Linking neutrino oscillations to the nucleosynthesis of elements

Neutrino interactions with matter play an important role in determining the nucleosynthesis outcome in explosive astrophysical environments such as core-collapse supernovae or mergers of compact objects. In this article, we first discuss our recent work on the importance of studying the time evolution of collective neutrino oscillations among active flavors in determining their effects on nucleosynthesis. We then consider the possible active-sterile neutrino mixing and demonstrate the need of a consistent approach to evolve neutrino flavor oscillations, matter composition, and the hydrodynamics when flavor oscillations can happen very deep inside the supernovae.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, OMEG 2015 conference proceedings, to appear in EPJ WOC proceeding

Formation and Persistence of Brine on Mars: Experimental Simulations throughout the Diurnal Cycle at the Phoenix Landing Site

In the last few years, water ice and salts capable of melting this ice and producing liquid saline water (brine) have been detected on Mars. Moreover, indirect evidence for brine has been found in multiple areas of the planet. Here, we simulate full diurnal cycles of temperature and atmospheric water vapor content at the Phoenix landing site for the first time and show experimentally that, in spite of the low Mars-like chamber temperature, brine forms minutes after the ground temperature exceeds the eutectic temperature of salts in contact with water ice. Moreover, we show that the brine stays liquid for most of the diurnal cycle when enough water ice is available to compensate for evaporation. This is predicted to occur seasonally in areas of the polar region where the temperature exceeds the eutectic value and frost or snow is deposited on saline soils, or where water ice and salts coexist in the shallow subsurface. This is important because the existence of liquid water is a key requirement for habitability. Key Words: Mars?Ice?Perchlorates?Brine?Water?Raman spectroscopy. Astrobiology 16, 937?948.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/140311/1/ast.2016.1525.pd

Effective indenter radius and frame compliance in instrumented indentation testing using a spherical indenter

We introduce a novel method to correct for imperfect indenter geometry and frame compliance in instrumented indentation testing with a spherical indenter. Effective radii were measured directly from residual indentation marks at various contact depths (ratio of contact depth to indenter radius between 0.1 and 0.9) and were determined as a function of contact depth. Frame compliance was found to depend on contact depth especially at small indentation depths, which is successfully explained using the concept of an extended frame boundary. Improved representative stress-strain values as well as hardness and elastic modulus were obtained over the entire contact depth

Dispersive approach to QCD and hadronic contributions to electroweak observables

The dispersive approach to QCD is briefly overviewed and its application to the assessment of hadronic contributions to electroweak observables is discussed.Comment: Talk given at 12th International Conference on Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum, 29 August - 3 September 2016, Thessaloniki, Greece; 10 pages, 3 figure

Balancing operating revenues and occupied refurbishment costs 1: problems of defining project success factors and selecting site planning methods

In planning the refurbishment of railway stations the spatial needs of the contractor and of the ongoing business stakeholders have to be balanced. A particular concern is the disruptive effect of construction works upon pedestrian movement. RaCMIT (Refurbishment and Customer Movement Integration Tool) was a research project aimed at addressing this problem. The objective of the research was to develop a decision protocol facilitating optimisation of overall project value to the client's business. This paper (the first of two) presents a framework for considering public disruption in occupied refurbishment using two case studies in large railway stations as examples. It briefly describes new tools which (combined with existing techniques) assist decision making in the management of disruption. It links strategic with sitebased decision making and suggests how public disruption may be treated as a variable to be jointly optimised along with traditional criteria such as time, cost and quality. Research observations as well as current literature suggest that for overall decision-making, opportunities may be lost (under current practice) for minimising joint project cost/revenue disruption, and, for spatio-temporal site decision-making, effective and efficient tools now exist to model both sides of the construction site boundary