2,301 research outputs found
Lessons learned from the development and manufacture of ceramic reusable surface insulation materials for the space shuttle orbiters
Three ceramic, reusable surface insulation materials and two borosilicate glass coatings were used in the fabrication of tiles for the Space Shuttle orbiters. Approximately 77,000 tiles were made from these materials for the first three orbiters, Columbia, Challenger, and Discovery. Lessons learned in the development, scale up to production and manufacturing phases of these materials will benefit future production of ceramic reusable surface insulation materials. Processing of raw materials into tile blanks and coating slurries; programming and machining of tiles using numerical controlled milling machines; preparing and spraying tiles with the two coatings; and controlling material shrinkage during the high temperature (2100-2275 F) coating glazing cycles are among the topics discussed
Hadronic unquenching effects in the quark propagator
We investigate hadronic unquenching effects in light quarks and mesons.
Within the non-perturbative continuum framework of Schwinger-Dyson and
Bethe-Salpeter equations we quantify the strength of the back reaction of the
pion onto the quark-gluon interaction. To this end we add a Yang-Mills part of
the interaction such that unquenched lattice results for various current quark
masses are reproduced. We find considerable effects in the quark mass function
at low momenta as well as for the chiral condensate. The quark wave function is
less affected. The Gell--Mann-Oakes-Renner relation is valid to good accuracy
up to pion masses of 400-500 MeV. As a byproduct of our investigation we verify
the Coleman theorem, that chiral symmetry cannot be broken spontaneously when
QCD is reduced to 1+1 dimensions.Comment: 27 pages, 15 figures, minor corrections and clarifications; version
to appear in PR
Functional Relaxation and Guided Imagery as Complementary Therapy in Asthma: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial
Background: Asthma is a frequently disabling and almost invariably distressing disease that has a high overall prevalence. Although relaxation techniques and hypnotherapeutic interventions have proven their effectiveness in numerous trials, relaxation therapies are still not recommended in treatment guidelines due to a lack of methodological quality in many of the trials. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the efficacy of the brief relaxation technique of functional relaxation (FR) and guided imagery (GI) in adult asthmatics in a randomized controlled trial. Methods: 64 patients with extrinsic bronchial asthma were treated over a 4-week period and assessed at baseline, after treatment and after 4 months, for follow-up. 16 patients completed FR, 14 GI, 15 both FR and GI (FR/GI) and 13 received a placebo relaxation technique as the control intervention (CI). The forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV 1) as well as the specific airway resistance (sR(aw)) were employed as primary outcome measures. Results: Participation in FR, GI and FR/GI led to increases in FEV 1 (% predicted) of 7.6 +/- 13.2, 3.3 +/- 9.8, and 8.3 +/- 21.0, respectively, as compared to -1.8 +/- 11.1 in the CI group at the end of the therapy. After follow-up, the increases in FEV 1 were 6.9 +/- 10.3 in the FR group, 4.4 +/- 7.3 in the GI and 4.5 +/- 8.1 in the FR/GI, compared to -2.8 +/- 9.2 in the CI. Improvements in sR(aw) (% predicted) were in keeping with the changes in FEV 1 in all groups. Conclusions: Our study confirms a positive effect of FR on respiratory parameters and suggests a clinically relevant long-term benefit from FR as a nonpharmacological and complementary therapy treatment option. Copyright (C) 2009 S. Karger AG, Base
Critical behavior of two-dimensional cubic and MN models in the five-loop renormalization-group approximation
The critical thermodynamics of the two-dimensional N-vector cubic and MN
models is studied within the field-theoretical renormalization-group (RG)
approach. The beta functions and critical exponents are calculated in the
five-loop approximation and the RG series obtained are resummed using the
Borel-Leroy transformation combined with the generalized Pad\'e approximant and
conformal mapping techniques. For the cubic model, the RG flows for various N
are investigated. For N=2 it is found that the continuous line of fixed points
running from the XY fixed point to the Ising one is well reproduced by the
resummed RG series and an account for the five-loop terms makes the lines of
zeros of both beta functions closer to each another. For the cubic model with
N\geq 3, the five-loop contributions are shown to shift the cubic fixed point,
given by the four-loop approximation, towards the Ising fixed point. This
confirms the idea that the existence of the cubic fixed point in two dimensions
under N>2 is an artifact of the perturbative analysis. For the quenched dilute
O(M) models ( models with N=0) the results are compatible with a stable
pure fixed point for M\geq1. For the MN model with M,N\geq2 all the
non-perturbative results are reproduced. In addition a new stable fixed point
is found for moderate values of M and N.Comment: 26 pages, 3 figure
Exact Finite-Size-Scaling Corrections to the Critical Two-Dimensional Ising Model on a Torus
We analyze the finite-size corrections to the energy and specific heat of the
critical two-dimensional spin-1/2 Ising model on a torus. We extend the
analysis of Ferdinand and Fisher to compute the correction of order L^{-3} to
the energy and the corrections of order L^{-2} and L^{-3} to the specific heat.
We also obtain general results on the form of the finite-size corrections to
these quantities: only integer powers of L^{-1} occur, unmodified by logarithms
(except of course for the leading term in the specific heat); and the
energy expansion contains only odd powers of L^{-1}. In the specific-heat
expansion any power of L^{-1} can appear, but the coefficients of the odd
powers are proportional to the corresponding coefficients of the energy
expansion.Comment: 26 pages (LaTeX). Self-unpacking file containing the tex file and
three macros (indent.sty, eqsection.sty, subeqnarray.sty). Added discussions
on the results and new references. Version to be published in J. Phys.
Triplet superconducting pairing and density-wave instabilities in organic conductors
Using a renormalization group approach, we determine the phase diagram of an
extended quasi-one-dimensional electron gas model that includes interchain
hopping, nesting deviations and both intrachain and interchain repulsive
interactions. We find a close proximity of spin-density- and
charge-density-wave phases, singlet d-wave and triplet f-wave superconducting
phases. There is a striking correspondence between our results and recent
puzzling experimental findings in the Bechgaard salts, including the
coexistence of spin-density-wave and charge-density-wave phases and the
possibility of a triplet pairing in the superconducting phase.Comment: 4 pages, 5 eps figure
Holonomy of the Ising model form factors
We study the Ising model two-point diagonal correlation function by
presenting an exponential and form factor expansion in an integral
representation which differs from the known expansion of Wu, McCoy, Tracy and
Barouch. We extend this expansion, weighting, by powers of a variable
, the -particle contributions, . The corresponding
extension of the two-point diagonal correlation function, , is shown, for arbitrary , to be a solution of the sigma
form of the Painlev{\'e} VI equation introduced by Jimbo and Miwa. Linear
differential equations for the form factors are obtained and
shown to have both a ``Russian doll'' nesting, and a decomposition of the
differential operators as a direct sum of operators equivalent to symmetric
powers of the differential operator of the elliptic integral . Each is expressed polynomially in terms of the elliptic integrals and . The scaling limit of these differential operators breaks the
direct sum structure but not the ``Russian doll'' structure. The previous -extensions, are, for singled-out values ( integers), also solutions of linear differential
equations. These solutions of Painlev\'e VI are actually algebraic functions,
being associated with modular curves.Comment: 39 page
Square lattice Ising model susceptibility: Series expansion method and differential equation for
In a previous paper (J. Phys. A {\bf 37} (2004) 9651-9668) we have given the
Fuchsian linear differential equation satisfied by , the
``three-particle'' contribution to the susceptibility of the isotropic square
lattice Ising model. This paper gives the details of the calculations (with
some useful tricks and tools) allowing one to obtain long series in polynomial
time. The method is based on series expansion in the variables that appear in
the -dimensional integrals representing the -particle contribution to
the isotropic square lattice Ising model susceptibility . The
integration rules are straightforward due to remarkable formulas we derived for
these variables. We obtain without any numerical approximation as
a fully integrated series in the variable , where , with the conventional Ising model coupling constant. We also
give some perspectives and comments on these results.Comment: 28 pages, no figur
The Magnetization of the 3D Ising Model
We present highly accurate Monte Carlo results for simple cubic Ising
lattices containing up to spins. These results were obtained by means
of the Cluster Processor, a newly built special-purpose computer for the Wolff
cluster simulation of the 3D Ising model. We find that the magnetization
is perfectly described by , where
, in a wide temperature range .
If there exist corrections to scaling with higher powers of , they are very
small. The magnetization exponent is determined as (6). An
analysis of the magnetization distribution near criticality yields a new
determination of the critical point: ,
with a standard deviation of .Comment: 7 pages, 5 Postscript figure
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