The Heat Capacity and the Free Energy Formation of Naphthalene

Because of work in project it became necessary to determine the heat capacity of compounds and solutions at low temperatures. To test the apparatus and method we have determined the heat capacity of napthalene at temperatures from liquid air to 25°

Radiative Capture of Protons by Be9

The gamma rays from the capture in Be9 of protons of energy between 0.27 and 1.2 Mev have been studied using large scintillation crystals. Excitation functions of the gamma rays leading to the 0-, 0.72-, 1.74-, 2.15-, 3.58-, and 5.16-Mev states of B10 were computed from the measured gamma-ray spectra. In addition to the resonances previously known to exist at 0.33-, 0.99-, and 1.086-Mev proton energy [corresponding to (1-) 6.88-, (2-) 7.48-, and (0+) 7.56-Mev states in B10], evidence was found only for the p-wave resonance near 1 Mev [(2+) 7.5-Mev state in B10] postulated by Mozer and by Dearnaly and for the influence of higher lying states. This work leaves unexplained the large isotopic-spin impurity of the 6.88-Mev level. Appreciable nonresonant capture was found for the transitions to the 0-, 0.72-, 3.58-, and 5.16-Mev states, which is probably not s-wave for the latter two transitions. Accurate energy measurements and coincidence work showed that the 5.16-Mev level of B10 is populated in preference to the 5.11-Mev level, contradicting earlier work of Clegg. Also, experimental evidence has been found which appears to be in contradiction to the 0+ spin assignment for the 7.56-Mev level of B10 and raises doubts about the 2+ spin assignment of the 5.16-Mev level

Bioactive ceramic-reinforced composites for bone augmentation

Biomaterials have been used to repair the human body for millennia, but it is only since the 1970s that man-made composites have been used. Hydroxyapatite (HA)-reinforced polyethylene (PE) is the first of the ‘second-generation’ biomaterials that have been developed to be bioactive rather than bioinert. The mechanical properties have been characterized using quasi-static, fatigue, creep and fracture toughness testing, and these studies have allowed optimization of the production method. The in vitro and in vivo biological properties have been investigated with a range of filler content and have shown that the presence of sufficient bioactive filler leads to a bioactive composite. Finally, the material has been applied clinically, initially in the orbital floor and later in the middle ear. From this initial combination of HA in PE other bioactive ceramic polymer composites have been developed

On the segmentation and classification of hand radiographs

This research is part of a wider project to build predictive models of bone age using hand radiograph images. We examine ways of finding the outline of a hand from an X-ray as the first stage in segmenting the image into constituent bones. We assess a variety of algorithms including contouring, which has not previously been used in this context. We introduce a novel ensemble algorithm for combining outlines using two voting schemes, a likelihood ratio test and dynamic time warping (DTW). Our goal is to minimize the human intervention required, hence we investigate alternative ways of training a classifier to determine whether an outline is in fact correct or not. We evaluate outlining and classification on a set of 1370 images. We conclude that ensembling with DTW improves performance of all outlining algorithms, that the contouring algorithm used with the DTW ensemble performs the best of those assessed, and that the most effective classifier of hand outlines assessed is a random forest applied to outlines transformed into principal components

Simulation of truncated normal variables

We provide in this paper simulation algorithms for one-sided and two-sided truncated normal distributions. These algorithms are then used to simulate multivariate normal variables with restricted parameter space for any covariance structure.Comment: This 1992 paper appeared in 1995 in Statistics and Computing and the gist of it is contained in Monte Carlo Statistical Methods (2004), but I receive weekly requests for reprints so here it is

Constant effective mass across the phase diagram of high-Tc_{c} cuprates

We investigate the hole dynamics in two prototypical high temperature superconducting systems: La$_{2-x}$Sr$_{x}$CuO$_{4}$ and YBa$_{2}$Cu$_{3}$O$_{y}$ using a combination of DC transport and infrared spectroscopy. By exploring the effective spectral weight obtained with optics in conjunction with DC Hall results we find that the transition to the Mott insulating state in these systems is of the "vanishing carrier number" type since we observe no substantial enhancement of the mass as one proceeds to undoped phases. Further, the effective mass remains constant across the entire underdoped regime of the phase diagram. We discuss the implications of these results for the understanding of both transport phenomena and pairing mechanism in high-T$_{c}$ systems.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

A population-based approach to background discrimination in particle physics

Background properties in experimental particle physics are typically estimated using control samples corresponding to large numbers of events. This can provide precise knowledge of average background distributions, but typically does not consider the effect of fluctuations in a data set of interest. A novel approach based on mixture model decomposition is presented as a way to estimate the effect of fluctuations on the shapes of probability distributions in a given data set, with a view to improving on the knowledge of background distributions obtained from control samples. Events are treated as heterogeneous populations comprising particles originating from different processes, and individual particles are mapped to a process of interest on a probabilistic basis. The proposed approach makes it possible to extract from the data information about the effect of fluctuations that would otherwise be lost using traditional methods based on high-statistics control samples. A feasibility study on Monte Carlo is presented, together with a comparison with existing techniques. Finally, the prospects for the development of tools for intensive offline analysis of individual events at the Large Hadron Collider are discussed.Comment: Updated according to the version published in J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. Minor changes have been made to the text with respect to the published article with a view to improving readabilit

Charge transfer and Fermi level shift in p-doped single-walled carbon nanotubes

The electronic properties of p-doped single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) bulk samples were studied by temperature-dependent resistivity and thermopower, optical reflectivity, and Raman spectroscopy. These all give consistent results for the Fermi level downshift (Delta E(F)) induced by doping. We find Delta E(F) approximate to 0.35 eV and 0.50 eV for concentrated nitric and sulfuric acid doping respectively. With these values, the evolution of Raman spectra can be explained by variations in the resonance condition as E(F) moves down into the valence band. Furthermore, we find no evidence for diameter-selective doping, nor any distinction between doping responses of metallic and semiconducting tubes

The Beagle 2 optical microscope

Introduction to the Beagle2 optical microscope

The a-axis optical conductivity of detwinned ortho-II YBa_2Cu_3O_6.50

The a-axis optical properties of a detwinned single crystal of YBa_2Cu_3O_6.50 in the ortho II phase (Ortho II Y123, T_c= 59 K) were determined from reflectance data over a wide frequency range (70 - 42 000 cm^-1) for nine temperature values between 28 and 295 K. Above 200 K the spectra are dominated by a broad background of scattering that extends to 1 eV. Below 200 K a shoulder in the reflectance appears and signals the onset of scattering at 400 cm^-1. In this temperature range we also observe a peak in the optical conductivity at 177 cm^-1. Below 59 K, the superconducting transition temperature, the spectra change dramatically with the appearance of the superconducting condensate. Its spectral weight is consistent, to within experimental error, with the Ferrell-Glover-Tinkham (FGT) sum rule. We also compare our data with magnetic neutron scattering on samples from the same source that show a strong resonance at 31 meV. We find that the scattering rates can be modeled as the combined effect of the neutron resonance and a bosonic background in the presence of a density of states with a pseudogap. The model shows that the decreasing amplitude of the neutron resonance with temperature is compensated for by an increasing of the bosonic background yielding a net temperature independent scattering rate at high frequencies. This is in agreement with the experiments.Comment: 13 pages 16 figure