OPERA superluminal neutrinos and Kinematics in Finsler spacetime

The OPERA collaboration recently reported that muon neutrinos could be superluminal. More recently, Cohen and Glashow pointed that such superluminal neutrinos would be suppressed since they lose their energies rapidly via bremsstrahlung. In this Letter, we propose that Finslerian nature of spacetime could account for the superluminal phenomena of particles. The Finsler spacetime permits the existence of superluminal behavior of particles while the casuality still holds. A new dispersion relation is obtained in a class of Finsler spacetime. It is shown that the superluminal speed is linearly dependent on the energy per unit mass of the particle. We find that such a superluminal speed formula is consistent with data of OPERA, MINOS and Fermilab-1979 neutrino experiments as well as observations on neutrinos from SN1987a.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures. Viewpoints of Finslerian special relativity on OPERA superluminal neutrino

A Two-Step Etching Method to Fabricate Nanopores in Silicon

A cost effectively method to fabricate nanopores in silicon by only using the conventional wet-etching technique is developed in this research. The main concept of the proposed method is a two-step etching process, including a premier double-sided wet etching and a succeeding track-etching. A special fixture is designed to hold the pre-etched silicon wafer inside it such that the track-etching can be effectively carried out. An electrochemical system is employed to detect and record the ion diffusion current once the pre-etched cavities are etched into a through nanopore. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method can cost effectively fabricate nanopores in silicon.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association (http://irevues.inist.fr/EDA-Publishing

The impact of satellite temperature soundings on the forecasts of a small national meteorological service

The impact of introducing satellite temperature sounding data on a numerical weather prediction model of a national weather service is evaluated. A dry five level, primitive equation model which covers most of the Northern Hemisphere, is used for these experiments. Series of parallel forecast runs out to 48 hours are made with three different sets of initial conditions: (1) NOSAT runs, only conventional surface and upper air observations are used; (2) SAT runs, satellite soundings are added to the conventional data over oceanic regions and North Africa; and (3) ALLSAT runs, the conventional upper air observations are replaced by satellite soundings over the entire model domain. The impact on the forecasts is evaluated by three verification methods: the RMS errors in sea level pressure forecasts, systematic errors in sea level pressure forecasts, and errors in subjective forecasts of significant weather elements for a selected portion of the model domain. For the relatively short range of the present forecasts, the major beneficial impacts on the sea level pressure forecasts are found precisely in those areas where the satellite sounding are inserted and where conventional upper air observations are sparse. The RMS and systematic errors are reduced in these regions. The subjective forecasts of significant weather elements are improved with the use of the satellite data. It is found that the ALLSAT forecasts are of a quality comparable to the SAR forecasts

Exploring the Variation in Spatial Landscape Utilisation by Cows in the Pre- and Post-Partum Period Using GNSS Technology

On-animal sensors refer to systems that monitor the location, behaviour, or physiological characteristics of livestock. These technologies provide a method to overcome many of the challenges that are associated with monitoring livestock within an extensive grazing system. A global navigation satellite system (GNSS) could be used to detect the changes in spatial utilisation associated with when a cow has a calf at foot. In this study, forty pregnant Belmont Red heifers were fitted with GNSS collars programmed to provide a location reading at 5 minute intervals. The data was cleaned and mapped in ArcGIS to identify changes in paddock area preference in the week prior to (-7d to -1d) and following (1d to 7d) parturition. A total of 14 heifers calved during this period and an overall reduction in the total area utilised was observed following parturition. Ten animals showed a preference for the eastern-side of the paddock following calving. These results suggest that paddock utilisation by cows does change around parturition but is inconsistent. Further research is required to better understand this issue, however, this information could be used to inform management decisions around resource distribution in the post-partum period to maximise productivity and animal welfare

A survey of parallel algorithms for fractal image compression

This paper presents a short survey of the key research work that has been undertaken in the application of parallel algorithms for Fractal image compression. The interest in fractal image compression techniques stems from their ability to achieve high compression ratios whilst maintaining a very high quality in the reconstructed image. The main drawback of this compression method is the very high computational cost that is associated with the encoding phase. Consequently, there has been significant interest in exploiting parallel computing architectures in order to speed up this phase, whilst still maintaining the advantageous features of the approach. This paper presents a brief introduction to fractal image compression, including the iterated function system theory upon which it is based, and then reviews the different techniques that have been, and can be, applied in order to parallelize the compression algorithm

Measurement of the Dynamical Structure Factor of a 1D Interacting Fermi Gas

We present measurements of the dynamical structure factor $S(q,\omega)$ of an interacting one-dimensional (1D) Fermi gas for small excitation energies. We use the two lowest hyperfine levels of the $^6$Li atom to form a pseudo-spin-1/2 system whose s-wave interactions are tunable via a Feshbach resonance. The atoms are confined to 1D by a two-dimensional optical lattice. Bragg spectroscopy is used to measure a response of the gas to density ("charge") mode excitations at a momentum $q$ and frequency $\omega$. The spectrum is obtained by varying $\omega$, while the angle between two laser beams determines $q$, which is fixed to be less than the Fermi momentum $k_\textrm{F}$. The measurements agree well with Tomonaga-Luttinger theory