370 research outputs found
An overview of in-flight plume diagnostics for rocket engines
An overview and progress report of the work performed or sponsored by LeRC toward the development of in-flight plume spectroscopy technology for health and performance monitoring of liquid propellant rocket engines are presented. The primary objective of this effort is to develop technology that can be utilized on any flight engine. This technology will be validated by a hardware demonstration of a system capable of being retrofitted onto the Space Shuttle Main Engines for spectroscopic measurements during flight. The philosophy on system definition and status on the development of instrumentation, optics, and signal processing with respect to implementation on a flight engine are discussed
Engineering soil organic matter quality: Biodiesel Co-Product (BCP) stimulates exudation of nitrogenous microbial biopolymers
Biodiesel Co-Product (BCP) is a complex organic material formed during the transesterification of lipids. We investigated the effect of BCP on the extracellular microbial matrix or ‘extracellular polymeric substance’ (EPS) in soil which is suspected to be a highly influential fraction of soil organic matter (SOM). It was hypothesised that more N would be transferred to EPS in soil given BCP compared to soil given glycerol. An arable soil was amended with BCP produced from either 1) waste vegetable oils or 2) pure oilseed rape oil, and compared with soil amended with 99% pure glycerol; all were provided with 15N labelled KNO3. We compared transfer of microbially assimilated 15N into the extracellular amino acid pool, and measured concomitant production of exopolysaccharide. Following incubation, the 15N enrichment of total hydrolysable amino acids (THAAs) indicated that intracellular anabolic products had incorporated the labelled N primarily as glutamine and glutamate. A greater proportion of the amino acids in EPS were found to contain 15N than those in the THAA pool, indicating that the increase in EPS was comprised of bioproducts synthesised de novo. Moreover, BCP had increased the EPS production efficiency of the soil microbial community (μg EPS per unit ATP) up to approximately double that of glycerol, and caused transfer of 21% more 15N from soil solution into EPS-amino acids. Given the suspected value of EPS in agricultural soils, the use of BCP to stimulate exudation is an interesting tool to consider in the theme of delivering sustainable intensification
Dust Emission from Evolved and Unevolved HII Regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud
We present a study of the dust properties of 12 classical and superbubble HII
regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud. We use infrared photometry from Spitzer
(8, 24, 70, and 160 \mum bands), obtained as part of the Surveying the Agents
of a Galaxy's Evolution (SAGE) program, along with archival spectroscopic
classifications of the ionizing stars to examine the role of stellar sources on
dust heating and processing. Our infrared observations show surprisingly little
correlation between the emission properties of the dust and the effective
temperatures or bolometric magnitudes of stars in the HII regions, suggesting
that the HII region evolutionary timescale is not on the order of the dust
processing timescale. We find that the infrared emission of superbubbles and
classical HII regions shows little differentiation between the two classes,
despite the significant differences in age and morphology. We do detect a
correlation of the 24 \mum emission from hot dust with the ratio of 70 to 160
\mum flux. This correlation can be modeled as a trend in the temperature of a
minority hot dust component, while a majority of the dust remains significantly
cooler.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures. Accepted to Ap
Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to one hadron-production in polarized pp collisions at RHIC
We calculate the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the spin-dependent
cross section for single-inclusive hadron production in hadronic collisions.
This process will be soon studied experimentally at RHIC, providing a tool to
unveil the polarized gluon distribution . We observe a considerably
improvement in the perturbative stability for both unpolarized and polarized
cross sections. The NLO corrections are found to be non-trivial, resulting in a
reduction of the asymmetry.Comment: 8 pages, RevTeX4, 9 figures include
Determination of polarized parton distribution functions and their uncertainties
We investigate the polarized parton distribution functions (PDFs) and their
uncertainties by using the world data on the spin asymmetry A_1. The
uncertainties of the polarized PDFs are estimated by the Hessian method. The up
and down valence-quark distributions are determined well. However, the
antiquark distributions have large uncertainties at this stage, and it is
particularly difficult to fix the gluon distribution. The \chi^2 analysis
produces a positively polarized gluon distribution, but even \Delta g(x)=0
could be allowed according to our uncertainty estimation. In comparison with
the previous AAC (Asymmetry Analysis Collaboration) parameterization in 2000,
accurate SLAC-E155 proton data are added to the analysis. We find that the E155
data improve the determination of the polarized PDFs, especially the polarized
antiquark distributions. In addition, the gluon-distribution uncertainties are
reduced due to the correlation with the antiquark distributions. We also show
the global analysis results with the condition \Delta g(x)=0 at the initial
scale, Q^2=1 GeV^2, for clarifying the error correlation effects with the gluon
distribution.Comment: 9 pages, 15 eps figures, REVTeX, FORTRAN package is available at the
web site http://www-hs.phys.saga-u.ac.jp/aac.html. Replaced 3 eps figures in
Fig.
Event-by-Event Fluctuations in Particle Multiplicities and Transverse Energy Produced in 158.A GeV Pb+Pb collisions
Event-by-event fluctuations in the multiplicities of charged particles and
photons, and the total transverse energy in 158 GeV Pb+Pb collisions
are studied for a wide range of centralities. For narrow centrality bins the
multiplicity and transverse energy distributions are found to be near perfect
Gaussians. The effect of detector acceptance on the multiplicity fluctuations
has been studied and demonstrated to follow statistical considerations. The
centrality dependence of the charged particle multiplicity fluctuations in the
measured data has been found to agree reasonably well with those obtained from
a participant model. However for photons the multiplicity fluctuations has been
found to be lower compared to those obtained from a participant model. The
multiplicity and transverse energy fluctuations have also been compared to
those obtained from the VENUS event generator.Comment: To appear in Physical Review C; changes : more detailed discussion on
errors and few figures modifie
Inclusive pi0 and K0s Production in Two-Photon Collisions at LEP
The reactions ee->ee+pi0+X and ee->ee+K0s+X are studied using data collected
at LEP with the L3 detector at centre-of-mass energies between 189 and 202 GeV.
Inclusive differential cross sections are measured as a function of the
particle transverse momentum pt and the pseudo-rapidity. For pt < 1.5 GeV, the
pi0 and K0s differential cross sections are described by an exponential,
typical of soft hadronic processes. For pt > 1.5 GeV, the cross sections show
the presence of perturbative QCD processes, described by a power-law. The data
are compared to Monte Carlo predictions and to NLO QCD calculations
Inclusive Charged Hadron Production in Two-Photon Collisions at LEP
Inclusive charged hadron production, e+e- -> e+e- h+- X, is studied using 414
pb-1 of data collected at LEP with the L3 detector at centre-of-mass energies
between 189 and 202 GeV. Single particle inclusive differential cross sections
are measured as a function of the particle transverse momentum, pt, and
pseudo-rapidity, eta. For p_t < 1.5 GeV, the data are well described by an
exponential, typical of soft hadronic processes. For higher pt, the onset of
perturbative QCD processes is observed. The pi+- production cross section for
pt > 5 GeV is much higher than the NLO QCD predictions
Energy and system size dependence of \phi meson production in Cu+Cu and Au+Au collisions
We study the beam-energy and system-size dependence of \phi meson production
(using the hadronic decay mode \phi -- K+K-) by comparing the new results from
Cu+Cu collisions and previously reported Au+Au collisions at \sqrt{s_NN} = 62.4
and 200 GeV measured in the STAR experiment at RHIC. Data presented are from
mid-rapidity (|y|<0.5) for 0.4 < pT < 5 GeV/c. At a given beam energy, the
transverse momentum distributions for \phi mesons are observed to be similar in
yield and shape for Cu+Cu and Au+Au colliding systems with similar average
numbers of participating nucleons. The \phi meson yields in nucleus-nucleus
collisions, normalised by the average number of participating nucleons, are
found to be enhanced relative to those from p+p collisions with a different
trend compared to strange baryons. The enhancement for \phi mesons is observed
to be higher at \sqrt{s_NN} = 200 GeV compared to 62.4 GeV. These observations
for the produced \phi(s\bar{s}) mesons clearly suggest that, at these collision
energies, the source of enhancement of strange hadrons is related to the
formation of a dense partonic medium in high energy nucleus-nucleus collisions
and cannot be alone due to canonical suppression of their production in smaller
systems.Comment: 20 pages and 5 figure
Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS
We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a
significant distance from their production point into a final state containing
charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is
conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV
and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS
detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles
is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We
observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of
supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the
neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino
masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final
version to appear in Physics Letters
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