The VLQ Calorimeter of H1 at HERA: A Highly Compact Device for Measurements of Electrons and Photons under Very Small Scattering Angles

In 1998, the detector H1 at HERA has been equipped with a small backward spectrometer, the Very Low Q^2 (VLQ) spectrometer comprising a silicon tracker, a tungsten - scintillator sandwich calorimeter, and a Time-of-Flight system. The spectrometer was designed to measure electrons scattered under very low angles, equivalent to very low squared four - momentum transfers Q^2, and high energy photons with good energy and spatial resolution. The VLQ was in operation during the 1999 and 2000 run periods. This paper describes the design and construction of the VLQ calorimeter, a compact device with a fourfold projective energy read-out, and its performance during test runs and in the experiment.Comment: 32 pages, 25 figures, 2 tables (To be submitted to Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A

Report on shopper travel behaviour in Dublin City Centre

Traders on Dublin’s two main shopping streets considerably over-estimate spending by shoppers travelling by car and Luas while significantly undervaluing the spend of bus passengers and pedestrians. A study interviewed 1,009 shoppers on Grafton and Henry streets seeking to identify differences (if any) between perceived and actual spending levels by travel mode. Bus carried 35% of shoppers to Grafton St and 49% to Henry St; this compares with traders’ perceptions of 31% and 40% respectively. Measured in value terms, bus proved the most lucrative mode to both streets, delivering 38% of the total spend on both streets, when outliers are excluded. Pedestrian travel was similarly under-valued. Traders believed that 11% would walk to shop on Grafton St while on Henry St traders estimated that 6% of their customers came on foot. The actual figures are 20% and 19%, according to the survey. Car transport was overvalued by traders. On Grafton St traders perceived that car would account for 13% of customers whereas in reality car-borne shoppers made up 10%. Traders on Henry St believed car would carry 19% of shoppers but in fact only 9% came by car. The situation is similar for Luas: traders perceived 28% of Grafton St shoppers would arrive by tram compared to 13% in reality, and again on Henry St, traders thought Luas would carry 19% but it served just 10%. Bus priority and pedestrian enhancement may therefore warrant greater investment. The imbalance in cycling mode share between Grafton Street and Henry Street should also be investigated further

An evaporation-based model of thermal neutron induced ternary fission of plutonium

Ternary fission probabilities for thermal neutron induced fission of plutonium are analyzed within the framework of an evaporation-based model where the complexity of time-varying potentials, associated with the neck collapse, are included in a simplistic fashion. If the nuclear temperature at scission and the fission-neck-collapse time are assumed to be ~1.2 MeV and ~10^-22 s, respectively, then calculated relative probabilities of ternary-fission light-charged-particle emission follow the trends seen in the experimental data. The ability of this model to reproduce ternary fission probabilities spanning seven orders of magnitude for a wide range of light-particle charges and masses implies that ternary fission is caused by the coupling of an evaporation-like process with the rapid re-arrangement of the nuclear fluid following scission.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in IJMP

Human capital growth and poverty: Evidence from Ethiopia and Peru

In this paper we use high quality data from two developing countries, Ethiopia and Peru, to estimate the production functions of human capital from age 1 to age 15. We characterize the nature of persistence and dynamic complementarities between two components of human capital: health and cognition. We also explore the implications of different functional form assumptions for the production functions. We find that more able and higher income parents invest more, particularly at younger ages when investments have the greatest impacts. These differences in investments by parental income lead to large gaps in inequality by age 8 that persist through age 15

Structural Evidence for Consecutive Hel308-Like Modules in the Spliceosomal ATPase Brr2

Brr2 is a DExD/H-box helicase responsible for U4/U6 unwinding during spliceosomal activation. Brr2 contains two helicase-like domains, each of which is followed by a Sec63 domain with unknown function. We determined the crystal structure of the second Sec63 domain, which unexpectedly resembles domains 4 and 5 of DNA helicase Hel308. This, together with sequence similarities between Brr2\u27s helicase-like domains and domains 1-3 of Hel308, led us to hypothesize that Brr2 contains two consecutive Hel308-like modules (Hel308-I and Hel308-II). Our structural model and mutagenesis data suggest that Brr2 shares a similar helicase mechanism with Hel308. We demonstrate that Hel308-II interacts with Prp8 and Snu114 in vitro and in vivo. We further find that the C-terminal region of Prp8 (Prp8-CTR) facilitates the binding of the Brr2-Prp8-CTR complex to U4/U6. Our results have important implications for the mechanism and regulation of Brr2\u27s activity in splicing

Statistical fluctuations for the fission process on its decent from saddle to scission

We reconsider the importance of statistical fluctuations for fission dynamics beyond the saddle in the light of recent evaluations of transport coefficients for average motion. The size of these fluctuations are estimated by means of the Kramers-Ingold solution for the inverted oscillator, which allows for an inclusion of quantum effects.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, 5 Postscript figures; submitted to PRC e-mail: [email protected] www home page: http://www.physik.tu-muenchen.de/tumphy/e/T36/hofmann.htm

Yielding and irreversible deformation below the microscale: Surface effects and non-mean-field plastic avalanches

Nanoindentation techniques recently developed to measure the mechanical response of crystals under external loading conditions reveal new phenomena upon decreasing sample size below the microscale. At small length scales, material resistance to irreversible deformation depends on sample morphology. Here we study the mechanisms of yield and plastic flow in inherently small crystals under uniaxial compression. Discrete structural rearrangements emerge as series of abrupt discontinuities in stress-strain curves. We obtain the theoretical dependence of the yield stress on system size and geometry and elucidate the statistical properties of plastic deformation at such scales. Our results show that the absence of dislocation storage leads to crucial effects on the statistics of plastic events, ultimately affecting the universal scaling behavior observed at larger scales.Comment: Supporting Videos available at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.002041

Realistic Expanding Source Model for Invariant One-Particle Multiplicity Distributions and Two-Particle Correlations in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions

We present a realistic expanding source model with nine parameters that are necessary and sufficient to describe the main physics occuring during hydrodynamical freezeout of the excited hadronic matter produced in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. As a first test of the model, we compare it to data from central Si + Au collisions at p_lab/A = 14.6 GeV/c measured in experiment E-802 at the AGS. An overall chi-square per degree of freedom of 1.055 is achieved for a fit to 1416 data points involving invariant pi^+, pi^-, K^+, and K^- one-particle multiplicity distributions and pi^+ and K^+ two-particle correlations. The 99-percent-confidence region of parameter space is identified, leading to one-dimensional error estimates on the nine fitted parameters and other calculated physical quantities. Three of the most important results are the freezeout temperature, longitudinal proper time, and baryon density along the symmetry axis. For these we find values of 92.9 +/- 4.4 MeV, 8.2 +/- 2.2 fm/c, and 0.0222 + 0.0096 / - 0.0069 fm^-3, respectively.Comment: 37 pages and 12 figures. RevTeX 3.0. Submitted to Physical Review C. Complete preprint, including device-independent (dvi), PostScript, and LaTeX versions of the text, plus PostScript files of all figures, are available at http://t2.lanl.gov/publications/publications.html or at ftp://t2.lanl.gov/publications/res

Thermal fission rate around super-normal phase transition

Using Langer's $Im F$ method, we discuss the temperature dependence of nuclear fission width in the presence of dissipative environments. We introduce a low cut-off frequency to the spectral density of the environmental oscillators in order to mimic the pairing gap. It is shown that the decay width rapidly decreases at the critical temperature, where the phase transition from super to normal fluids takes place. Relation to the recently observed threshold for the dissipative fission is discussed.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, Submitted to Physical Review C for publication, 3 Postscript figures are available by request from [email protected]

The damping width of giant dipole resonances of cold and hot nuclei: a macroscopic model

A phenomenological macroscopic model of the Giant Dipole Resonance (GDR) damping width of cold- and hot-nuclei with ground-state spherical and near-spherical shapes is developed. The model is based on a generalized Fermi Liquid model which takes into account the nuclear surface dynamics. The temperature dependence of the GDR damping width is accounted for in terms of surface- and volume-components. Parameter-free expressions for the damping width and the effective deformation are obtained. The model is validated with GDR measurements of the following nuclides, $^{39,40}$K, $^{42}$Ca, $^{45}$Sc, $^{59,63}$Cu, $^{109-120}$Sn,$^{147}$Eu, $^{194}$Hg, and $^{208}$Pb, and is compared with the predictions of other models.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure