A proposed superconducting booster linac for the HRIBF

A 42 MV Superconducting (SC) Booster Linac is proposed for the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility (HRIBF). The linac, consisting of 56 superconducting, resonators, will be used to boost Radioactive Ion Beams (RIBs) accelerated by the 25 MV NEC tandem, to Coulomb barrier energies for use in nuclear physics research near the proton and neutron drip lines. The design potential of 42 MV is sufficient to boost the beams of mass 180 above the Coulomb barrier using the most probable charge state, 15+, from single foil stripping in the tandem terminal. Linac parameters and layout are presented with accompanying beam dynamic calculations. In addition, an upgrade of the existing pre-tandem beam bunching system is proposed to further preserve the RIB intensity through better longitudinal phase space matching into the linac

Toward a realistic and tractable model for negative ion extraction from volume sources

A new negative ion source extraction model has been formulated and implemented that explicitly considers the motion of positive ions and the volume generation of negative ions. It is found that (1) for high-beam currents, the beam current is limited by a transverse space charge limit, meaning that an increase in negative ion density at the extraction sheath will result in a lower beam current; (2) there is a saddle point with a potential barrier preventing most volume produced negative ions from being extracted; (3) introduction of cesium may cause an increase in the transverse space charge limit; (4) cesium also results in an increase in the fraction of volume produced negative ions which are extracted; (5) cesium may also result in reduction of extracted electrons by producing a less negative bias on the plasma electrode with respect to the plasma, thus allowing the transverse space charge limit budget to be taken up virtually totally by the ions; (6) a strong ion time scale sheath instability due to violation of the Bohm criteria produces an anomalous ion temperature which increases with beam current as routinely seen in measurements; and (7) introduction of cesium may result in a reduction in this instability. These insights may lead to improvements in volume negative ion sources

Retroviral gene transfer is inhibited by chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans/glycosaminoglycans in malignant pleural effusions

Gene therapy may be an important adjuvant for treating cancer in the pleural space. The initial results of retroviral gene transfer to cancer cells in malignant pleural effusions revealed that transduction was markedly inhibited, and studies to characterize the inhibitory factor(s) were performed. The inhibition was contained within the soluble, rather than cellular, components of the effusions and was demonstrated with amphotropic, gibbon ape leukemia virus, and vesicular stomatitis virus-glycoprotein pseudotyped retroviral vectors. After excluding complement proteins, a series of studies identified chondroitin sulfates (CSs) as the inhibitory substances. First, treatment of the effusions with mammalian hyaluronidase or chondroitinases, but not Streptomyces hyaluronidase, abolished the inhibitory activity. Second, addition of exogenous CS glycosaminoglycans mimicked the inhibition observed with pleural effusions. Third, immunoassays and biochemical analyses of malignant pleural effusion specimens revealed CS in relevant concentrations within pleural fluid. Fourth, proteoglycans/glycosaminoglycans isolated from the effusions inhibited retroviral gene transfer. Analyses of the mechanism of inhibition indicate that the chondroitin sulfates interact with vector in solution rather than at the target cell surface. These results suggest that drainage of the malignant pleural effusion, and perhaps enzymatic pretreatment of the pleural cavity, will be necessary for efficient retroviral vector mediated gene delivery to pleural metastases

Nonlinear self consistent high resolution beam halo algorithm in homomorphic and weakly chaotic systems

A technique is described which enables high resolution of halo in beam dynamic studies by direct simulation. The method consists in first solving the beam dynamics problem using coarse initial data. The regions of the initial data, which result in beam halo, or extremums in phase space, are identified. The dynamics are resolved by continuing the calculation using initial data points slightly offset from those that result in halo formation, thus filling in the halo structure. The solution is repeated with appropriate scaling of such things as charge per orbit etc. This process may be continued indefinitely. The method can also shed some light on the halo generation in weakly chaotic systems. The scheme is essentially different from the {Delta}f method in that no assumption is made about f{sub 0}. As an example, a bifurcation in a non-trivial space charge dominated homomorphic problem is resolved self-consistently using minor computational resources, rather than having to perform the calculation for 250 trillion effective particles

Size Doesn't Matter: Towards a More Inclusive Philosophy of Biology

notes: As the primary author, O’Malley drafted the paper, and gathered and analysed data (scientific papers and talks). Conceptual analysis was conducted by both authors.publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticlePhilosophers of biology, along with everyone else, generally perceive life to fall into two broad categories, the microbes and macrobes, and then pay most of their attention to the latter. ‘Macrobe’ is the word we propose for larger life forms, and we use it as part of an argument for microbial equality. We suggest that taking more notice of microbes – the dominant life form on the planet, both now and throughout evolutionary history – will transform some of the philosophy of biology’s standard ideas on ontology, evolution, taxonomy and biodiversity. We set out a number of recent developments in microbiology – including biofilm formation, chemotaxis, quorum sensing and gene transfer – that highlight microbial capacities for cooperation and communication and break down conventional thinking that microbes are solely or primarily single-celled organisms. These insights also bring new perspectives to the levels of selection debate, as well as to discussions of the evolution and nature of multicellularity, and to neo-Darwinian understandings of evolutionary mechanisms. We show how these revisions lead to further complications for microbial classification and the philosophies of systematics and biodiversity. Incorporating microbial insights into the philosophy of biology will challenge many of its assumptions, but also give greater scope and depth to its investigations

Search for leptophobic Z ' bosons decaying into four-lepton final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV

Peer reviewe

Search for black holes and other new phenomena in high-multiplicity final states in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

Peer reviewe

Search for heavy resonances decaying into a vector boson and a Higgs boson in final states with charged leptons, neutrinos, and b quarks

Peer reviewe