Formation of Amorphous Metal By Hypervelocity Impact

The Center for Electromechanics at The University of Texas at Austin has investigated the use of an electromagnetic railgun accelerator for the deposition of non-crystalline metals. The two main objectives of the study were to produce non-crystalline metal deposits in single thin layers (˷ 25lJm thick) and to determine the feasibility of building thicker layers by making multiple deposits. Deposits have been analyzed using a variety of techniques, including electrical resistivity and resistivity ratio, x-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy. Differential scanning calorimetry was carried out at Battelle Columbus Laboratories. The measurements show that CEM-UT -has produced non-crystalline Fe78B13Si9 deposits. Single and multiple-layer non-crystalline deposits with thicknesses of up to 36 µm have been produced, and the upper thickness limit of the technique has not yet been determined.Center for Electromechanic

Revisiting Local Campaign Effects: An Experiment Involving Literature Mail Drops in the 2007 Ontario Election

An invariant feature of constituency election campaigns is the literature mail drop, usually a one-page leaflet or card left at the door profiling the candidate and appealing for electoral support. In this article, we report on a field experiment designed to assess the effects of such mail drops. The experiment was conducted during the 2007 Ontario provincial election campaign in the constituency of Cambridge and entailed distributing literature for the Green party candidate in that constituency. After randomly assigning constituency polls to treatment and control groups, and delivering the Green candidate’s partisan literature only to the selected treatment group polls, we compared the candidate’s support levels in the treated polls with those in the control group. Our research detected a modest effect associated with the literature drop. The effect was largely limited to constituency neighbourhoods fitting at least part of the Green party’s traditional demographic, that is, those with higher than average socio-economic status

The 2007 Provincial Election and Electoral System Referendum in Ontario

Ontario’s general election in Oct. 10, 2007, was unprecedented for several reasons. The election was held on a date fixed by legislation and not one set by the premier or his caucus, something new to Ontario and relatively new to Canadian politics. Turnout declined to 53%, the lowest ever in Ontario history. The incumbent Liberals won a second consecutive majority government, something the party had not achieved since 1937. And finally, the election featured a referendum question that asked voters in Ontario to approve reforms to the electoral system, a proposal that was overwhelmingly rejected. This article explores each of the above-stated elements as they unfolded in the election

Value chain analysis for sea cucumber in the Philippines

This study examined the sea cucumber industry in the Philippines through the value chain lens. The intent was to identify effective pathways for the successful introduction of sandfish culture as livelihood support for coastal communities. Value chain analysis is a high-resolution analytical tool that enables industry examination at a detailed level. Previous industry assessments have provided a general picture of the sea cucumber industry in the country. The present study builds on the earlier work and supplies additional details for a better understanding of the industry's status and problems, especially their implications for the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded sandfish project "Culture of sandfish (Holothuria scabra) in Asia- Pacific" (FIS/2003/059). (PDF contains 54 pages

Value chain analysis for sea cucumber in the Philippines

This study examined the sea cucumber industry in the Philippines through the value chain lens. The intent was to identify effective pathways for the successful introduction of sandfish culture as livelihood support for coastal communities. Value chain analysis is a high-resolution analytical tool that enables industry examination at a detailed level. Previous industry assessments have provided a general picture of the sea cucumber industry in the country. The present study builds on the earlier work and supplies additional details for a better understanding of the industryÆs status and problems, especially their implications for the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) funded sandfish project ôCulture of sandfish (Holothuria scabra) in Asia- Pacificö (FIS/2003/059).Economic analysis, Trade, Pricing, Echinoderm fisheries, Philippines, Luzon I., Pangasinan, Philippines, Palawan I., ISEW, Philippines, Mindanao I., Davao Gulf,

Quartic Gauge Couplings and the Radiation Zero in pp to l nu gamma gamma events at the LHC

We report a study of the process pp to l nu gamma gamma at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, using a leading order partonic-level event generator interfaced to the Pythia program for showering and hadronisation and a with a generic detector simulation. The process is sensitive to possible anomalous quartic gauge boson couplings of the form W W gamma gamma. It is shown how unitarity-safe limits may be placed on these anomalous couplings by applying a binned maximum likelihood fit to the distribution of the two-photon invariant mass, M(gamma gamma), below a cutoff of 1TeV. Assuming 30fb-1 of integrated luminosity, the expected limits are two orders of magnitude tighter than those available from LEP. It is also demonstrated how the Standard Model radiation zero feature of the qq to W gamma gamma process may be observed in the difference between the two-photon and charged lepton pseudo-rapidities.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

Dynamic instability in resonant tunneling

We show that an instability may be present in resonant tunneling through a quantum well in one, two and three dimensions, when the resonance lies near the emitter Fermi level. A simple semiclassical model which simulates the resonance and the projected density of states by a nonlinear conductor, the Coulomb barrier by a capacitance, and the time evolution by an iterated map, is used. The model reproduces the observed hysteresis in such devices, and exhibits a series of bifurcations leading to fast chaotic current fluctuations.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Semimicroscopical description of the simplest photonuclear reactions accompanied by excitation of the giant dipole resonance in medium-heavy mass nuclei

A semimicroscopical approach is applied to describe photoabsorption and partial photonucleon reactions accompanied by the excitation of the giant dipole resonance (GDR). The approach is based on the continuum-RPA (CRPA) with a phenomenological description for the spreading effect. The phenomenological isoscalar part of the nuclear mean field, momentum-independent Landau-Migdal particle-hole interaction, and separable momentum-dependent forces are used as input quantities for the CRPA calculations. The experimental photoabsorption and partial $(n,\gamma)$-reaction cross sections in the vicinity of the GDR are satisfactorily described for $^{89}$Y, $^{140}$Ce and $^{208}$Pb target nuclei. The total direct-neutron-decay branching ratio for the GDR in $^{48}$Ca and $^{208}$Pb is also evaluated.Comment: 19 pages, 5 eps figure

Softly Broken A_4 Symmetry for Nearly Degenerate Neutrino Masses

The leptonic Higgs doublet model of neutrino masses is implemented with an A_4 discrete symmetry (the even permutation of 4 objects or equivalently the symmetry of the tetrahedron) which has 4 irreducible representations: 1, 1', 1'', and 3. The resulting spontaneous and soft breaking of A_4 provides a realistic model of charged-lepton masses as well as a nearly degenerate neutrino mass matrix. Phenomenological consequences at and below the TeV scale are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, no figur