PLENARY PANEL: A 360-DEGREE VIEW OF SCIENCE AND AGRICULTURAL POLICY; EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Nuclear Propelled Vessels and Neutrino Oscillation Experiments

We study the effect of naval nuclear reactors on the study of neutrino oscillations. We find that the presence of naval reactors at unknown locations and times may limit the accuracy of future very long baseline reactor-based neutrino oscillation experiments. At the same time we argue that a nuclear powered surface ship such as a large Russian ice-breaker may provide an ideal source for precision experiments. While the relatively low reactor power would in this case require a larger detector, the source could be conveniently located at essentially any distance from a detector built at an underground location near a shore in a region of the world far away from other nuclear installations. The variable baseline would allow for a precise measurement of backgrounds and greatly reduced systematics from reactor flux and detector efficiency. In addition, once the oscillation measurement is completed, the detector could perform geological neutrino and astrophysical measurements with minimal reactor background.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

A Generic Surface Sampler for Monte Carlo Simulations

We present an implementation of a Monte Carlo algorithm that generates points randomly and uniformly on a set of arbitrary surfaces. The algorithm is completely general and only requires the geometry modeling software to provide the intersection points of an arbitrary line with the surface being sampled. We demonstrate the algorithm using the Geant4 Monte Carlo simulation toolkit. The efficiency of the sampling algorithm is discussed, along with various options in the implementation and example applications

Report on Chemical Analysis and Further Dating of Dinosaur Bones and Dinosaur Petroglypths

Much of the material in this report was presented at the 1990 ICC poster sessions. Our radiocarbon dates of dinosaur bones and the other information in this report should be alarming to the evolutionary community and should be given serious study considering our preliminary results

Renormalization group parameter evolution of the minimal supersymmetric standard model with R-parity violation

A comparison of spectra obtained using the 1-loop MSSM and 2-loop R-parity violating MSSM renormalization group equations is presented. Influence of higher loop corrections and R-parity violating terms is discussed. Some numerical constraints on the R-parity violating parameters are also given.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, using RevTE

The MGDO software library for data analysis in Ge neutrinoless double-beta decay experiments

The GERDA and Majorana experiments will search for neutrinoless double-beta decay of germanium-76 using isotopically enriched high-purity germanium detectors. Although the experiments differ in conceptual design, they share many aspects in common, and in particular will employ similar data analysis techniques. The collaborations are jointly developing a C++ software library, MGDO, which contains a set of data objects and interfaces to encapsulate, store and manage physical quantities of interest, such as waveforms and high-purity germanium detector geometries. These data objects define a common format for persistent data, whether it is generated by Monte Carlo simulations or an experimental apparatus, to reduce code duplication and to ease the exchange of information between detector systems. MGDO also includes general-purpose analysis tools that can be used for the processing of measured or simulated digital signals. The MGDO design is based on the Object-Oriented programming paradigm and is very flexible, allowing for easy extension and customization of the components. The tools provided by the MGDO libraries are used by both GERDA and Majorana.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure, proceedings for TAUP201

Miscible displacement fronts of shear thinning fluids inside rough fractures

The miscible displacement of a shear-thinning fluid by another of same rheological properties is studied experimentally in a transparent fracture by an optical technique imaging relative concentration distributions. The fracture walls have complementary self-affine geometries and are shifted laterally in the direction perpendicular to the mean flow velocity {\bf U} : the flow field is strongly channelized and macro dispersion controls the front structure for P\'{e}clet numbers above a few units. The global front width increases then linearly with time and reflects the velocity distribution between the different channels. In contrast, at the local scale, front spreading is similar to Taylor dispersion between plane parallel surfaces. Both dispersion mechanisms depend strongly on the fluid rheology which shifts from Newtonian to shear-thinning when the flow rate increases. In the latter domain, increasing the concentration enhances the global front width but reduces both Taylor dispersion (due to the flattening of the velocity profile in the gap of the fracture) and the size of medium scale front structures

Measurement of the double-\beta decay half-life of ^{136}Xe with the KamLAND-Zen experiment

We present results from the KamLAND-Zen double-beta decay experiment based on an exposure of 77.6 days with 129 kg of $^{136}$Xe. The measured two-neutrino double-beta decay half-life of $^{136}$Xe is $T_{1/2}^{2\nu} = 2.38 \pm 0.02(stat) \pm 0.14(syst) \times 10^{21}$ yr, consistent with a recent measurement by EXO-200. We also obtain a lower limit for the neutrinoless double-beta decay half-life, $T_{1/2}^{0\nu} > 5.7 \times 10^{24}$ yr at 90% confidence level (C.L.), which corresponds to almost a five-fold improvement over previous limits.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. Version as published in PR

Study of electron anti-neutrinos associated with gamma-ray bursts using KamLAND

We search for electron anti-neutrinos ($\overline{\nu}_e$) from long and short-duration gamma-ray bursts~(GRBs) using data taken by the KamLAND detector from August 2002 to June 2013. No statistically significant excess over the background level is found. We place the tightest upper limits on $\overline{\nu}_e$ fluence from GRBs below 7 MeV and place first constraints on the relation between $\overline{\nu}_e$ luminosity and effective temperature.Comment: 16 pages and 5 figure