Absolute measurement of the nitrogen fluorescence yield in air between 300 and 430 nm

The nitrogen fluorescence induced in air is used to detect ultra-high energy cosmic rays and to measure their energy. The precise knowledge of the absolute fluorescence yield is the key quantity to improve the accuracy on the cosmic ray energy. The total yield has been measured in dry air using a 90Sr source and a [300-430 nm] filter. The fluorescence yield in air is 4.23 $\pm$ 0.20 photons per meter when normalized to 760 mmHg, 15 degrees C and with an electron energy of 0.85 MeV. This result is consistent with previous experiments made at various energies, but with an accuracy improved by a factor of about 3. For the first time, the absolute continuous spectrum of nitrogen excited by 90Sr electrons has also been measured with a spectrometer. Details of this experiment are given in one of the author's PhD thesis [32].Comment: accepted for publication in NIM

EFFECT OF REVENUE INSURANCE ON ENTRY AND EXIT DECISIONS IN TABLE GRAPE PRODUCTION: A REAL OPTION APPROACH

This study determines the entry and exit thresholds of table grape farming with irreversible investment under uncertainty. Real option approach is adopted to consider the investment and management flexibility. Also revenue insurance is introduced to consider the effect of the risk management programs on the entry and exit thresholds. Results show that revenue insurance increases the entry and exit thresholds by 1% and 4%, respectively, thus discouraging new investment and current farming, as long as the revenue guarantee is less than the exit threshold. Revenue insurance increases the entry threshold by 3% and decreases the exit threshold by 13% as long as the revenue guarantee is greater than the exit threshold. In this case, revenue insurance discourages the investment and encourages the current farmer to stay in farming, further. However, the decrease in the subsidy rate results in the increase in both entry and exit thresholds. Thus, the premium subsidy levels should be carefully considered if the policy objective is to encourage growers to shift to higher-value crops.Risk and Uncertainty,

Weak Pion Production off the Nucleon

We develop a model for the weak pion production off the nucleon, which besides the Delta pole mechanism (weak excitation of the $\Delta(1232)$ resonance and its subsequent decay into $N\pi$), includes also some background terms required by chiral symmetry. We re-fit the $C_5^A(q^2)$ form factor to the flux averaged $\nu_\mu p \to \mu^-p\pi^+$ ANL $q^2-$differential cross section data, finding a substantially smaller contribution of the Delta pole mechanism than traditionally assumed in the literature. Within this scheme, we calculate several differential and integrated cross sections, including pion angular distributions, induced by neutrinos and antineutrinos and driven both by charged and neutral currents. In all cases we find that the background terms produce quite significant effects and that they lead to an overall improved description of the data, as compared to the case where only the Delta pole mechanism is considered. We also show that the interference between the Delta pole and the background terms produces parity-violating contributions to the pion angular differential cross section, which are intimately linked to $T-$odd correlations in the contraction between the leptonic and hadronic tensors. However, these latter correlations do not imply a genuine violation of time reversal invariance because of the existence of strong final state interaction effects.Comment: Typos corrected; comments adde

Inadequate food intake at high temperatures is related to depressed mitochondrial respiratory capacity

Animals, especially ectotherms, are highly sensitive to the temperature of their surrounding environment. Extremely high temperature, for example, induces a decline of average performance of conspecifics within a population, but individual heterogeneity in the ability to cope with elevating temperatures has rarely been studied. In this study, we examined inter-individual variation in feeding ability and consequent growth rate of juvenile brown trout Salmo trutta acclimated to a high temperature (19°C), and investigated the relationship between these metrics of whole-animal performances and among-individual variation in mitochondrial respiration capacity. Food was provided ad libitum yet intake varied ten-fold amongst individuals, resulting in some fish losing weight whilst others continued to grow. Almost half of the variation in food intake was related to variability in mitochondrial capacity: low intake (and hence growth failure) was associated with high leak respiration rates within liver and muscle mitochondria, and a lower coupling of muscle mitochondria. These observations, combined with the inability of fish with low food consumption to increase their intake despite ad libitum food levels, suggest a possible insufficient capacity of the mitochondria for maintaining ATP homeostasis. Individual variation in thermal performance is likely to confer variation in the upper limit of an organism's thermal niche and in turn affect the structure of wild populations in warming environments

Differential effects of food availability on minimum and maximum rates of metabolism

Metabolic rates reflect the energetic cost of living but exhibit remarkable variation among conspecifics, partly as a result of the constraints imposed by environmental conditions. Metabolic rates are sensitive to changes in temperature and oxygen availability, but effects of food availability, particularly on maximum metabolic rates, are not well understood. Here, we show in brown trout (Salmo trutta) that maximum metabolic rates are immutable but minimum metabolic rates increase as a positive function of food availability. As a result, aerobic scope (i.e. the capacity to elevate metabolism above baseline requirements) declines as food availability increases. These differential changes in metabolic rates likely have important consequences for how organisms partition available metabolic power to different functions under the constraints imposed by food availability

Transport Coefficients of the Yukawa One Component Plasma

We present equilibrium molecular-dynamics computations of the thermal conductivity and the two viscosities of the Yukawa one-component plasma. The simulations were performed within periodic boundary conditions and Ewald sums were implemented for the potentials, the forces, and for all the currents which enter the Kubo formulas. For large values of the screening parameter, our estimates of the shear viscosity and the thermal conductivity are in good agreement with the predictions of the Chapman-Enskog theory.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figure

Experimental and numerical investigations of flow structure and momentum transport in a turbulent buoyancy-driven flow inside a tilted tube.

Buoyancy-driven turbulent mixing of fluids of slightly different densities [At = Δρ/(2〈ρ〉) = 1.15×10−2] in a long circular tube tilted at an angle θ = 15° from the vertical is studied at the local scale, both experimentally from particle image velocimetry and laser induced fluorescence measurements in the vertical diametrical plane and numerically throughout the tube using direct numerical simulation. In a given cross section of the tube, the axial mean velocity and the mean concentration both vary linearly with the crosswise distance z from the tube axis in the central 70% of the diameter. A small crosswise velocity component is detected in the measurement plane and is found to result from a four-cell mean secondary flow associated with a nonzero streamwise component of the vorticity. In the central region of the tube cross section, the intensities of the three turbulent velocity fluctuations are found to be strongly different, that of the streamwise fluctuation being more than twice larger than that of the spanwise fluctuation which itself is about 50% larger than that of the crosswise fluctuation. This marked anisotropy indicates that the turbulent structure is close to that observed in homogeneous turbulent shear flows. Still in the central region, the turbulent shear stress dominates over the viscous stress and reaches a maximum on the tube axis. Its crosswise variation is approximately accounted for by a mixing length whose value is about one-tenth of the tube diameter. The momentum exchange in the core of the cross section takes place between its lower and higher density parts and there is no net momentum exchange between the core and the near-wall regions. A sizable part of this transfer is due both to the mean secondary flow and to the spanwise turbulent shear stress. Near-wall regions located beyond the location of the extrema of the axial velocity (|z|≳0.36 d) are dominated by viscous stresses which transfer momentum toward (from) the wall near the top (bottom) of the tube

MEMPHYS:A large scale water Cerenkov detector at Fr\'ejus

A water \v{C}erenkov detector project, of megaton scale, to be installed in the Fr\'ejus underground site and dedicated to nucleon decay, neutrinos from supernovae, solar and atmospheric neutrinos, as well as neutrinos from a super-beam and/or a beta-beam coming from CERN, is presented and compared with competitor projects in Japan and in the USA. The performances of the European project are discussed, including the possibility to measure the mixing angle $\theta_{13}$ and the CP-violating phase $\delta$.Comment: 1+33 pages, 14 figures, Expression of Interest of MEMPHYS projec