Chemical Identification of the Radioelements Produced from Carbon and Boron by Deuteron Bombardment

Chemical experiments were made on the radioactive substances resulting from the bombardment of carbon and boron by deuterons. Carbon is shown to yield an isotope of nitrogen and boron an isotope of carbon. The nitrogen so formed has a half-life of 10.5 minutes while that found by Curie and Joliot on bombardment of boron with alpha-particles has a half-life of 14 minutes. These facts are discussed

Soft Null Hypotheses: A Case Study of Image Enhancement Detection in Brain Lesions

This work is motivated by a study of a population of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients using dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) to identify active brain lesions. At each visit, a contrast agent is administered intravenously to a subject and a series of images is acquired to reveal the location and activity of MS lesions within the brain. Our goal is to identify and quantify lesion enhancement location at the subject level and lesion enhancement patterns at the population level. With this example, we aim to address the difficult problem of transforming a qualitative scientific null hypothesis, such as "this voxel does not enhance", to a well-defined and numerically testable null hypothesis based on existing data. We call the procedure "soft null hypothesis" testing as opposed to the standard "hard null hypothesis" testing. This problem is fundamentally different from: 1) testing when a quantitative null hypothesis is given; 2) clustering using a mixture distribution; or 3) identifying a reasonable threshold with a parametric null assumption. We analyze a total of 20 subjects scanned at 63 visits (~30Gb), the largest population of such clinical brain images

Electron Acceleration by Multi-Island Coalescence

Energetic electrons of up to tens of MeV are created during explosive phenomena in the solar corona. While many theoretical models consider magnetic reconnection as a possible way of generating energetic electrons, the precise roles of magnetic reconnection during acceleration and heating of electrons still remain unclear. Here we show from 2D particle-in-cell simulations that coalescence of magnetic islands that naturally form as a consequence of tearing mode instability and associated magnetic reconnection leads to efficient energization of electrons. The key process is the secondary magnetic reconnection at the merging points, or the `anti-reconnection', which is, in a sense, driven by the converging outflows from the initial magnetic reconnection regions. By following the trajectories of the most energetic electrons, we found a variety of different acceleration mechanisms but the energization at the anti-reconnection is found to be the most important process. We discuss possible applications to the energetic electrons observed in the solar flares. We anticipate our results to be a starting point for more sophisticated models of particle acceleration during the explosive energy release phenomena.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures (degraded figure quality), 1 table. Accepted for publication in ApJ

`Island Surfing' Mechanism of Electron Acceleration During Magnetic Reconnection

One of the key unresolved problems in the study of space plasmas is to explain the production of energetic electrons as magnetic field lines `reconnect' and release energy in a exposive manner. Recent observations suggest possible roles played by small scale magnetic islands in the reconnection region, but their precise roles and the exact mechanism of electron energization have remained unclear. Here we show that secondary islands generated in the reconnection region are indeed efficient electron accelerators. We found that, when electrons are trapped inside the islands, they are energized continuously by the reconnection electric field prevalent in the reconnection diffusion region. The size and the propagation speed of the secondary islands are similar to those of islands observed in the magnetotail containing energertic electrons.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to J. Geophys. Res

Transition of amorphous to crystalline oxide film in initial oxide overgrowth on liquid metals

It is important to understand the mechanism of oxidation in the initial stage on the free surface of liquid metals. Mittemeijer and co-workers recently developed a thermodynamic model to study the oxide overgrowth on a solid metal surface. Based on this model, we have developed a thermodynamic model to analyse the thermodynamic stability of oxide overgrowth on liquid metals. The thermodynamic model calculation revealed that the amorphous oxide phase is thermodynamically preferred up to 1.3 and 0.35 nm respectively, in the initial oxide overgrowth on liquid Al and Ga at the corresponding melting point. However, the amorphous phase is thermodynamically unstable in the initial oxide overgrowth on liquid Mg. The thermodynamic stability of amorphous phase in the Al and Ga oxide systems is attributed to lower sums of surface and interfacial energies for amorphous phases, compared to that of the corresponding crystalline phases.Financial support under grant EP/H026177/1 from the EPSRC was used

Light emission patterns from stadium-shaped semiconductor microcavity lasers

We study light emission patterns from stadium-shaped semiconductor (GaAs) microcavity lasers theoretically and experimentally. Performing systematic wave calculations for passive cavity modes, we demonstrate that the averaging by low-loss modes, such as those realized in multi-mode lasing, generates an emission pattern in good agreement with the ray model's prediction. In addition, we show that the dependence of experimental far-field emission patterns on the aspect ratio of the stadium cavity is well reproduced by the ray model.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Panel data analysis of factors of broadband services diffusion in OECD countries: Focus on deployment and migration

Deployment of broadband, particularly, FTTx, is now one of major policy objectives in many countries, including Japan, Korea, and the U.S., for example. The U.S. announced a National Broadband Plan which aimed at providing 100 million households with access to 100 Mbps broadband services by 2020. The purpose of this paper is to conduct an empirical analysis to identify factors affecting broadband service diffusion in OECD 30 member countries. In so doing, by considering the diffusion ratios of three broadband technologies, 30 countries are categorized into types, namely CATV (BB), DSL and FTTx. Then, the paper identifies the following factors which promote broadband services by an international comparison method: (1) initial conditions of Cable TV around year 2000; (2) open access obligations on copper subscriber lines; (3) relative connection speed of FTTx to DSL; and (4) business strategy of operators for investment in FTTx influence FTTx diffusion. (1) promotes CATV diffusion, (2) promotes DSL and FTTH, and (3) and (4) influence FTTH diffusion. Finally, the paper empirically verifies the above hypotheses and the migration process among three services using panel data model, which take care of the endogeneity problem using instrumental variable method. This analysis will provide an important basis for national broadband policy formulation in individual countries