Inexpensive, removable coating for plaster tooling

Procedure for thinning and spaying a vinyl material provides strippable film for plaster surfaces. Coating is low-cost, effective seal against moisture and other sources of damage. Coating consists of a mixture of hot-spray vinyl material and 30 to 50 percent by volume of methyl ethyl ketone

Modelling heat transfer through a novel design of rotary kiln

A novel form of rotary kiln has been developed which confers advantages over conventional designs. Details are given of the main features of the kiln, along with an approach used to study its heat transfer characteristics when hot processing waste products into a lightweight synthetic aggregate for recycling in building materials. Computer aided finite element modelling was used to predict temperature profiles and heat fluxes involving non-linear properties of the exterior insulation materials and internal radiation effects. Observations are given comparing predicted temperatures for two different cross sectional shapes and with those measured in practice on a prototype novel kiln. Observations are also given on the methods of approach to the modelling

Estimation of Lyapunov spectra from space-time data

A method to estimate Lyapunov spectra from spatio-temporal data is presented, which is well-suited to be applied to experimental situations. It allows to characterize the high-dimensional chaotic states, with possibly a large number of positive Lyapunov exponents, observed in spatio-temporal chaos. The method is applied to data from a coupled map lattice

Sigma pole position and errors of a once and twice subtracted dispersive analysis of pi-pi scattering data

We show how the new precise data on kaon decays together with forward dispersion relations, sum rules and once- and twice-subtracted Roy's equations allow for a precise determination of the sigma meson pole position. We present a comparison and a study of the different sources of uncertainties when using either once- or twice-subtracted Roy's equations to analyze the data. Finally we present a preliminary determination of the sigma pole from the constrained dispersive data analysis.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures. Contribution to the proceedings of the QCD08 14th International QCD Conference. 7-12th July 2008 Montpellier (France); one reference removed, changed errors in Eqs (4), (5) and (7

New dispersion relations in the description of ππ\pi\pi scattering amplitudes

We present a set of once subtracted dispersion relations which implement crossing symmetry conditions for the $\pi\pi$ scattering amplitudes below 1 GeV. We compare and discuss the results obtained for the once and twice subtracted dispersion relations, known as Roy's equations, for three $\pi\pi$ partial JI waves, S0, P and S2. We also show that once subtracted dispersion relations provide a stringent test of crossing and analyticity for $\pi\pi$ partial wave amplitudes, remarkably precise in the 400 to 1.1 GeV region, where the resulting uncertainties are significantly smaller than those coming from standard Roy's equations, given the same input.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the Meson 2008 conference, June 6-10, 2008, Cracow, Polan

Discriminating between unresolved point sources and "negative" SZ clusters in CMB maps

Clusters of galaxies produce negative features at wavelengths $\lambda > 1.25$ mm in CMB maps, by means of the thermal SZ effect, while point radio sources produce positive peaks. This fact implies that a distribution of unresolved SZ clusters could be detected using the negative asymmetry introduced in the odd-moments of the brightness map (skewness and higher), or in the probability distribution function (PDF) for the fluctuations, once the map has been filtered in order to remove the contribution from primordial CMB fluctuations from large scales. This property provides a consistency check to the recent detections from CBI and BIMA experiments of an excess of power at small angular scales, in order to confirm that they are produced by a distribution of unresolved SZ clusters. However it will require at least 1.5 - 2 times more observing time than detection of corresponding power signal. This approach could also be used with the data of the planned SZ experiments (e.g. ACT, AMI, AMIBA, APEX, 8 m South Pole telescope).Comment: Includes a new section and a new appendix. Typos corrected. Accepted for publication in MNRA