Sodium Atoms in the Lunar Exotail: Observed Velocity and Spatial Distributions

The lunar sodium tail extends long distances due to radiation pressure on sodium atoms in the lunar exosphere. Our earlier observations measured the average radial velocity of sodium atoms moving down the lunar tail beyond Earth (i.e., near the anti-lunar point) to be ~ 12.5 km/s. Here we use the Wisconsin H-alpha Mapper to obtain the first kinematically resolved maps of the intensity and velocity distribution of this emission over a 15 x 15 deg region on the sky near the anti-lunar point. We present both spatially and spectrally resolved observations obtained over four nights bracketing new Moon in October 2007. The spatial distribution of the sodium atoms is elongated along the ecliptic with the location of the peak intensity drifting 3 deg east along the ecliptic per night. Preliminary modeling results suggest the spatial and velocity distributions in the sodium exotail are sensitive to the near surface lunar sodium velocity distribution. Future observations of this sort along with detailed modeling offer new opportunities to describe the time history of lunar surface sputtering over several days

The potential for the use of population health indices in the Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme: a Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme (PBMS) report

The Predatory Bird Monitoring Scheme (PBMS; http://pbms.ceh.ac.uk/) is the umbrella project that encompasses the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology’s National Capability activities for contaminant monitoring and surveillance work on avian predators. The PBMS aims to detect and quantify current and emerging chemical threats to the environment and in particular to vertebrate wildlife. Each bird that is submitted to the scheme is given a post-mortem examination during which approximately 60 macroscopic observations and measurements are made. The information gathered during this examination could potentially be used to monitor health status of the birds at the time of their death or at a particular stage of their development. In the current study, we focused on examining potential health indicators for the sparrowhawk, Accipiter nisus, as a candidate species partly because we have a long track record of collecting carcasses and eggs of this species, and so hold a substantial associated post-mortem (PM) observations and egg morphometric data sets. This species is sexually dimorphic, another reason for using it as a candidate species as it allowed us to investigate if the various health indices would need to be (and could be) defined separately by age class and sex. We were able to establish baseline “norms” in the form of Shewhart charts for indicators that could be broadly categorised as indicators of change in: (i) population demography because of altered recruitment, survival and mortality (measures were sex ratio, proportion of first-year birds, proportion deaths from starvation or disease, eggshell index); (ii) nutritional status (measures were body weight, fat score, condition index) and (iii) physiological stress (fluctuating asymmetry). The measurements necessary to calculate these indices are routinely captured by the PBMS through direct input into an Oracle database at the time of PM examination. We also explored the potential for annual monitoring of feather corticosterone as a simple effects biomarker for environmental stress, including environmental contaminants, but further work and resource would be needed to incorporate any such measure into annual health surveillance monitoring. We outline how the health indices described here could be reported in real-time and extended to other species to provide surveillance across different trophic strategists, and ecosystems. This report is intended to prompt debate about the type of population health indices that may be of use in assessing environmental health. It is not intended to be definitive in terms of which should be used

A Monitor of Beam Polarization Profiles for the TRIUMF Parity Experiment

TRIUMF experiment E497 is a study of parity violation in pp scattering at an energy where the leading term in the analyzing power is expected to vanish, thus measuring a unique combination of weak-interaction flavour conserving terms. It is desired to reach a level of sensitivity of 2x10^-8 in both statistical and systematic errors. The leading systematic errors depend on transverse polarization components and, at least, the first moment of transverse polarization. A novel polarimeter that measures profiles of both transverse components of polarization as a function of position is described.Comment: 19 pages LaTeX, 10 PostScript figures. To appear in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section

The Biology Instrument for the Viking Mars Mission

Two Viking spacecraft have successfully soft landed on the surface of Mars. Each carries, along with other scientific instruments, one biology laboratory with three different experiments designed to search for evidence of living microorganisms in material sampled from the Martian surface. This 15.5-kg biology instrument which occupies a volume of almost 28.3 dm3 is the first to carry out an in situ search for extraterrestrial life on a planet. The three experiments are called the pyrolytic release, labeled release, and gas exchange. The pyrolytic release experiment has the capability to measure the fixation of carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide into organic matter. The labeled release experiment detects metabolic processes by monitoring the production of volatile carbon compounds from a radioactively labeled nutrient mixture. The gas exchange experiment monitors the gas changes in the head space above a soil sample which is either incubated in a humid environment or supplied with a rich organic nutrient solution. Each experiment can analyze a soil sample as it is received from the surface or, as a control, analyze a soil which has been heated to above 160C. Each instrument has the capability to receive four different soils dug from the Martian surface and perform a number of analysis cycles depending on the particular experiment. This paper describes in detail the design and operation of the three experiments and the supporting subsystems

Operation of a novel hot electron vertical cavity surface emitting laser

The hot Electron Light Emission and Lasing in Semiconductor Heterostructures devices (HELLISH-1) is novel surface emitter consisting of a GaAs quantum well, within the depletion region, on the n side of Ga 1-xAlxAs p- n junction. It utilizes hot electron transport parallel to the layers and injection of hot electron hole pairs into the quantum well through a combination of mechanisms including tunnelling, thermionic emission and diffusion of 'lucky' carriers. Super Radiant HELLISH-1 is an advanced structure incorporating a lower distributed Bragg reflector (DBR). Combined with the finite reflectivity of the upper semiconductor-air interface reflectivity it defines a quasi- resonant cavity enabling emission output from the top surface with a higher spectral purity. The output power has increased by two orders of magnitude and reduced the full width at half maximum (FWHM) to 20 nm. An upper DBR added to the structure defines HELLISH-VCSEL which is currently the first operational hot electron surface emitting laser and lases at room temperature with a 1.5 nm FWHM. In this work we demonstrate and compare the operation of UB-HELLISH-1 and HELLISH-VCSEL using experimental and theoretical reflectivity spectra over an extensive temperature range. ©2003 Copyright SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Measurement of the B0-anti-B0-Oscillation Frequency with Inclusive Dilepton Events

The $B^0$-$\bar B^0$ oscillation frequency has been measured with a sample of 23 million \B\bar B pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B Factory at SLAC. In this sample, we select events in which both B mesons decay semileptonically and use the charge of the leptons to identify the flavor of each B meson. A simultaneous fit to the decay time difference distributions for opposite- and same-sign dilepton events gives $\Delta m_d = 0.493 \pm 0.012{(stat)}\pm 0.009{(syst)}$ ps$^{-1}$.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figure, submitted to Physical Review Letter

Search for W' bosons decaying to an electron and a neutrino with the D0 detector

This Letter describes the search for a new heavy charged gauge boson W' decaying into an electron and a neutrino. The data were collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron proton-antiproton Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 1 inverse femtobarn. Lacking any significant excess in the data in comparison with known processes, an upper limit is set on the production cross section times branching fraction, and a W' boson with mass below 1.00 TeV can be excluded at the 95% C.L., assuming standard-model-like couplings to fermions. This result significantly improves upon previous limits, and is the most stringent to date.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Search for a scalar or vector particle decaying into Zgamma in ppbar collisions at sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV

We present a search for a narrow scalar or vector resonance decaying into Zgamma with a subsequent Z decay into a pair of electrons or muons. The data for this search were collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron ppbar collider at a center of mass energy sqrt(s) = 1.96 TeV. Using 1.1 (1.0) fb-1 of data, we observe 49 (50) candidate events in the electron (muon) channel, in good agreement with the standard model prediction. From the combination of both channels, we derive 95% C.L. upper limits on the cross section times branching fraction (sigma x B) into Zgamma. These limits range from 0.19 (0.20) pb for a scalar (vector) resonance mass of 600 GeV/c^2 to 2.5 (3.1) pb for a mass of 140 GeV/c^2.Comment: Published by Phys. Lett.

Search for displaced vertices arising from decays of new heavy particles in 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

We present the results of a search for new, heavy particles that decay at a significant distance from their production point into a final state containing charged hadrons in association with a high-momentum muon. The search is conducted in a pp-collision data sample with a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and an integrated luminosity of 33 pb^-1 collected in 2010 by the ATLAS detector operating at the Large Hadron Collider. Production of such particles is expected in various scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. We observe no signal and place limits on the production cross-section of supersymmetric particles in an R-parity-violating scenario as a function of the neutralino lifetime. Limits are presented for different squark and neutralino masses, enabling extension of the limits to a variety of other models.Comment: 8 pages plus author list (20 pages total), 8 figures, 1 table, final version to appear in Physics Letters