Looking for differences in wood properties as a function of the felling date: lunar phase-correlated variations in the drying behavior of Norway Spruce ( Picea abies Karst.) and Sweet Chestnut ( Castanea sativa Mill.)

A large-scale field experiment on the drying behavior of Norway Spruce (Picea abies Karst.) and Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.) in relation to the felling date was conducted over a period of 24weeks in order to investigate the existence of variations linked to lunar rhythms, which are mentioned as having a role in many traditional forestry practices. The measured criteria were the water loss from fresh to dry state, the shrinkage linked to this water loss, and the relative density (ratio between the dry density and the initial fresh density) for both sapwood and heartwood in Picea and heartwood in Castanea. In addition to seasonal trends, slight but significant variations with lunar periodicities (both synodic and sidereal; to a much lesser extent tropic) characterize the three investigated criteria. These lunar rhythmicities occur in both Picea and Castanea, in heartwood and sapwood. These results raise new questions and perspectives about a rhythmic character of the wood-water relatio

A 6.5 - 50 GHz battery-powered compact rotary joint for polarization ellipticity measurements

A simple, efficient, and compact rotary joint has been designed, realized, and measured. It has been used intensively to perform polarization ellipticity measurements on various circularly polarized antennas (e.g., helical antennas and circularly polarized horns, used either individually or feeding a lens antennas) operating in millimeter-wave band (similar to 30 GHz). (C) 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 53:375-379, 2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.2569

TOLPA (Tripod Omnidirectional Low Profile Antenna): a vertically polarized antenna with 90% bandwidth

A new vertically polarized omnidirectional antenna, inspired by an old design, has been studied, optimized, realized and measured. With a radiation pattern similar to the classical monopole on a ground plane, the proposed antenna concept provides a much larger bandwidth and a very low profile. This antenna has numerous potential applications for mobile communications, UWB and others

Towards a Precise Parton Luminosity Determination at the CERN LHC

A new approach to determine the LHC luminosity is investigated. Instead of employing the proton-proton luminosity measurement, we suggest to measure directly the parton-parton luminosity. It is shown that the electron and muon pseudorapidity distributions, originating from the decay of W+, W- and Z0 bosons produced at 14 TeV pp collisions (LHC), constrain the x distributions of sea and valence quarks and antiquarks in the range from about 3 x 10**-4 to about 10**-1 at a Q**2 of about 10**4 GeV**2. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that, once the quark and antiquark structure functions are constrained from the W+,W- and Z0 production dynamics, other quark-antiquark related scattering processes at the LHC like q-qbar --> W+W- can be predicted accurately. Thus, the lepton pseudorapidity distributions provide the key to a precise parton luminosity monitor at the LHC, with accuracies of about +-1% compared to the so far considered goal of +-5%.Comment: plain tex, 14 pages, 5 figure