New system for bathing bedridden patients

Multihead shower facility can be used with minimal patient handling. Waterproof curtain allows patient to bathe with his head out of shower. He can move completely inside shower to wash his face and hair. Main advantage of shower system is time saved in giving bath

Symmetric mode resonance of bubbles near a rigid boundary - the nonlinear case with time delay effects

A fundamental understanding of the effect of a surface on the resonance frequency of bubbles will be useful in the future development of diagnostic medical ultrasound equipment, and specifically in the area of targeted contrast agents for the screening and possible treatment of colon cancer. In this work we turn to the wall effects on the nonlinear resonance frequency response of air bubbles in water, following on from an earlier work which considered linear interactions (E. M. B. Payne, S. Illesinghe, A. Ooi, R. Manasseh, J. Acoust Soc. Am. 118, 2841-2849 (2005)). Numerical results for micron-sized bubbles near a rigid boundary are presented, showing the shift in frequency caused by the presence of the boundary and the presence of other bubbles. Time delay effects are also included, showing a damping of the frequency response. Simulations are limited to the special case where all bubbles are in phase (i.e., the symmetric mode), which refers to the case where all bubbles have the same initial conditions and are subjected to the same excitation pressure field. As a result they have identical time histories. An experimental method for measuring the frequency response of a single bubble attached to a surface is also briefly mentioned

Microscopic mechanism for mechanical polishing of diamond (110) surfaces

Mechanically induced degradation of diamond, as occurs during polishing, is studied using total--energy pseudopotential calculations. The strong asymmetry in the rate of polishing between different directions on the diamond (110) surface is explained in terms of an atomistic mechanism for nano--groove formation. The post--polishing surface morphology and the nature of the polishing residue predicted by this mechanism are consistent with experimental evidence.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Cytotoxicity assay automation

The design and construction of a system to automatically test HLP antigens are described. Major efforts were made to test and evaluate the performance of such a system, and compare its performance with nonautomatic tissue typing techniques. The system is based on the fluorochromatic cytotoxicity assay. Results show the system will work but is subject to malfunctions after a few samplings, and poses problems in showing correctly the necessary readings

Vibrational modes of circular free plates under tension

The vibrational frequencies of a plate under tension are given by the eigenvalues $\omega$ of the equation $\Delta^2u-\tau\Delta u=\omega u$. This paper determines the eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of this bi-Laplace problem on the ball under natural (free) boundary conditions. In particular, the fundamental modes --- the eigenfunctions of the lowest nonzero eigenvalue --- are identified and found to have simple angular dependence.Comment: 17 pages. To be submitted for publication shortly

Carbon recombination lines between 34.5 and 770 MHz toward Cassiopeia A

We present observations of low-frequency recombination lines of carbon toward Cas A near 34.5 MHz (n ~ 575) using the Gauribidanur radio telescope and near 560 MHz (n ~ 225) and 770 MHz (n ~ 205) using the NRAO 140 foot (43 m) telescope in Greenbank. We also present high angular resolution (1') observations of the C270α line near 332 MHz using the Very Large Array in B-configuration. A high signal-to-noise ratio spectrum is obtained at 34.5 MHz, which clearly shows a Voigt profile with distinct Lorentzian wings, resulting from significant pressure and radiation broadening at such high quantum numbers. The emission lines detected near 332, 550, and 770 MHz, on the other hand, are narrow and essentially Doppler-broadened. The measured Lorentzian width at 34.5 MHz constrains the allowed combinations of radiation temperature, electron density, and electron temperature in the line-forming region. Radiation broadening at 34.5 MHz places a lower limit of 115 pc on the separation between Cas A and the line-forming clouds. Modeling the variation in the integrated line-to-continuum ratio with frequency indicates that the region is likely to be associated with the cold atomic hydrogen component of the interstellar medium, and the physical properties of this region are likely to be Te = 75 K, ne = 0.02 cm-3, TR100 = 3200 K, and nHTe = 10,000 cm-3 K. Comparison of the distribution of the C270α recombination line emission across Cas A with that of 12CO and H I also supports the above conclusion

New Consequences of Induced Transparency in a Double-Lambda scheme: Destructive Interference In Four-wave Mixing

We investigate a four-state system interacting with long and short laser pulses in a weak probe beam approximation. We show that when all lasers are tuned to the exact unperturbed resonances, part of the four-wave mixing (FWM) field is strongly absorbed. The part which is not absorbed has the exact intensity required to destructively interfere with the excitation pathway involved in producing the FWM state. We show that with this three-photon destructive interference, the conversion efficiency can still be as high as 25%. Contrary to common belief,our calculation shows that this process, where an ideal one-photon electromagnetically induced transparency is established, is not most suitable for high efficiency conversion. With appropriate phase-matching and propagation distance, and when the three-photon destructive interference does not occur, we show that the photon flux conversion efficiency is independent of probe intensity and can be close to 100%. In addition, we show clearly that the conversion efficiency is not determined by the maximum atomic coherence between two lower excited states, as commonly believed. It is the combination of phase-matching and constructive interference involving the two terms arising in producing the mixing wave that is the key element for the optimized FWM generation. Indeed, in this scheme no appreciable excited state is produced, so that the atomic coherence between states |0> and |2> is always very small.Comment: Submitted to Phys. Rev. A, 7 pages, 4 figure

Finite Projective Spaces, Geometric Spreads of Lines and Multi-Qubits

Given a (2N - 1)-dimensional projective space over GF(2), PG(2N - 1, 2), and its geometric spread of lines, there exists a remarkable mapping of this space onto PG(N - 1, 4) where the lines of the spread correspond to the points and subspaces spanned by pairs of lines to the lines of PG(N - 1, 4). Under such mapping, a non-degenerate quadric surface of the former space has for its image a non-singular Hermitian variety in the latter space, this quadric being {\it hyperbolic} or {\it elliptic} in dependence on N being {\it even} or {\it odd}, respectively. We employ this property to show that generalized Pauli groups of N-qubits also form two distinct families according to the parity of N and to put the role of symmetric operators into a new perspective. The N=4 case is taken to illustrate the issue.Comment: 3 pages, no figures/tables; V2 - short introductory paragraph added; V3 - to appear in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Genetic resistance to soil chemical toxicities and deficiencies.

Breeding new crop cultivars for adaptation to stress-related phenomena due to soil chemical toxicity and deficiency is a complex process. Data from nutrient culture trials, in which seedling plants are stressed with a deficiency or excess of mineral elements, do not correlate well with those from similar field stress conditions using the same germplasm. Further, evaluating segregating populations in nutrient culture can result in little or no genetic gain due to selection. Field screening efforts are plagued with genotype x environmental interactions caused by a multitude of biotic and abiotic factors. Selecting the proper level of stress for field evaluations and maintaining this level in a dynamically changeable medium like soil can be difficult. Genetic improvement of sorghum under field conditions similar to those encountered by farmers, however, has nearly always been obtained