Structure of the neutron-rich N=7 isotones 10Li and 9He

The near threshold structure of the unbound N=7 isotones 10Li and 9He has been investigated using proton removal and breakup from intermediate energy (35 MeV/nucleon) secondary beams of 11Be and 14,15B. The coincident detection of the beam velocity 9Li and 8He fragments and neutrons permitted the relative energy of the in-flight decay of 10Li and 9He to be reconstructed. Both systems were found to exhibited virtual s-wave strength near threshold together with a higher-lying resonance.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Contribution to INPC2010 - "International Nuclear Physics Conference", Vancouver, Canada, 4-9 July 2010, Proceedings to be published in Journal of Physics: Conference Serie

Ab Initio Theory of Light-ion Reactions

The exact treatment of nuclei starting from the constituent nucleons and the fundamental interactions among them has been a long-standing goal in nuclear physics. Above all nuclear scattering and reactions, which require the solution of the many-body quantum-mechanical problem in the continuum, represent a theoretical and computational challenge for ab initio approaches. After a brief overview of the field, we present a new ab initio many-body approach capable of describing simultaneously both bound and scattering states in light nuclei. By combining the resonating-group method with the ab initio no-core shell model, we complement a microscopic cluster technique with the use of realistic interactions and a microscopic and consistent description of the clusters. We show results for neutron and proton scattering on light nuclei, including p-7Be and n-8He. We also highlight the first results of the d-3He and d-3H fusion calculations obtained within this approach.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the International Nuclear Physics Conference INPC 2010, Vancouver, Canada, July 4 - 9, 2010, 10 pages, 5 figure

Surface Morphology and Strain Relief in Surfactant Mediated Growth of Germanium on Silicon (111)

The growth of Ge on Si is strongly modified by adsorbates called surfactants. The relevance of the stress on surface morphology and the growth mode of Ge on Si(111) is presented in a detailed in situ study by high resolution low energy electron diffraction (LEED) during the deposition. The change from islanding to layer-by-layer growth mode is seen in the oscillatory intensity behaviour of the 00-spot. As a strain relief mechanism, the Ge-film forms a microscopic rough surface of small triangular and defect-free pyramids in the pseudomorphic growth regime up to 8 monolayers. As soon as the pyramids are completed and start to coalesce, strain relieving defects are created at their base, finally arranging to the dislocation network. Without the driving force for the micro-roughness, the stress, the surface flattens again showing a much larger terrace length. The formation process of the dislocation network results in a spot splitting in LEED, since the periodic dislocations at the interface give rise to elastic deformation of the surface. Surprisingly the Ge-film is relaxed to 70% immediately after 8 monolayers of coverage, which is attributed to the micro rough surface morphology, providing innumerous nucleation sites for dislocation

Measurement of the 18Ne(a,p_0)21Na reaction cross section in the burning energy region for X-ray bursts

The 18Ne(a,p)21Na reaction provides one of the main HCNO-breakout routes into the rp-process in X-ray bursts. The 18Ne(a,p_0)21Na reaction cross section has been determined for the first time in the Gamow energy region for peak temperatures T=2GK by measuring its time-reversal reaction 21Na(p,a)18Ne in inverse kinematics. The astrophysical rate for ground-state to ground-state transitions was found to be a factor of 2 lower than Hauser-Feshbach theoretical predictions. Our reduced rate will affect the physical conditions under which breakout from the HCNO cycles occurs via the 18Ne(a,p)21Na reaction.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication on Physical Review Letter

Structure of 13^{13}Be probed via secondary beam reactions

The low-lying level structure of the unbound neutron-rich nucleus $^{13}$Be has been investigated via breakup on a carbon target of secondary beams of $^{14,15}$B at 35 MeV/nucleon. The coincident detection of the beam velocity $^{12}$Be fragments and neutrons permitted the invariant mass of the $^{12}$Be+$n$ and $^{12}$Be+$n$+$n$ systems to be reconstructed. In the case of the breakup of $^{15}$B, a very narrow structure at threshold was observed in the $^{12}$Be+$n$ channel. Contrary to earlier stable beam fragmentation studies which identified this as a strongly interacting $s$-wave virtual state in $^{13}$Be, analysis here of the $^{12}$Be+$n$+$n$ events demonstrated that this was an artifact resulting from the sequential-decay of the $^{14}$Be(2$^+$) state. Single-proton removal from $^{14}$B was found to populate a broad low-lying structure some 0.70 MeV above the neutron-decay threshold in addition to a less prominent feature at around 2.4 MeV. Based on the selectivity of the reaction and a comparison with (0-3)$\hbar\omega$ shell-model calculations, the low-lying structure is concluded to most probably arise from closely spaced J$^\pi$=1/2$^+$ and 5/2$^+$ resonances (E$_r$=0.40$\pm$0.03 and 0.85$^{+0.15}_{-0.11}$ MeV), whilst the broad higher-lying feature is a second 5/2$^+$ level (E$_r$=2.35$\pm$0.14 MeV). Taken in conjunction with earlier studies, it would appear that the lowest 1/2$^+$ and 1/2$^-$ levels lie relatively close together below 1 MeV.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Chemotherapy-Response Monitoring of Breast Cancer Patients Using Quantitative Ultrasound-Based Intra-Tumour Heterogeneities

© 2017 The Author(s). Anti-cancer therapies including chemotherapy aim to induce tumour cell death. Cell death introduces alterations in cell morphology and tissue micro-structures that cause measurable changes in tissue echogenicity. This study investigated the effectiveness of quantitative ultrasound (QUS) parametric imaging to characterize intra-tumour heterogeneity and monitor the pathological response of breast cancer to chemotherapy in a large cohort of patients (n = 100). Results demonstrated that QUS imaging can non-invasively monitor pathological response and outcome of breast cancer patients to chemotherapy early following treatment initiation. Specifically, QUS biomarkers quantifying spatial heterogeneities in size, concentration and spacing of acoustic scatterers could predict treatment responses of patients with cross-validated accuracies of 82 ± 0.7%, 86 ± 0.7% and 85 ± 0.9% and areas under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve of 0.75 ± 0.1, 0.80 ± 0.1 and 0.89 ± 0.1 at 1, 4 and 8 weeks after the start of treatment, respectively. The patients classified as responders and non-responders using QUS biomarkers demonstrated significantly different survivals, in good agreement with clinical and pathological endpoints. The results form a basis for using early predictive information on survival-linked patient response to facilitate adapting standard anti-cancer treatments on an individual patient basis

Transmit Power Minimization for MIMO Systems of Exponential Average BER with Fixed Outage Probability

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Dian-Wu Yue, and Yichuang Sun, ‘Transmit Power Minimization for MIMO Systems of Exponential Average BER with Fixed Outage Probability’, Wireless Personal Communications, Vol. 90 (4): 1951-1970, first available online on 20 June 2016. Under embargo. Embargo end date: 20 June 2017. The final publication is available at Springer via https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11277-016-3432-4This paper is concerned with a wireless multiple-antenna system operating in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels with channel state information being known at both transmitter and receiver. By spatiotemporal subchannel selection and power control, it aims to minimize the average transmit power (ATP) of the MIMO system while achieving an exponential type of average bit error rate (BER) for each data stream. Under the constraints on each subchannel that individual outage probability and average BER are given, based on a traditional upper bound and a dynamic upper bound of Q function, two closed-form ATP expressions are derived, respectively, which can result in two different power allocation schemes. Numerical results are provided to validate the theoretical analysis, and show that the power allocation scheme with the dynamic upper bound can achieve more power savings than the one with the traditional upper bound.Peer reviewe

High-Precision Measurement of the 19Ne Half-Life and Implications for Right-Handed Weak Currents

We report a precise determination of the 19Ne half-life to be $T_{1/2} = 17.262 \pm 0.007$ s. This result disagrees with the most recent precision measurements and is important for placing bounds on predicted right-handed interactions that are absent in the current Standard Model. We are able to identify and disentangle two competing systematic effects that influence the accuracy of such measurements. Our findings prompt a reassessment of results from previous high-precision lifetime measurements that used similar equipment and methods.Comment: 5 pages and 5 figures. Paper accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let