Spin effects in large rapidity neutral pion production at STAR

First measurements of large Feynman x (x_F) neutral pion production in polarized proton collisions at sqrt(s)=200 GeV were reported previously. Cross section measurements at =3.3 and 3.8$ and analyzing power (A_N) measurements at =3.8 were completed for 0.3 < x_F < 0.6. The cross section was found to be consistent with next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations. In that framework, the dominant subprocess is partonic collisions of valence quarks on low Bjorken-x gluons. The A_N was found to be large and positive and increasing with x_F, and consistent with phenomonological calculations based on the Collins effect, the Sivers effect and initial-state and final-state higher twist contributions. Subsequent data have been acquired with transverse polarized proton collisions at RHIC at sqrt(s)=200 GeV. The status of the analysis and preliminary results will be presented.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Submitted talk presented at the "16th International spin physics symposium" (SPIN2004) 10-16 Oct 2004, Trieste, Italy. To be published in proceeding

On the syntactic-semantic status of adverbial utterance constituents

In this article I attempt to show that grammatical categories such as the adverbs dabei (with it/them) and doch (but, still) in German can be explained as prosodic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic continuum based on their core meaning. Some classifications described and maintained in the traditional grammar of German, especially represented by the „valency grammar“, i.e. classifications as „sentential adverbs“ or „discourse markers“, therefore should be neutralized and newly considered. The grammatical categories in charge should be understood as crossing over the unit of sentence, and in this respect they are not „Satzglieder“ (sentence constituents), but „Äußerungsglieder“ (utterance constituents) as Darski (2010) claims. In the „adverbial“ area prosodic features and syntactic positions closely correspond to each other and on the other hand semantic contents and pragmatic effects do correspond too. The continuous scale of the elements dabei and doch can be seen as an ample example for demonstrating the „iconic“ relation between prosody/syntax and semantics/pragmatics, i.e. between forms and functions.In this article I attempt to show that grammatical categories such as the adverbs dabei (with it/them) and doch (but, still) in German can be explained as prosodic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic continuum based on their core meaning. Some classifications described and maintained in the traditional grammar of German, especially represented by the „valency grammar“, i.e. classifications as „sentential adverbs“ or „discourse markers“, therefore should be neutralized and newly considered. The grammatical categories in charge should be understood as crossing over the unit of sentence, and in this respect they are not „Satzglieder“ (sentence constituents), but „Äußerungsglieder“ (utterance constituents) as Darski (2010) claims. In the „adverbial“ area prosodic features and syntactic positions closely correspond to each other and on the other hand semantic contents and pragmatic effects do correspond too. The continuous scale of the elements dabei and doch can be seen as an ample example for demonstrating the „iconic“ relation between prosody/syntax and semantics/pragmatics, i.e. between forms and functions

Phenological characteristics of reproduction and seed formation in Durio zibethinus Murray

Phenological characteristics during the reproductive processes of flower budding, flowering, fruiting and seed formation were investigated in a Durio zibethinus Murray tree growing in an experimental field of Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) in Selangor, Peninsular Malaysia. The survival curve showed that the relative fall rate of reproductive organs was lower at the mixed stages of flower budding, flowering and fruiting than at the early fruiting stage. The fall of flower buds commenced after the flower budding was completed. However, the falls of flowers and fruits occurred within a few days after the formation of flowering and fruiting. The periods of flower budding, flowering and fruiting were 34, 19 and 28 days, respectively. The fruit weight growth was approximated by a logistic equation, where the intrinsic growth rate varied from 0.419 to 0.794 week-1. The forming seeds germinated or possessed germination ability at the fruit growth stage where the fruit weight reached the asymptote of the logistic growth curve. Total numbers of emerged flower buds, flowers and fruits over the whole reproductive period were 1629, 1467 and 1412 per tree, respectively. The percentage of fruits with germination ability was estimated to be 1.2% of the number of fruiting ones

Performance improvement of recycled aggregate concrete using fly ash and Portland blast-furnace slag cement

Several countermeasures are implemented in the manufacture of construction materials to avoid negative impacts on the environment. Using concrete debris in construction demolition waste as a recycled aggregate to make recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) is one of the countermeasures. Further, the use of recycled construction waste and industrial by-products, such as fly ash and ground granulated blast-furnace slag, in concrete not only promotes resource circulation and reduces CO2 emissions in the cement manufacturing process but also improves concrete performance. In this study, low-quality recycled aggregate was mixed with normal aggregate at various replacement ratios to produce RAC. Additionally, ground granulated blast-furnace slag in Portland blast-furnace slag cement and fly ash were introduced in concrete to improve concrete performance. Applying the relative quality index method for performance evaluation, it was possible to design a mix proportion of RAC that achieved the requisite performance through the application of Portland blast-furnace slagcement and fly ashas a cement substitute or as a fine aggregate substitute

Long-term Multidisciplinary Rehabilitation Efficacy in Older Patients After Traumatic Brain Injury: Assessed by the Functional Independence Measure

Instances of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the elderly have been increasing along with the aging of popula-tions. In the present study, we examined the effect of aging on long-term multidisciplinary in-patient rehabili-tation efficacy after TBI. Sixty-three patients with physical and cognitive impairments after TBI were enrolled in this study. Patients were divided into 4 age groups (≤ 24, 25-44, 45-64, ≥ 65 years) and the clinical charac-teristics and rehabilitation efficacy of each age group were determined. Functional disability was evaluated using motor and cognitive Functional Independence Measure (FIM) scores. Rehabilitation efficacy was assessed by FIM gains during rehabilitation and compared among the groups. There were no statistically significant dif-ferences in motor and cognitive FIM gains among the age groups. However, cognitive FIM gain was limited in a subset of ≥ 65 patients, and initial cognitive measures could not predict cognitive FIM improvement. These results indicate that chronological age is insufficient to accurately predict rehabilitation efficacy in older TBI patients, and that such patients should be considered candidates for intensive rehabilitation programs based on these results. Accurate prognostication of rehabilitation efficacy with continuing data collection is important when using rehabilitation resources for older TBI patients

Low Frequency Ultrasonic Array Imaging using Signal Post-processing for Concrete Material

The use of ultrasonic arrays for conducting non-destructive evaluation has been drastically increased in recent years. As one of the array imaging, a post-processing beam-forming technique has been proposed that utilizes a complete set of signals of all combinations of transmission and reception elements. This approach is referred to as full matrix capture (FMC) [1]. In FMC, each array element is sequentially used as an emitter and all other array elements are used as receivers. By changing the emitting element, we obtained a set of flaw signals that was used to form the focal beam. The delay-and-sum beam reconstruction based on the post-processing was applied to imaging of internal voids and reinforced steel bars in concrete material. The reconstruction of voids and steels in concrete specimen (400mm x 400mm x 400 mm) was demonstrated using a phased array transducer in the low frequency range. In this study, the array transducer with total 16 elements and center frequency of 50 kHz was developed. The volume fraction of aggregates in concrete was 70 %, and the maximum size of the coarse aggregate was 20 mm. Figure 1 shows the reconstruction result of a slit. For on-site inspection, we introduced a graphics processing unit (GPU) computation to accelerate the post-processing of beam-forming [2]. The flaw detection time was approximately 0.15 s using Geforce GTX880M (NVIDIA)