A Spallation Model for the Titanium-rich Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A

Titanium-rich subluminous supernovae are rare and challenge current SN nucleosynthesis models. We present a model in which ejecta from a standard Supernova is impacted by a second explosion of the neutron star (a Quark-nova), resulting in spallation reactions that lead to 56Ni destruction and 44Ti creation under the right conditions. Basic calculations of the spallation products shows that a delay between the two explosions of ~ 5 days reproduces the observed abundance of 44Ti in Cas A and explains its low luminosity as a result of the destruction of 56Ni. Our results could have important implications for lightcurves of subluminous as well as superluminous supernovae.Comment: Accepted/to be published in Physical Review Letters. [ for more info on the Quark Nova, see: http://quarknova.ucalgary.ca/

Enhancement of chemotherapy using oncolytic virotherapy: Mathematical and optimal control analysis

Oncolytic virotherapy (OV) has been emerging as a promising novel cancer treatment that may be further combined with the existing therapeutic modalities to enhance their effects. To investigate how OV could enhance chemotherapy, we propose an ODE based model describing the interactions between tumour cells, the immune response, and a treatment combination with chemotherapy and oncolytic viruses. Stability analysis of the model with constant chemotherapy treatment rates shows that without any form of treatment, a tumour would grow to its maximum size. It also demonstrates that chemotherapy alone is capable of clearing tumour cells provided that the drug efficacy is greater than the intrinsic tumour growth rate. Furthermore, OV alone may not be able to clear tumour cells from body tissue but would rather enhance chemotherapy if viruses with high viral potency are used. To assess the combined effect of OV and chemotherapy we use the forward sensitivity index to perform a sensitivity analysis, with respect to chemotherapy key parameters, of the virus basic reproductive number and the tumour endemic equilibrium. The results from this sensitivity analysis indicate the existence of a critical dose of chemotherapy above which no further significant reduction in the tumour population can be observed. Numerical simulations show that a successful combinational therapy of the chemotherapeutic drugs and viruses depends mostly on the virus burst size, infection rate, and the amount of drugs supplied. Optimal control analysis was performed, by means of Pontryagin's principle, to further refine predictions of the model with constant treatment rates by accounting for the treatment costs and sides effects.Comment: This is a preprint of a paper whose final and definite form is with 'Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering', ISSN 1551-0018 (print), ISSN 1547-1063 (online), available at [http://www.aimsciences.org/journal/1551-0018]. Submitted 27-March-2018; revised 04-July-2018; accepted for publication 10-July-201

A new 130nm F.E readout chip for microstrip detectors

In the context of the Silicon tracking for a Linear Collider (SiLC) R&D collaboration, a highly compact mixed-signal chip has been designed in 130nm CMOS technology intended to read Silicon strip detectors for the experiments at the future International Linear Collider. The chip includes eighty eight channels of a full analog signal processing chain and analog to digital conversion with the corresponding digital controls and readout channels. The chip is 5x10mm2 where the analog implementation represents 4/5 of the total Silicon area.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, LCWS08 worksho

Some rings for which the cosingular submodule of every module is a direct summand

The submodule Z(M) = ∩{N | M/N is small in its injective hull} was introduced by Talebi and Vanaja in 2002. A ring R is said to have property (P ) if Z(M) is a direct summand of M for every R-module M . It is shown that a commutative perfect ring R has (P ) if and only if R is semisimple. An example is given to show that this characterization is not true for noncommutative rings. We prove that if R is a commutative ring such that the class {M ∈ Mod−R | ZR(M) = 0} is closed under factor modules, then R has (P ) if and only if the ring R is von Neumann regular

Identification of tsunami-induced deposits using numerical modeling and rock magnetism techniques: a study case of the 1755 Lisbon tsunami in Algarve, Portugal

Storm- and tsunami-deposits are generated by similar depositional mechanisms making their discrimination hard to establish using classic sedimentologic methods. Here we propose an original approach to identify tsunami-induced deposits by combining numerical simulation and rock magnetism. To test our method, we investigate the tsunami deposit of the Boca do Rio estuary generated by the 1755 earthquake in Lisbon which is well described in the literature. We first test the 1755 tsunami scenario using a numerical inundation model to provide physical parameters for the tsunami wave. Then we use concentration (MS. SIRM) and grain size (chi(ARM), ARM, B1/2, ARM/SIRM) sensitive magnetic proxies coupled with SEM microscopy to unravel the magnetic mineralogy of the tsunami-induced deposit and its associated depositional mechanisms. In order to study the connection between the tsunami deposit and the different sedimentologic units present in the estuary, magnetic data were processed by multivariate statistical analyses. Our numerical simulation show a large inundation of the estuary with flow depths varying from 0.5 to 6 m and run up of similar to 7 m. Magnetic data show a dominance of paramagnetic minerals (quartz) mixed with lesser amount of ferromagnetic minerals, namely titanomagnetite and titanohematite both of a detrital origin and reworked from the underlying units. Multivariate statistical analyses indicate a better connection between the tsunami-induced deposit and a mixture of Units C and D. All these results point to a scenario where the energy released by the tsunami wave was strong enough to overtop and erode important amount of sand from the littoral dune and mixed it with reworked materials from underlying layers at least 1 m in depth. The method tested here represents an original and promising tool to identify tsunami-induced deposits in similar embayed beach environments

Pair production of neutralinos and charginos at the LHC: the role of Higgs bosons exchange

We analyze the effects of the s-channel Higgs bosons exchange on the charginos and neutralinos-pair production in proton-proton collision at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the following channels: pp \to \Cha^+\Cha^-/\Neu^0\Neu^0 + X, within the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). Assuming the usual GUT relation between $M_1$ and $M_2$ at the weak scale, we found that substantial enhancement can be obtained through s-channel Higgs bosons exchange in the mixed regime where $M_2 \sim |\mu|$ with moderate to large $\tan\beta$ at the resonance of the heavy Higgs bosons. By Combining the phenomenological constraints on neutralinos and charginos, we may still find regions of parameter space where charginos and neutralinos-pair production at the LHC from $b\bar b$ initial state can be large and observable at LHC. We also compute the full complete set of electroweak (EW) contributions to pp\to gg\to \Cha^+\Cha^-/\Neu^0\Neu^0 + X at one loop level in the general MSSM. The analytical computation of the complete tree level amplitude for b\bar{b} \to \Cha^+\Cha^-/\Neu^0\Neu^0 + X, including s-channel Higgs exchange, is given.Comment: Accepted to be published in PR

The spin-half XXZ antiferromagnet on the square lattice revisited: A high-order coupled cluster treatment

We use the coupled cluster method (CCM) to study the ground-state properties and lowest-lying triplet excited state of the spin-half {\it XXZ} antiferromagnet on the square lattice. The CCM is applied to it to high orders of approximation by using an efficient computer code that has been written by us and which has been implemented to run on massively parallelized computer platforms. We are able therefore to present precise data for the basic quantities of this model over a wide range of values for the anisotropy parameter Δ in the range −1≤Δ1) regimes, where Δ→∞ represents the Ising limit. We present results for the ground-state energy, the sublattice magnetization, the zero-field transverse magnetic susceptibility, the spin stiffness, and the triplet spin gap. Our results provide a useful yardstick against which other approximate methods and/or experimental studies of relevant antiferromagnetic square-lattice compounds may now compare their own results. We also focus particular attention on the behaviour of these parameters for the easy-axis system in the vicinity of the isotropic Heisenberg point (Δ=1), where the model undergoes a phase transition from a gapped state (for Δ>1) to a gapless state (for Δ≤1), and compare our results there with those from spin-wave theory (SWT). Interestingly, the nature of the criticality at Δ=1 for the present model with spins of spin quantum number s=12 that is revealed by our CCM results seems to differ qualitatively from that predicted by SWT, which becomes exact only for its near-classical large-s counterpart