Laser-heated rocket studies

CW laser heated rocket propulsion was investigated in both the flowing core and stationary core configurations. The laser radiation considered was 10.6 micrometers, and the working gas was unseeded hydrogen. The areas investigated included initiation of a hydrogen plasma capable of absorbing laser radiation, the radiation emission properties of hot, ionized hydrogen, the flow of hot hydrogen while absorbing and radiating, the heat losses from the gas and the rocket performance. The stationary core configuration was investigated qualitatively and semi-quantitatively. It was found that the flowing core rockets can have specific impulses between 1,500 and 3,300 sec. They are small devices, whose heating zone is only a millimeter to a few centimeters long, and millimeters to centimeters in radius, for laser power levels varying from 10 to 5,000 kW, and pressure levels of 3 to 10 atm. Heat protection of the walls is a vital necessity, though the fraction of laser power lost to the walls can be as low as 10% for larger powers, making the rockets thermally efficient

Antigenic Complementarity in the Origins of Autoimmunity: A General Theory Illustrated With a Case Study of Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia Purpura

We describe a novel, testable theory of autoimmunity, outline novel predictions made by the theory, and illustrate its application to unravelling the possible causes of idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura (ITP). Pairs of stereochemically complementary antigens induce complementary immune responses (antibody or T-cell) that create loss of regulation and civil war within the immune system itself. Antibodies attack antibodies creating circulating immune complexes; T-cells attack T-cells creating perivascular cuffing. This immunological civil war abrogates the self-nonself distinction. If at least one of the complementary antigens mimics a self antigen, then this unregulated immune response will target host tissues as well. Data demonstrating that complementary antigens are found in some animal models of autoimmunity and may be present in various human diseases, especially ITP, are reviewed. Specific mechanisms for preventing autoimmunity or suppressing existing autoimmunity are derived from the theory, and critical tests proposed. Finally, we argue that Koch's postulates are inadequate for establishing disease causation for multiple-antigen diseases and discuss the possibility that current research has failed to elucidate the causes of human autoimmune diseases because we are using the wrong criteria

Systematic 1/N1/N corrections for bosonic and fermionic vector models without auxiliary fields

In this paper, colorless bilocal fields are employed to study the large $N$ limit of both fermionic and bosonic vector models. The Jacobian associated with the change of variables from the original fields to the bilocals is computed exactly, thereby providing an exact effective action. This effective action is shown to reproduce the familiar perturbative expansion for the two and four point functions. In particular, in the case of fermionic vector models, the effective action correctly accounts for the Fermi statistics. The theory is also studied non-perturbatively. The stationary points of the effective action are shown to provide the usual large $N$ gap equations. The homogeneous equation associated with the quadratic (in the bilocals) action is simply the two particle Bethe Salpeter equation. Finally, the leading correction in $1\over N$ is shown to be in agreement with the exact $S$ matrix of the model.Comment: 24 pages, uses REVTEX macros. Replaced with final version to appear in Phys. Rev.