimensional quantum degenerate Bose gas at finite temperature using the projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation classical field method. While this describes the highly occupied modes of the gas below a momentum cutoff, we have developed a method to incorporate the higher momentum states in our model. We concentrate on finite-sized homogeneous systems in order to simplify the analysis of the vortex pairing. We determine the dependence of the condensate fraction on temperature and compare this to the calculated superfluid fraction. By measuring the first order correlation function we determine the boundary of the Bose-Einstein condensate and BKT phases, and find it is consistent with the superfluid fraction decreasing to zero. We reveal the characteristic unbinding of vortex pairs above the BKT transition via a coarse-graining procedure. Finally, we model the procedure used in experiments to infer system correlations [Hadzibabic et al., Nature 441, 1118 (2006)], and quantify its level of agreement with directly calculated in situ correlation functions.Comment: published versio

Some constructions of almost para-hyperhermitian structures on manifolds and tangent bundles

In this paper we give some examples of almost para-hyperhermitian structures on the tangent bundle of an almost product manifold, on the product manifold $M\times\mathbb{R}$, where $M$ is a manifold endowed with a mixed 3-structure and on the circle bundle over a manifold with a mixed 3-structure.Comment: 10 pages; This paper has been presented in the "4th German-Romanian Seminar on Geometry" Dortmund, Germany, 15-18 July 200

Dense, Fe-rich Ejecta in Supernova Remnants DEM L238 and DEM L249: A New Class of Type Ia Supernova?

We present observations of two LMC supernova remnants (SNRs), DEM L238 and DEM L249, with the Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray satellites. Bright central emission, surrounded by a faint shell, is present in both remnants. The central emission has an entirely thermal spectrum dominated by strong Fe L-shell lines, with the deduced Fe abundance in excess of solar and not consistent with the LMC abundance. This Fe overabundance leads to the conclusion that DEM L238 and DEM L249 are remnants of thermonuclear (Type Ia) explosions. The shell emission originates in gas swept up and heated by the blast wave. A standard Sedov analysis implies about 50 solar masses in both swept-up shells, SNR ages between 10,000 and 15,000 yr, low (< 0.05 cm^-3) preshock densities, and subluminous explosions with energies of 3x10^50 ergs. The central Fe-rich supernova ejecta are close to collisional ionization equilibrium. Their presence is unexpected, because standard Type Ia SNR models predict faint ejecta emission with short ionization ages. Both SNRs belong to a previously unrecognized class of Type Ia SNRs characterized by bright interior emission. Denser than expected ejecta and/or a dense circumstellar medium around the progenitors are required to explain the presence of Fe-rich ejecta in these SNRs. Substantial amounts of circumstellar gas are more likely to be present in explosions of more massive Type Ia progenitors. DEM L238, DEM L249, and similar SNRs could be remnants of ``prompt'' Type Ia explosions with young (~100 Myr old) progenitors.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures, ApJ, in pres

The Relationship Between Galaxies and Low Redshift Weak Lyman alpha Absorbers in the Directions of H1821+643 and PG1116+215

To study the nature of low z Lya absorbers in the spectra of QSOs, we have obtained high signal-to-noise UV spectra of H 1821+643 (z = 0.297) and PG 1116+215 (z = 0.177) with the GHRS on the HST. The spectra have minimum S/N of 70-100 and 3 sigma limiting equivalent widths of 50-75 mA. We detect 26 Lya lines with Wr > 50 mA toward H1821+643 and 13 toward PG1116+215, which implies a density of 102+/-16 lines per unit redshift. The two-point correlation function shows marginal evidence of clustering on ~500 km/s scales, but only if the weakest lines are excluded. We have also used the WIYN Observatory to measure galaxy redshifts in the ~1 degree fields centered on each QSO. We find 17 galaxy-absorber pairs within projected distances of 1 Mpc with velocity separations of 350 km/s or less. Monte Carlo simulations show that if the Lya lines are randomly distributed, the probability of observing this many close pairs is 3.6e-5. We find that all galaxies with projected distances of 600 kpc or less have associated Lya absorbers within 1000 km/s, and the majority of these galaxies have absorbers within 350 km/s. We also find that the Lya equivalent width is anticorrelated with the projected distance of the nearest galaxy out to at least 600 kpc, but this should be interpreted cautiously because there are potential selection biases. Statistical tests using the entire sample also indicate that the absorbers are not randomly distributed. We discuss the nature of the Lya absorbers in light of the new data.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ. 17 pages plus 11 tables and 17 figure