13,527 research outputs found
Cherenkov Telescope Array: The next-generation ground-based gamma-ray observatory
High energy gamma-ray astronomy is a newly emerging and very successful
branch of astronomy and astrophysics. Exciting results have been obtained by
the current generation Cherenkov telescope systems such as H.E.S.S., MAGIC,
VERITAS and CANGAROO. The H.E.S.S. survey of the galactic plane has revealed a
large number of sources and addresses issues such as the question about the
origin of cosmic rays. The detection of very high energy emission from
extragalactic sources at large distances has provided insights in the star
formation during the history of the universe and in the understanding of active
galactic nuclei. The development of the very large Cherenkov telescope array
system (CTA) with a sensitivity about an order of magnitude better than current
instruments and significantly improved sensitivity is under intense discussion.
This observatory will reveal an order of magnitude more sources and due to its
higher sensitivity and angular resolution it will be able to detect new classes
of objects and phenomena that have not been visible until now. A combination of
different telescope types will provide the sensitivity needed in different
energy ranges.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the 30th
International Cosmic Ray Conference, Merida, July 200
A powerful computational crystallography method to study ice polymorphism
Classical Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations are employed as a tool to
investigate structural properties of ice crystals under several temperature and
pressure conditions. All ice crystal phases are analyzed by means of a
computational protocol based on a clustering approach following standard MD
simulations. The MD simulations are performed by using a recently published
classical interaction potential for oxygen and hydrogen in bulk water, derived
from neutron scattering data, able to successfully describe complex phenomena
such as proton hopping and bond formation/breaking. The present study
demonstrates the ability of the interaction potential model to well describe
most ice structures found in the phase diagram of water and to estimate the
relative stability of sixteen known phases through a cluster analysis of
simulated powder diagrams of polymorphs obtained from MD simulations. The
proposed computational protocol is suited for automated crystal structure
identification.Comment: RevTex 4.1, 7 figures - to be published in the Journal of Chemical
Physic
Solution to the problem of the poor cyclic fatigue resistance of bulk metallic glasses
The recent development of metallic glass-matrix composites represents a particular milestone in engineering materials for structural applications owing to their remarkable combination of strength and toughness. However, metallic glasses are highly susceptible to cyclic fatigue damage, and previous attempts to solve this problem have been largely disappointing. Here, we propose and demonstrate a microstructural design strategy to overcome this limitation by matching the microstructural length scales (of the second phase) to mechanical crack-length scales. Specifically, semisolid processing is used to optimize the volume fraction, morphology, and size of second-phase dendrites to confine any initial deformation (shear banding) to the glassy regions separating dendrite arms having length scales of ā2 Ī¼m, i.e., to less than the critical crack size for failure. Confinement of the damage to such interdendritic regions results in enhancement of fatigue lifetimes and increases the fatigue limit by an order of magnitude, making these ādesignedā composites as resistant to fatigue damage as high-strength steels and aluminum alloys. These design strategies can be universally applied to any other metallic glass systems
Amortised resource analysis with separation logic
Type-based amortised resource analysis following Hofmann and Jostāwhere resources are associated with individual elements of data structures and doled out to the programmer under a linear typing disciplineāhave been successful in providing concrete resource bounds for functional programs, with good support for inference. In this work we translate the idea of amortised resource analysis to imperative languages by embedding a logic of resources, based on Bunched Implications, within Separation Logic. The Separation Logic component allows us to assert the presence and shape of mutable data structures on the heap, while the resource component allows us to state the resources associated with each member of the structure. We present the logic on a small imperative language with procedures and mutable heap, based on Java bytecode. We have formalised the logic within the Coq proof assistant and extracted a certified verification condition generator. We demonstrate the logic on some examples, including proving termination of in-place list reversal on lists with cyclic tails
Statistical Mechanics of semi-classical colored Objects
A microscopic model of deconfined matter based on color interactions between
semi-classical quarks is studied. A hadronization mechanism is imposed to
examine the properties and the disassembly of a thermalized quark plasma and to
investigate the possible existence of a phase transition from quark matter to
hadron matter.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Lett.
Stratosphere aerosol and cloud measurements at McMurdo Station Antarctica during the spring of 1987
Measurements of stratospheric aerosols with balloonborne optical particle counters on 6 occasions at McMurdo Station (78 deg S) in the spring of 1986 indicated subsidence of the stratospheric sulfate layer during the time that the ozone hole was forming (Hofmann et al., 1988). Since dynamic models of ozone depletion involving upwelling in the spring polar vortex would suggest the opposite, we repeated the measurements with an increased frequency (about one sounding per week) in 1987. During 3 of the aerosol soundings in 1986, temperatures in the 15 to 20 km range were low enough (less than 80 C) for HNO3 to co-condense with water according to several theories of polar stratospheric cloud formation. However, particles were not observed with the characteristic size suggested by theory (approx. 0.5 microns). For this reason, it was proposed that polar stratospheric clouds may predominantly consist of large (approx. 5 to 50 microns) ice crystals at very low (approx. 10 sup 4- 10 sup 3 cm cubed) concentrations (Rosen et al., 1988). The particle counter employed would be relatively insensitive to these low concentrations. With the increased frequency of soundings in 1987, and adding additional size discrimination in the 1 to 2 micron region, this hypothesis could be verified if suitably low temperatures were encountered
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