Understanding urbanicity: how interdisciplinary methods help to unravel the effects of the city on mental health

Twenty-first century urbanization poses increasing challenges for mental health. Epidemiological studies have shown that mental health problems often accumulate in urban areas, compared to rural areas, and suggested possible underlying causes associated with the social and physical urban environments. Emerging work indicates complex urban effects that depend on many individual and contextual factors at neighbourhood and country level and novel experimental work is starting to dissect potential underlying mechanisms. This review summarizes findings from epidemiology and population- based studies, neuroscience, experimental, and experience-based research and illustrates how a combined approach can move the field towards an increased understanding of the urbanicity-mental health nexus

Enhanced light trapping in realistic thin film solar cells using one-dimensional gratings

Finding the optimal structure to enhance light trapping in thin film silicon solar cells has attracted much attention in the previous decades. However, because of problems in integrating theory and experiment, there are only few comprehensive contributions that provide guidelines for the optimal design of such structures. In this work, a realistic thin film solar cell with almost conformal layers based on a one-dimensional metallic grating back-reflector is investigated through experiment and theory. The external quantum efficiency of the cell is obtained with the aid of both theory and experiment for different angles of incidence and in both polarizations to validate the computational method and to show the impact of guided mode excitation. Different substrate shapes that are compatible with solar cell fabrication are then considered and the effect of geometrical parameters on the short circuit current density of the device is investigated. Calculations show that among the investigated shapes, trinagular gratings with a very sharp slope in one side, so called sawtooth gratings, are the most promising one-dimensional grating for light trapping. Furthermore, the role of material property is discussed specifically in the back-reflector by simulating aluminum and silver back-reflectors. It is shown that the blue response of the solar cells is similar almost regardless of the back-reflector material but their red response is viable to change due to variation in resonant properties of the structure

Evidence for a new nuclear 'magic number' from the level structure of Ca-54

Atomic nuclei are finite quantum systems composed of two distinct types of fermion--protons and neutrons. In a manner similar to that of electrons orbiting in an atom, protons and neutrons in a nucleus form shell structures. In the case of stable, naturally occurring nuclei, large energy gaps exist between shells that fill completely when the proton or neutron number is equal to 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82 or 126 (ref. 1). Away from stability, however, these so-called 'magic numbers' are known to evolve in systems with a large imbalance of protons and neutrons. Although some of the standard shell closures can disappear, new ones are known to appear. Studies aiming to identify and understand such behaviour are of major importance in the field of experimental and theoretical nuclear physics. Here we report a spectroscopic study of the neutron-rich nucleus (54)Ca (a bound system composed of 20 protons and 34 neutrons) using proton knockout reactions involving fast radioactive projectiles. The results highlight the doubly magic nature of (54)Ca and provide direct experimental evidence for the onset of a sizable subshell closure at neutron number 34 in isotopes far from stability.status: publishe

ISOMER SPECTROSCOPY AND SUB-NANOSECOND HALF-LIVE DETERMINATION IN W-178 USING THE NuBALL ARRAY

The reaction of a pulsed O-18 beam on a Dy-164 target was studied in the first experiment with the NuBall array at the IPN Orsay, France. Excited state half-lives were measured using the fast timing method with 20 LaBr3 (Ce) detectors. The timing characteristics of the fully digital acquisition system is briefly discussed. A value for the previously unknown half-life of the first excited 4(+) state in W-178 is presented

Decay properties of tau leptons measured at the Z0 resonance

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Installation and commissioning of EURICA - Euroball-RIKEN Cluster Array

EURICA is a project at AIKEN Nishina Center aimed at studying a wide range of exotic nuclei through beta-decay measurements and high-resolution gamma-ray spectroscopy. The setup is located behind the BigRIPS fragment separator and the ZeroDegree spectrometer at the RIBF. EURICA consists of the HPGe cluster detectors from the previous Euroball and RISING projects, together with double-sided silicon-strip detectors for beta-decay counting and lifetime measurements. In total, this setup provides us with the possibility to study several aspects of the exotic nuclei produced at the RIBF. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Search for lepton flavour violation in Z0 decays

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