The Beagle landing site in Isidis Planitia

The Mars probe Beagle 2 will land in Isidis Planitia. This region satisfies the engineering constraints and has evidence for particularly volatile-rich subsoil. Isidis provides a suitable place for the lander to search for H2O and organic matter

Cherenkov Glue in Opaque Nuclear Medium

The spectrum of Cherenkov gluons is calculated within the framework of in-medium QCD. It is compared with experimental data on the double-humped structure around the away-side jet obtained at RHIC. The values of the real and imaginary parts of the nuclear permittivity are obtained from these fits. It is shown that accounting for an additional smearing due to resonance-like production of final hadrons allows to achieve an agreement with experimental data

The low energy limit of the non-commutative Wess-Zumino model

The non-commutative Wess-Zumino model is used as a prototype for studying the low energy behaviour of a renormalizable non-commutative field theory. We start by deriving the potential mediating the fermion-fermion and boson-boson interactions in the non-relativistic regime. The quantum counterparts of these potentials are afflicted by irdering ambiguities but we show that there exists an ordering prescription which makes them hermitean. For space/space noncommutativity it turns out that Majorana fermions may be pictured as rods oriented perpendicularly to the direction of motion showing a lack of localituy, while bosons remain insensitive to the effects of noncommutativity. For time/space noncommutativity bosopns and fermions can be regarded as rods oriented along the direction of motion. For both cases of noncommutativity the scattering state described scattered waves, with at least one wave having negative time delay signalizing the underlying nonlocality. The superfield formulation of the model is used to compute the corresponding effective action in the one- and two-loop approximations. In the case of time/space noncommutativity, unitarity is violated in the relativistic regime. However, this does not preclude the existence of the unitary low energy limit.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, minor correction

Analysis of energy-efficiency investment decisions by small and medium-sized manufacturers

This report highlights the results of a comprehensive analysis of investment decisions regarding energy-efficiency measures at small and medium-sized manufacturing plants. The analysis is based on the experiences of companies participating in the DOE Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) program. The IAC program is a network of university-based centers that provides energy and waste assessments to small and medium-sized manufacturing plants. The purposes of this report are to do the following: (1) Examine what the data collected reveal about patterns of implementation of recommended energy- efficiency measures, (2) Evaluate how various factors, such as the type of industry, the characteristics of the manufacturing plants, or the cost of the measures, appear to effect implementation rates, (3) Examine reasons why recommended energy-saving measures are accepted or rejected

ac Josephson effect in the resonant tunneling through mesoscopic superconducting junctions

We investigate ac Josephson effect in the resonant tunneling through mesoscopic superconducting junctions. In the presence of microwave irradiation, we show that the trajectory of multiple Andreev reflections can be closed by emitting or absorbing photons. Consequently, photon-assisted Andreev states are formed and play the role of carrying supercurrent. On the Shapiro steps, dc component appears when the resonant level is near a series of positions with spacing of half of the microwave frequency. Analytical result is derived in the limit of infinite superconducting gap, based on which new features of ac Josephson effect are revealed.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Calibration of the length of a chain of single gold atoms

Using a scanning tunneling microscope or mechanically controllable break junctions it has been shown that it is possible to control the formation of a wire made of single gold atoms. In these experiments an interatomic distance between atoms in the chain of ~3.6 Angstrom was reported which is not consistent with recent theoretical calculations. Here, using precise calibration procedures for both techniques, we measure length of the atomic chains. Based on the distance between the peaks observed in the chain length histogram we find the mean value of the inter-atomic distance before chain rupture to be 2.6 +/- 0.2 A . This value agrees with the theoretical calculations for the bond length. The discrepancy with the previous experimental measurements was due to the presence of He gas, that was used to promote the thermal contact, and which affects the value of the work function that is commonly used to calibrate distances in scanning tunnelling microscopy and mechanically controllable break junctions at low temperatures.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Palaeoproterozoic magnesite: lithological and isotopic evidence for playa/sabkha environments

Magnesite forms a series of 1- to 15-m-thick beds within the approximate to2.0 Ga (Palaeoproterozoic) Tulomozerskaya Formation, NW Fennoscandian Shield, Russia. Drillcore material together with natural exposures reveal that the 680-m-thick formation is composed of a stromatolite-dolomite-'red bed' sequence formed in a complex combination of shallow-marine and non-marine, evaporitic environments. Dolomite-collapse breccia, stromatolitic and micritic dolostones and sparry allochemical dolostones are the principal rocks hosting the magnesite beds. All dolomite lithologies are marked by delta C-13 values from +7.1 parts per thousand to +11.6 parts per thousand (V-PDB) and delta O-18 ranging from 17.4 parts per thousand to 26.3 parts per thousand (V-SMOW). Magnesite occurs in different forms: finely laminated micritic; stromatolitic magnesite; and structureless micritic, crystalline and coarsely crystalline magnesite. All varieties exhibit anomalously high delta C-13 values ranging from +9.0 parts per thousand to +11.6 parts per thousand and delta O-18 values of 20.0-25.7 parts per thousand. Laminated and structureless micritic magnesite forms as a secondary phase replacing dolomite during early diagenesis, and replaced dolomite before the major phase of burial. Crystalline and coarsely crystalline magnesite replacing micritic magnesite formed late in the diagenetic/metamorphic history. Magnesite apparently precipitated from sea water-derived brine, diluted by meteoric fluids. Magnesitization was accomplished under evaporitic conditions (sabkha to playa lake environment) proposed to be similar to the Coorong or Lake Walyungup coastal playa magnesite. Magnesite and host dolostones formed in evaporative and partly restricted environments; consequently, extremely high delta C-13 values reflect a combined contribution from both global and local carbon reservoirs. A C- 13-rich global carbon reservoir (delta C-13 at around +5 parts per thousand) is related to the perturbation of the carbon cycle at 2.0 Ga, whereas the local enhancement in C-13 (up to +12 parts per thousand) is associated with evaporative and restricted environments with high bioproductivity

Gaseous Galaxy Halos

Galactic halo gas traces inflowing star formation fuel and feedback from a galaxy's disk and is therefore crucial to our understanding of galaxy evolution. In this review, we summarize the multi-wavelength observational properties and origin models of Galactic and low redshift spiral galaxy halo gas. Galactic halos contain multiphase gas flows that are dominated in mass by the ionized component and extend to large radii. The densest, coldest halo gas observed in neutral hydrogen (HI) is generally closest to the disk (< 20 kpc), and absorption line results indicate warm and warm-hot diffuse halo gas is present throughout a galaxy's halo. The hot halo gas detected is not a significant fraction of a galaxy's baryons. The disk-halo interface is where the multiphase flows are integrated into the star forming disk, and there is evidence for both feedback and fueling at this interface from the temperature and kinematic gradient of the gas and HI structures. The origin and fate of halo gas is considered in the context of cosmological and idealized local simulations. Accretion along cosmic filaments occurs in both a hot (> 10^5.5 K) and cold mode in simulations, with the compressed material close to the disk the coldest and densest, in agreement with observations. There is evidence in halo gas observations for radiative and mechanical feedback mechanisms, including escaping photons from the disk, supernova-driven winds, and a galactic fountain. Satellite accretion also leaves behind abundant halo gas. This satellite gas interacts with the existing halo medium, and much of this gas will become part of the diffuse halo before it can reach the disk. The accretion rate from cold and warm halo gas is generally below a galaxy disk's star formation rate, but gas at the disk-halo interface and stellar feedback may be important additional fuel sources.Comment: 50 pages, 9 figures (1 in 3D, view with a current version of Adobe), to appear in ARA&A, 50, 49

Generalized Parton Distributions from Hadronic Observables: Non-Zero Skewness

We propose a physically motivated parametrization for the unpolarized generalized parton distributions, H and E, valid at both zero and non-zero values of the skewness variable, \zeta. Our approach follows a previous detailed study of the \zeta=0 case where H and E were determined using constraints from simultaneous fits of the experimental data on both the nucleon elastic form factors and the deep inelastic structure functions in the non singlet sector. Additional constraints at \zeta \neq 0 are provided by lattice calculations of the higher moments of generalized parton distributions. We illustrate a method for extracting generalized parton distributions from lattice moments based on a reconstruction using sets of orthogonal polynomials. The inclusion in our fit of data on Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering is also discussed. Our method provides a step towards a model independent extraction of generalized distributions from the data. It also provides an alternative to double distributions based phenomenological models in that we are able to satisfy the polynomiality condition by construction, using a combination of experimental data and lattice, without resorting to any specific mathematical construct.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figures; added references, changed text in several place