Refinement and growth enhancement of Al2Cu phase during magnetic field assisting directional solidification of hypereutectic Al-Cu alloy.

International audienceUnderstanding how the magnetic fields affect the formation of reinforced phase during solidification is crucial to tailor the structure and therefor the performance of metal matrix in situ composites. In this study, a hypereutectic Al-40 wt.% Cu alloy has been directionally solidified under various axial magnetic fields and the morphology of Al2Cu phase was quantified in 3D by means of high resolution synchrotron X-ray tomography. With rising magnetic fields, both increase of Al2Cu phase's total volume and decrease of each column's transverse section area were found. These results respectively indicate the growth enhancement and refinement of the primary Al2Cu phase in the magnetic field assisting directional solidification. The thermoelectric magnetic forces (TEMF) causing torque and dislocation multiplication in the faceted primary phases were thought dedicate to respectively the refinement and growth enhancement. To verify this, a real structure based 3D simulation of TEMF in Al2Cu column was carried out, and the dislocations in the Al2Cu phase obtained without and with a 10T high magnetic field were analysed by the transmission electron microscope

Calculation of composition distribution of ultrafine ion-H2O-H2SO4 clusters using a modified binary ion nucleation theory

Thomson's ion nucleation theory was modified to include the effects of curvature dependence of the microscopic surface tension of field dependent, nonlinear, dielectric properties of the liquid; and of sulfuric acid hydrate formation in binary mixtures of water and sulfuric acid vapors. The modified theory leads to a broadening of the ion cluster spectrum, and shifts it towards larger numbers of H2O and H2SO4 molecules. Whether there is more shifting towards larger numbers of H2O or H2SO4 molecules depends on the relative humidity and relative acidity of the mixture. Usually, a broadening of the spectrum is accompanied by a lowering of the mean cluster intensity. For fixed values of relative humidity and relative acidity, a similar broadening pattern is observed when the temperature is lowered. These features of the modified theory illustrate that a trace of sulfuric acid can facilitate the formation of ultrafine, stable, prenucleation ion clusters as well as the growth of the prenucleation ion clusters towards the critical saddle point conditions, even with low values of relative humidity and relative acidity

Charmless decays B->pipi, piK and KK in broken SU(3)symmetry

Charmless B decay modes $B \to \pi \pi, \pi K$ and $KK$ aresystematically investigated with and without flavor SU(3) symmetry. Independent analyses on $\pi \pi$ and $\pi K$ modes both favor a large ratio between color-suppressed tree ($C$) and tree ($T)$ diagram, which suggests that they are more likely to originate from long distance effects. The sizes of QCD penguin diagrams extracted individually from $\pi\pi$, $\pi K$ and $KK$ modes are found to follow a pattern of SU(3) breaking in agreement with the naive factorization estimates. Global fits to these modes are done under various scenarios of SU(3)relations. The results show good determinations of weak phase $\gamma$ in consistency with the Standard Model (SM), but a large electro-weak penguin (P_{\tmop{EW}}) relative to $T + C$ with a large relative strong phase are favored, which requires an big enhancement of color suppressed electro-weak penguin (P_{\tmop{EW}}^C) compatible in size but destructively interfering with P_{\tmop{EW}} within the SM, or implies new physics. Possibility of sizable contributions from nonfactorizable diagrams such as $W$-exchange ($E$), annihilation($A$) and penguin-annihilation diagrams($P_A$) are investigated. The implications to the branching ratios and CP violations in $K K$modes are discussed.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figures, reference added, to appear in Phy.Rev.

Research Program towards Observation of Neutrino-Nucleus Coherent Scattering

The article describes the research program pursued by the TEXONO Collaboration towards an experiment to observe coherent scattering between neutrinos and the nucleus at the power reactor. The motivations of studying this process are surveyed. In particular, a threshold of 100-200 eV has been achieved with an ultra-low-energy germanium detector prototype. This detection capability at low energy can also be adapted to conduct searches of Cold Dark Matter in the low-mass region as well as to enhance the sensitivities in the study of neutrino magnetic moments.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figures ; Proceedings of TAUP-2005 Workshop, Spain, 2005. Updated on 2006/9/15 for Proceedings of Neutrino-2006 Conference, Santa Fe, 200

Detecting multivariate interactions in spatial point patterns with Gibbs models and variable selection

We propose a method for detecting significant interactions in very large multivariate spatial point patterns. This methodology develops high dimensional data understanding in the point process setting. The method is based on modelling the patterns using a flexible Gibbs point process model to directly characterise point-to-point interactions at different spatial scales. By using the Gibbs framework significant interactions can also be captured at small scales. Subsequently, the Gibbs point process is fitted using a pseudo-likelihood approximation, and we select significant interactions automatically using the group lasso penalty with this likelihood approximation. Thus we estimate the multivariate interactions stably even in this setting. We demonstrate the feasibility of the method with a simulation study and show its power by applying it to a large and complex rainforest plant population data set of 83 species

Efficient dam break flood simulation methods for developing a preliminary evacuation plan after the Wenchuan Earthquake

The Xiaojiaqiao barrier lake, which was the second largest barrier lake formed by the Wenchuan Earthquake had seriously threatened the lives and property of the population downstream. The lake was finally dredged successfully on 7 June 2008. Because of the limited time available to conduct an inundation potential analysis and make an evacuation plan, barrier lake information extraction and real-time dam break flood simulation should be carried out quickly, integrating remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) techniques with hydrologic/hydraulic analysis. In this paper, a technical framework and several key techniques for this real-time preliminary evacuation planning are introduced. An object-oriented method was used to extract hydrological information on the barrier lake from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) remote sensing images. The real-time flood routine was calculated by using shallow-water equations, which were solved by means of a finite volume scheme on multiblock structured grids. The results of the hydraulic computations are visualized and analyzed in a 3-D geographic information system for inundation potential analysis, and an emergency response plan is made. The results show that if either a full-break or a half-break situation had occurred for the Chapinghe barrier lake on 19 May 2008, then the Xiaoba Town region and the Sangzao Town region would have been affected, but the downstream towns would have been less influenced. Preliminary evacuation plans under different dam break situations can be effectively made using these methods

The scalars from the topcolor scenario and the spin correlations of the top pair production at the LHC

The topcolor scenario predicts the existences of some new scalars. In this paper, we consider the contributions of these new particles to the observables, which are related to the top quark pair ($t\bar{t}$) production at the LHC. It is found that these new particles can generate significant corrections to the $t\bar{t}$ production cross section and the $t\bar{t}$ spin correlations.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures; discussions and references added; agrees with published versio