Allison Brown, The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2010

Sin resume

Interactive Chemical Reactivity Exploration

Elucidating chemical reactivity in complex molecular assemblies of a few hundred atoms is, despite the remarkable progress in quantum chemistry, still a major challenge. Black-box search methods to find intermediates and transition-state structures might fail in such situations because of the high-dimensionality of the potential energy surface. Here, we propose the concept of interactive chemical reactivity exploration to effectively introduce the chemist's intuition into the search process. We employ a haptic pointer device with force-feedback to allow the operator the direct manipulation of structures in three dimensions along with simultaneous perception of the quantum mechanical response upon structure modification as forces. We elaborate on the details of how such an interactive exploration should proceed and which technical difficulties need to be overcome. All reactivity-exploration concepts developed for this purpose have been implemented in the Samson programming environment.Comment: 36 pages, 14 figure

High-spin structures of 136Cs

Odd-odd 136Cs nuclei have been produced in the 18O + 208Pb and 12C + 238U fusion-fission reactions and their gamma rays studied with the Euroball array. The high-spin level scheme has been built up to ~ 4.7 MeV excitation energy and spin I ~ 16 hbar from the triple gamma-ray coincidence data. The configurations of the three structures observed above ~ 2 MeV excitation energy are first discussed by analogy with the proton excitations identified in the semi-magic 137Cs nucleus, which involve the three high-j orbits lying above the Z=50 gap, pi g_{7/2}, pi d_{5/2} and pi h_{11/2}. This is confirmed by the results of shell-model calculations performed in this work.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 3 table

Dewetting of Glassy Polymer Films

Dynamics and morphology of hole growth in a film of power hardening viscoplastic solid (yield stress ~ [strain-rate]^n) is investigated. At short-times the growth is exponential and depends on the initial hole size. At long-times, for n > 1/3, the growth is exponential with a different exponent. However, for n < 1/3, the hole growth slows; the hole radius approaches an asymptotic value as time tends to infinity. The rim shape is highly asymmetric, the height of which has a power law dependence on the hole radius (exponent close to unity for 0.25 < n < 0.4). The above results explain recent intriguing experiments of Reiter, Phys. Rev. Lett, 87, 186101 (2001).Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, RevTe

Dewetting of thin polymer films near the glass transition

Dewetting of ultra-thin polymer films near the glass transition exhibits unexpected front morphologies [G. Reiter, Phys. Rev. Lett., 87, 186101 (2001)]. We present here the first theoretical attempt to understand these features, focusing on the shear-thinning behaviour of these films. We analyse the profile of the dewetting film, and characterize the time evolution of the dry region radius, $R_{d}(t)$, and of the rim height, $h_{m}(t)$. After a transient time depending on the initial thickness, $h_{m}(t)$ grows like $\sqrt{t}$ while $R_{d}(t)$ increases like $\exp{(\sqrt{t})}$. Different regimes of growth are expected, depending on the initial film thickness and experimental time range.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures Revised version, published in Physical Review Letters: F. Saulnier, E. Raphael and P.-G. de Gennes, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 196101 (2002

Large Deformation Effects in the N = Z 44Ti Compound Nucleus

The N = Z 44Ti* nucleus has been populated in Fusion Evaporation process at very high excitation energies and angular momenta using two entrance channels with different mass-asymmetry. The deformation effects in the rapidly rotating nuclei have been investigated through the energy distribution of the alpha-particle combined to statistical-model calculations. In the case of low-multiplicity events, the ratio between first particle emitted has been measured and shows significant disagreement with the predictions of the statistical-model. This may explain The large discrepancies observed in proton energy spectra measured in previous experiments performed in the same mass region.Comment: Proceeding of the 10th International Conference on Nuclear Reaction Mechanisms, Varenna Italy, June 9-13 2003. 10 pages, 6 figures, 1 tabl

Observation of the lowest energy gamma-ray in any superdeformed nucleus : 196Bi

New results on the superdeformed $^{196}$Bi nucleus a re reported. We have observed with the EUROBALL IV $\gamma$-ray spectrometer array a superdeformed trans ition of 124 keV which is the lowest observed energy $\gamma$-ray in any superdeformed nucleus. We have de velopped microscopic cranked Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov calculations using the SLy4 effective force and a realistic surface p airing which strongly support the $K^\pi=2^-$($\pi$[651]1/2$\otimes \nu$[752]5/2) assignment of this su perdeformed band

Energy partition in Sapphire and BGO scintillating bolometers

International audienceScintillating bolometers are particle detectors with a high particle discrimination power with many applications in nuclear and particle physics. This discrimination power is based on the different scintillation yield for different particles, and is strongly dependent on the target used. At the very low temperatures required for the operation of the bolometers, very few data about the scintillation yields are available. In this paper we present estimates of absolute light yields and energy partition among heat, light and trapping channels in Sapphire (AlO) and BGO (BiGeO) scintillating bolometers operated at 20 mK. The estimate relies on the observed negative correlation between the light and heat signals produced by γ-ray absorption in scintillating bolometers and on the study of the x-ray stimulated luminescence properties of BGO at temperatures down to 77 K

Cyclin L1 (CCNL1) gene alterations in human head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

We evaluated the expression and amplification of cyclin L1 (CCNL1) gene, a potential oncogene localised in the commonly amplified 3q25–28 region, in human head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs). Overexpression was observed in 55 out of 96 cases (57%) and amplification in nine out of 35 tumours (26%) with no relationships to the clinico-pathological parameters. The Cyclin L1 antibody we developed labels nuclear speckles in tumour cells compatible with a role for CCNL1 in RNA splicing

Response of parylene-coated NaI(Tl) scintillators at low temperature

Despite that it is widely used as a scintillator at room temperature, the hygroscopicity of NaI complicates its handling and limits its application for many purposes, for example as a cryogenic detector. To overcome this problem we study coating materials that can act as humidity barriers, in particular parylene, a polymer that can be deposited in very radiopure, thin and conformal layers. In this work, several NaI(Tl) samples coated with 2-5 µm parylene-C were tested at low temperature. Luminescence spectra under X-ray excitation are presented at several temperatures as well as the light output vs temperature at 1.5-300 K. Several thermoluminescence peaks were observed at around 60, 95 and 150 K during warm up to room temperature The mechanical resistance of the coating under thermal cycles was also investigated, and we observed a degradation of the optical appearance and the light output after cooling down to about 100 mK, which compromises the reusability of the samples