A comparison of two magnetic ultra-cold neutron trapping concepts using a Halbach-octupole array

This paper describes a new magnetic trap for ultra-cold neutrons (UCNs) made from a 1.2 m long Halbach-octupole array of permanent magnets with an inner bore radius of 47 mm combined with an assembly of superconducting end coils and bias field solenoid. The use of the trap in a vertical, magneto-gravitational and a horizontal setup are compared in terms of the effective volume and ability to control key systematic effects that need to be addressed in high precision neutron lifetime measurements

Optimal guidance law development for an advanced launch system

The objective of this research effort was to develop a real-time guidance approach for launch vehicles ascent to orbit injection. Various analytical approaches combined with a variety of model order and model complexity reduction have been investigated. Singular perturbation methods were first attempted and found to be unsatisfactory. The second approach based on regular perturbation analysis was subsequently investigated. It also fails because the aerodynamic effects (ignored in the zero order solution) are too large to be treated as perturbations. Therefore, the study demonstrates that perturbation methods alone (both regular and singular perturbations) are inadequate for use in developing a guidance algorithm for the atmospheric flight phase of a launch vehicle. During a second phase of the research effort, a hybrid analytic/numerical approach was developed and evaluated. The approach combines the numerical methods of collocation and the analytical method of regular perturbations. The concept of choosing intelligent interpolating functions is also introduced. Regular perturbation analysis allows the use of a crude representation for the collocation solution, and intelligent interpolating functions further reduce the number of elements without sacrificing the approximation accuracy. As a result, the combined method forms a powerful tool for solving real-time optimal control problems. Details of the approach are illustrated in a fourth order nonlinear example. The hybrid approach is then applied to the launch vehicle problem. The collocation solution is derived from a bilinear tangent steering law, and results in a guidance solution for the entire flight regime that includes both atmospheric and exoatmospheric flight phases

Surface critical behavior of driven diffusive systems with open boundaries

Using field theoretic renormalization group methods we study the critical behavior of a driven diffusive system near a boundary perpendicular to the driving force. The boundary acts as a particle reservoir which is necessary to maintain the critical particle density in the bulk. The scaling behavior of correlation and response functions is governed by a new exponent eta_1 which is related to the anomalous scaling dimension of the chemical potential of the boundary. The new exponent and a universal amplitude ratio for the density profile are calculated at first order in epsilon = 5-d. Some of our results are checked by computer simulations.Comment: 10 pages ReVTeX, 6 figures include

Willingness of Hong Kong healthcare workers to accept pre-pandemic influenza vaccination at different WHO alert levels: two questionnaire surveys

Objective To assess the acceptability of pre-pandemic influenza vaccination among healthcare workers in public hospitals in Hong Kong and the effect of escalation in the World Health Organization’s alert level for an influenza pandemic

Elevated Oestrogen Receptor Splice Variant ERαΔ5 Expression in Tumour-adjacent Hormone-responsive Tissue

Susceptibility to prostate or endometrial cancer is linked with obesity, a state of oestrogen excess. Oestrogen receptor (ER) splice variants may be responsible for the tissue-level of ER activity. Such micro-environmental regulation may modulate cancer initiation and/or progression mechanisms. Real-time reverse transcriptase (RT) polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to quantitatively assess the levels of four ER splice variants (ERαΔ3, ERαΔ5, ERβ2 and ERβ5), plus the full-length parent isoforms ERα and ERβ1, in high-risk [tumour-adjacent prostate (n = 10) or endometrial cancer (n = 9)] vs. low-risk [benign prostate (n = 12) or endometrium (n = 9)], as well as a comparison of UK (n = 12) vs. Indian (n = 15) benign prostate. All three tissue groups expressed the ER splice variants at similar levels, apart from ERαΔ5. This splice variant was markedly raised in all of the tumour-adjacent prostate samples compared to benign tissues. Immunofluorescence analysis for ERβ2 in prostate tissue demonstrated that such splice variants are present in comparable, if not greater, amounts as the parent full-length isoform. This small pilot study demonstrates the ubiquitous nature of ER splice variants in these tissue sites and suggests that ERαΔ5 may be involved in progression of prostate adenocarcinoma

The impact of hybrid oceanic data assimilation in a coupled model: a case study of a tropical cyclone

Tropical cyclones tend to result in distinctive spatial and temporal characteristics in the upper ocean, which suggests that traditional, parametrisation-based background-error covariances in oceanic data assimilation (DA) may not be suitable. Using the case study of Cyclone Titli, which affected the Bay of Bengal in October 2018, we explore hybrid methods that combine the traditional covariance modelling strategy used in variational methods with flow-dependent estimates of the ocean's error covariance structures based on a short-range ensemble forecast. This hybrid approach is investigated in the UK Met Office’s state-of-the-art system. Single-observation experiments in the ocean reveal that the hybrid approach is capable of producing analysis increments that are time-varying, more anisotropic and vertically less uniform. When the hybrid oceanic covariances are incorporated into a weakly coupled DA system, the sea-surface temperature (SST) in the path of the cyclone is changed, not only through the different specifications of background-error covariances used in the SST assimilation, but also through the propagation of sub-surface temperature differences to the surface as a result of vertical mixing associated with the cyclone's strong winds. The coupling with the atmosphere then leads to a discrepancy in the cyclone's central pressure, which brings forth further SST differences due to the different representations of the cyclone's emerging cold wake

The Nylon Scintillator Containment Vessels for the Borexino Solar Neutrino Experiment

Borexino is a solar neutrino experiment designed to observe the 0.86 MeV Be-7 neutrinos emitted in the pp cycle of the sun. Neutrinos will be detected by their elastic scattering on electrons in 100 tons of liquid scintillator. The neutrino event rate in the scintillator is expected to be low (~0.35 events per day per ton), and the signals will be at energies below 1.5 MeV, where background from natural radioactivity is prominent. Scintillation light produced by the recoil electrons is observed by an array of 2240 photomultiplier tubes. Because of the intrinsic radioactive contaminants in these PMTs, the liquid scintillator is shielded from them by a thick barrier of buffer fluid. A spherical vessel made of thin nylon film contains the scintillator, separating it from the surrounding buffer. The buffer region itself is divided into two concentric shells by a second nylon vessel in order to prevent inward diffusion of radon atoms. The radioactive background requirements for Borexino are challenging to meet, especially for the scintillator and these nylon vessels. Besides meeting requirements for low radioactivity, the nylon vessels must also satisfy requirements for mechanical, optical, and chemical properties. The present paper describes the research and development, construction, and installation of the nylon vessels for the Borexino experiment

Testing the Higgs boson gluonic couplings at LHC

We study Higgs + jet production at hadron colliders in order to look for new physics residual effects possibly described by the $dim=6$ operators {\O}_{GG} and {\widetilde\O}_{GG} which induce anomalous $Hgg$ and $Hggg$ couplings. Two ways for constraining these operators at LHC may be ~useful. The first is based on the total Higgs boson production rate induced by gluon-gluon fusion, in which the main cause of limitations are due to theoretical uncertainties leading to sensitivities of $|d_G|\simeq 3.\times 10^{-4}$ and $|\widetilde{d}_G|\simeq 1.4\times 10^{-3}$ for the corresponding anomalous couplings, in the mass range 100 GeV \lsim \mh \lsim 2~00 GeV. These results imply sensitivity to new physics scales of 51 and 24 TeV respectively. The second way investigated here concerns the shape of the Higgs transverse momentum; for which the theoretical uncertainties are less severe and the limitations are mainly induced by statistics. A simple analysis, based on the ratio of the number of events at large and low $p_T$ at LHC, leads to similar sensitivities, if only the $H\to \gamma \gamma$ decay mode is used. But the sensitivities can now be improved by a factor 2 to 10, depending on the Higgs mass, if the Higgs decay modes to $WW^*$, $ZZ^*$, $WW$, $ZZ$ are also used.Comment: 23 pages and 7 figures, version to appear in Phys.ReV.D. e-mail: [email protected]