Evaluation of dimensional stability, surface roughness, colour, flexural properties and decay resistance of thermally modified Acacia auriculiformis

This paper presents the effect of thermal modification of 14-15 year-old plantation grown Acacia auriculiformis wood in the 150-240ºC temperature range under vacuum condition. Important techno-mechanical parameters of thermally modified wood such as density, dimensional stability, colour, surface roughness, decay resistance against brown and white rot fungi and flexural properties were evaluated and compared with control. Depending on severity of heat treatment, colour of modified sapwood was turned from light to dark brownish. Moreover, the change in colour was found to be uniform throughout the thickness of wood blocks. Amount of shrinkage of Acacia auriculiformis wood was observed to be decreased with increasing treatment temperatures. Maximum dimensional stability of wood thermally modified at 240ºC was in the range of 60-65%. The surface roughness parameters (Ra and Rz) were reduced significantly after the treatment. The flexural strength (modulus of rupture-MOR) was observed to be reduced with increasing treatment temperatures. However, flexural stiffness (modulus of elasticity-MOE) was not found to be affected significantly up to 210ºC temperature. The lower amount of weight loss of thermally modified wood compared to untreated control showed improved decay resistance against white and brown rot fungi. With desirable improvements in various esthetic and technologically important quality parameters such as enhanced dimensional stability, biological durability against fungi and certain other properties, thermally modified wood from short-rotation Acacia auriculiformis may be considered as viable alternative to scarcely available timber resource for different value-added applications

Studies on Anatomical and Physico-Mechanical Properties of Candidate Plus Culms (CPCs) of Dendrocalamus strictus for Planting Stock Improvement Programme

Five candidate plus culms (CPCs) of about 2-year-old Dendrocalamus strictus (namely 16, 17, 21, 55 and 110) were collected from Sirsi, Karnataka, India, for investigations on anatomical, physical and mechanical properties. Various morphological (inter-nodal length, culm diameter and culm wall thickness), anatomical (fibre length, fibre diameter, fibre lumen diameter, fibre wall thickness and vascular bundles), physical (moisture content and specific gravity) and mechanical (fibre stress at elastic limit-FS at EL, modulus of rupture-MOR and modulus of elasticity-MOE) properties were evaluated for inter-comparison among the CPCs. Among all the CPCs, specific gravity was maximum in CPC 55 and minimum in CPC 17. A comparison of different properties was carried out at 2nd and 4th internode for all the five CPCs. The results indicate that the internodal length was lower in 2nd than 4th internodes with maximum and minimum values observed in CPC 55 and CPC 16 respectively. The culm diameter and culm wall thickness was higher in the 2nd internode than 4th internode. The maximum value of culm wall thickness was observed in CPC 110 and minimum in CPC 21 whereas culm diameter was maximum in CPC 16 and minimum in CPC 17. The fibre morphology did not show significant variation between 2nd and 4th internode among all the CPCs. However, the number of vascular bundles remained more in 4th internode of all the CPCs compared to 2nd internode. While FS at EL was maximum in CPC 55, the minimum corresponding values were found in CPC 110. Similarly, the MOR was maximum in CPC 55 and minimum in CPC 110. The maximum value of MOE was observed in CPC 55 while minimum values was in CPC 16. The data analysis shows that CPCs 55 having superior strength properties is comparatively more suitable for structural applications. CPCs 16 showed most of the anatomical parameters in the higher range and may be utilized for general applications including pulp and paper. The data generated on CPCs may be of use for bamboo improvement program and bamboo plantations which can produce quality product

Nucleon Spin-Polarisabilities from Polarisation Observables in Low-Energy Deuteron Compton Scattering

We investigate the dependence of polarisation observables in elastic deuteron Compton scattering below the pion production threshold on the spin-independent and spin-dependent iso-scalar dipole polarisabilities of the nucleon. The calculation uses Chiral Effective Field Theory with dynamical Delta(1232) degrees of freedom in the Small Scale Expansion at next-to-leading order. Resummation of the NN intermediate rescattering states and including the Delta induces sizeable effects. The analysis considers cross-sections and the analysing power of linearly polarised photons on an unpolarised target, and cross-section differences and asymmetries of linearly and circularly polarised beams on a vector-polarised deuteron. An intuitive argument helps one to identify kinematics in which one or several polarisabilities do not contribute. Some double-polarised observables are only sensitive to linear combinations of two of the spin-polarisabilities, simplifying a multipole-analysis of the data. Spin-polarisabilities can be extracted at photon energies \gtrsim 100 MeV, after measurements at lower energies of \lesssim 70 MeV provide high-accuracy determinations of the spin-independent ones. An interactive Mathematica 7.0 notebook of our findings is available from [email protected]: 30 pages LaTeX2e, including 22 figures as 66 .eps file embedded with includegraphicx; three errors in initial submission corrected. This submission includes ot the erratum to be published in EPJA (2012) and the corrections in the tex

Deconstructing 1S0 nucleon-nucleon scattering

A distorted-wave method is used to analyse nucleon-nucleon scattering in the 1S0 channel. Effects of one-pion exchange are removed from the empirical phase shift to all orders by using a modified effective-range expansion. Two-pion exchange is then subtracted in the distorted-wave Born approximation, with matrix elements taken between scattering waves for the one-pion exchange potential. The residual short-range interaction shows a very rapid energy dependence for kinetic energies above about 100 MeV, suggesting that the breakdown scale of the corresponding effective theory is only 270MeV. This may signal the need to include the Delta resonance as an explicit degree of freedom in order to describe scattering at these energies. An alternative strategy of keeping the cutoff finite to reduce large, but finite, contributions from the long-range forces is also discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures (introduction revised, references added; version to appear in EPJA

The Glauber model and the heavy ion reaction cross section

We reexamine the Glauber model and calculate the total reaction cross section as a function of energy in the low and intermediate energy range, where many of the corrections in the model, are effective. The most significant effect in this energy range is by the modification of the trajectory due to the Coulomb field. The modification in the trajectory due to nuclear field is also taken into account in a self consistent way. The energy ranges in which particular corrections are effective, are quantified and it is found that when the center of mass energy of the system becomes 30 times the Coulomb barrier, none of the trajectory modification to the Glauber model is really required. The reaction cross sections for light and heavy systems, right from near coulomb barrier to intermediate energies have been calculated. The exact nuclear densities and free nucleon-nucleon (NN) cross sections have been used in the calculations. The center of mass correction which is important for light systems, has also been taken into account. There is an excellent agreement between the calculations with the modified Glauber model and the experimental data. This suggests that the heavy ion reactions in this energy range can be explained by the Glauber model in terms of free NN cross sections without incorporating any medium modification.Comment: RevTeX, 21 pages including 9 Postscript figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Tight-binding parameters for charge transfer along DNA

We systematically examine all the tight-binding parameters pertinent to charge transfer along DNA. The $\pi$ molecular structure of the four DNA bases (adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine) is investigated by using the linear combination of atomic orbitals method with a recently introduced parametrization. The HOMO and LUMO wavefunctions and energies of DNA bases are discussed and then used for calculating the corresponding wavefunctions of the two B-DNA base-pairs (adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine). The obtained HOMO and LUMO energies of the bases are in good agreement with available experimental values. Our results are then used for estimating the complete set of charge transfer parameters between neighboring bases and also between successive base-pairs, considering all possible combinations between them, for both electrons and holes. The calculated microscopic quantities can be used in mesoscopic theoretical models of electron or hole transfer along the DNA double helix, as they provide the necessary parameters for a tight-binding phenomenological description based on the $\pi$ molecular overlap. We find that usually the hopping parameters for holes are higher in magnitude compared to the ones for electrons, which probably indicates that hole transport along DNA is more favorable than electron transport. Our findings are also compared with existing calculations from first principles.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 7 table

The Effects of Disorder on the ν=1\nu=1 Quantum Hall State

A disorder-averaged Hartree-Fock treatment is used to compute the density of single particle states for quantum Hall systems at filling factor $\nu=1$. It is found that transport and spin polarization experiments can be simultaneously explained by a model of mostly short-range effective disorder. The slope of the transport gap (due to quasiparticles) in parallel field emerges as a result of the interplay between disorder-induced broadening and exchange, and has implications for skyrmion localization.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps figure