On an unverified nuclear decay and its role in the DAMA experiment

The rate of the direct decay of 40K to the ground state of 40Ar through electron capture has not been experimentally reported. Aside from its inherent importance for the theory of electron capture as the only such decay known of its type (unique third-forbidden), this decay presents an irreducible background in the DAMA experiment. We find that the presence of this background, as well as others, poses a challenge to any interpretation of the DAMA results in terms of a Dark Matter model with a small modulation fraction. A 10ppb contamination of natural potassium requires a 20% modulation fraction or more. A 20ppb contamination, which is reported as an upper limit by DAMA, disfavors any Dark Matter origin of the signal. This conclusion is based on the efficiency of detecting 40K decays as inferred from simulation. We propose measures to help clarify the situation.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures; v2 - published version; results unchanged; an addendum can be found in http://arxiv.org/abs/arXiv:1210.754

Russian Capability and Usage of Hybrid Tactics During the Intervention in Ukraine and Crimea in 2014

The hybrid war in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine is linked to history, geography, demography, local and national power play, and International level power politics between the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and Russia. Russia has strong fraternal ties with Ukraine dating back to the 9th century and the founding of Kievan Rus, the first eastern Slavic state, whose capital was Kiev/Kyiv. The country has been under partial or total Russian rule for most of those intervening centuries, which is a big part of why one in six Ukrainians is actually an ethnic Russian, one in three speaks Russian as the native language (the other two-thirds speak Ukrainian natively), and much of the country's media is in Russian. It is also why the subject of Russia is such a divisive one in Ukraine: many in the country see Moscow as the source of Ukraine's historical subjugation and something to be resisted, while others tend to look at Russia more fondly, with a sense of shared heritage and history. Nikita Khrushchev and the Supreme Council of the Soviet Union transferred Crimea from under the government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. As both republics were a part of the Soviet Union, the move was largely symbolic and of little practical consequence

The Dragon Bares Its Fangs: Modernisation of Plarf to Support an Expansionist Policy

On December 31, 2015, China elevated the status and stature of its nuclear and missile forces by making the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) a fourth military Service alongside the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Since then, the pronouncements and directions of Chinese President Xi Jinping and press releases have bolstered and further enhanced the importance that China attaches to its PLARF. Owing to China's increasing attention to the PLARF, it becomes imperative to understand the Chinese approach to the modernisation of the PLARF and its future role. The pertinent query lies in understanding how this capability will be instrumental in actualising China's role in the future. Keeping this context, the assessments will be drawn from a context and content analysis of the official papers and documents of press releases to determine if there is a genuine commitment to the official word or there is an asymmetry in the theory and practice. In doing so, the paper seeks to examine two key issues: first, application of the proposed thoughts and ideas; and second, evaluation of the consonance between professing and practice

Analysis and Improvement of Pegasis using Sink Mobility

WSN is a distributed network to sense diverse physical conditions of the environment using sensors. Sensor nodes could be static or moving. Wireless routing protocols try to ensure efficient transmission of data in WSN. Many routing protocols have been proposed such as LEACH (low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy), PEGASIS (power efficient gathering in sensor information system), TEEN (threshold sensitive energy efficient sensor network protocol). The new algorithm is proposed on the basis of mobility of sink. Using multi-chain, multi-head and sink mobility algorithm, the network can achieve better lifetime. The PEGASIS protocol presented here is a chain-based routing protocol where sensor uses greedy algorithm to form a chain data. In the proposed technique, mobile sink moves along its path and stays at a sojourn location for a sojourn time and guarantees complete collection of data. In this proposed algorithm a path has been developed of mobile sink and then wide range of experiments have been performed to access the performance of the proposed model

Nuclear Data Sheets for A=129

The experimental nuclear spectroscopic data for known nuclides of mass number 129 (Ag, Cd, In, Sn, Sb, Te, I, Xe, Cs, Ba, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Pm, Sm) have been evaluated and presented together with adopted properties for levels and γ rays. This evaluation represents a revision of the previous one 18 years ago by Y. Tendow (1996Te01). Extensive new data have become available for many nuclides in the intervening years, although, no data are available for excited states in 129Pm and 129Sm, and for 129Ag and 129Cd, only limited information is available for the g.s. and isomers. The decay schemes of 129Ag, 129Pm and 129Sm are unknown, and those for 129Cd, 129In, 129Ce, 129Pr and 129Nd are incomplete. Many γ rays and extended level schemes have been reported for the ground state and isomer decays of 129Ba to 129Cs, yet the adopted set of intensities in this evaluation originate from a brief paper in an annual laboratory report. There remain several unplaced gamma rays, coupled with ambiguity about division of intensities amongst the two activities of 129Ba with nearly the same half-lives. Isomerism is expected in 129Pr, but there is no confirmed identification. Low-lying level structure in 129Nd, including identification of a possible third long-lived isomer in this nuclide, remains uncertain. The spin-parity assignments of (5/2+) for the ground state and (7/2-) for an isomer at 107.6 keV in 129Ce are assigned based on strong support from systematics and band configurations, yet this result is in contradiction with the quadrupole interaction hyperfine structure measurement which favors 9/2- over 7/2- for the isomer, consequently 7/2+ for the ground state. Direct measurements of spins of ground state and isomer of 129Ce are needed to settle this issue. Confirmed spins and parities of the ground state and isomer of 129La are also lacking. Assignments in this work are mainly based on systematics of h11/2 decoupled structures. A direct measurement of ground state spin of 129La will also be desirable. Recommended data presented in this work supersede those in previous NDS evaluations of A=129 nuclides published by 1996Te01, 1983Ha46 and 1972Ho55

Utilizing Composted Jatropha & Neem cake and Tobacco Waste to sustain Garlic yields in Indo-Gangetic plains

The effect of composted Jatropha de-oiled cake, neem de-oiled cake and tobacco waste on morphological parameters like maximum leaf length, number of leaves, fresh and dry weight of bulb and yield was studied for Garlic (Allium sativum L.). Trials were conducted on field plots under the RBD design. The parameters recorded for plants grown on soil treated with composted organic fertilizer treatments were compared to those recorded for plants grown on chemical fertilizer treated soil and control. The results showed that the application of 2 tones per hectare mixture of composted Jatropha cake and tobacco waste (in ratio 2:1) resulted in an increase of 22.88 % in fresh bulb weight, 29.52% in dried bulb weight per plant and 18.3% in average yield of bulb as compared to control. This yield enhancement was significantly higher than control and comparable to that recorded for plants grown on soil treated with chemical fertilizers. The significant increase in garlic yield on application of composted Jatropha cake and tobacco waste is due to the availability o

Systematics of alpha decay hindrance factors in doubly-even nuclei

304-307In present work, we have calculated the hindrance factors of 182 even-even alpha emitters using Preston’s formulation of alpha decay probabilities and presented HFs systematics of 1- and 3- states in reflection asymmetric even-even quadruple-octupole deformed nuclides (A~216-230). The calculated HFs of both 1- and 3- states decrease with reduction in neutron number and this decrease is attributed to onset of intrinsic reflection asymmetry. There is a trend reversal for 1- states at N=132 (218Ra) and N=134 (220Rn), which might be a possible indication of departure from static octupole deformation. Similarly, HFs systematics is discussed for 224-230Th and 232-236U isotopic chains along with 2+ states observed in daughter nuclei in N=132-146 isotonic chains

Job-shop scheduling

Call number: LD2668 .R4 1967 S6

Job-shop scheduling

Call number: LD2668 .R4 1967 S6