Cosmic Needles versus Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

It has been suggested by a number of authors that the 2.7K cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation might have arisen from the radiation from Population III objects thermalized by conducting cosmic graphite/iron needle-shaped dust. Due to lack of an accurate solution to the absorption properties of exceedingly elongated grains, in existing literature which studies the CMB thermalizing process they are generally modelled as (1) needle-like spheroids in terms of the Rayleigh approximation; (2) infinite cylinders; and (3) the antenna theory. We show here that the Rayleigh approximation is not valid since the Rayleigh criterion is not satisfied for highly conducting needles. We also show that the available intergalactic iron dust, if modelled as infinite cylinders, is not sufficient to supply the required opacity at long wavelengths to obtain the observed isotropy and Planckian nature of the CMB. If appealing to the antenna theory, conducting iron needles with exceedingly large elongations (10^4) appear able to provide sufficient opacity to thermalize the CMB within the iron density limit. But the applicability of the antenna theory to exceedingly thin needles of nanometer/micrometer in thickness needs to be justified.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures; submitted to ApJ

The Detection of Cold Dust in Cas A: Evidence for the Formation of Metallic Needles in the Ejecta

Recently, Dunne et al. (2003) obtained 450 and 850 micron SCUBA images of CasA, and reported the detection of 2-4 M_sun of cold, 18K, dust in the remnant. Here we show that their interpretation of the observations faces serious difficulties. Their inferred dust mass is larger than the mass of refractory material in the ejecta of a 10 to 30 M_sun star. The cold dust model faces even more difficulties if the 170 micron observations of the remnant are included in the analysis, decreasing the cold dust temperature to ~ 8K, and increasing its mass to > 20 M_sun. We offer here a more plausible interpretation of their observation, in which the cold dust emission is generated by conducting needles with properties that are completely determined by the combined submillimeter and X-ray observations of the remnant. The needles consist of metallic whiskers with <1% of embedded impurities that may have condensed out of blobs of material that were expelled at high velocities from the inner metal-rich layers of the star in an asymmetric explosion. The needles are collisionally heated by the shocked gas to a temperature of 8K. Taking the destruction of needles into account, a dust mass of only 1E-4 to 1E-3M_sun is needed to account for the observed SCUBA emission. Aligned in the magnetic field, needles may give rise to observable polarized emission. The detection of submillimeter polarization will therefore offer definitive proof for a needle origin for the cold dust emission. Supernovae may still be proven to be important sources of interstellar dust, but the evidence is still inconclusive.Comment: 18 pages including 4 figures. Accepted for publication in the ApJ. Missing reference adde

Revolution of digital communication and Asian competitive creativity chasm

This study aims to identify changes that have taken place in the Asian technological creativity after the post-communication revolution of digital technologies. After examining the utility patent applications forwarded to the US Patent Office by 24 Asian countries between 1965 to 2007, the study partially supports the claim that the “digital communication revolution have influenced the competitive creativity development in Asia.” However, the development growth model is shaped like a snail shell, and digital technologies have not been the silver bullet that promoted the leapfrogging of creativity in stagnating countries. Information and communication technologies (ICT) should be considered as a means of technological learning rather than the end of creativity development. The challenge of strengthening stagnating Asian countries to become competitive and innovative nations will continue until the next decade. Unless necessary steps are taken to improve technological learning and local innovations in stagnating countries, their technological dependency will increase and thus deepen the marginalization in the coming eras

Influence of internet usage on social and subjective well-being of Sri Lankan GLIS

The Internet has significantly contributed to the drastic growth of technological inventions and innovation in the world. The majority of the inventors in developing countries is independent inventors work on inventions by their own interest. The Internet has been one of the leading knowledge repositories for these independent inventors to search clues for their inventions. Owing to the self-driven behavior of the independent inventors, they might gain success and perceive happiness through the inventive activities that involved searching and creation of new knowledge. However, there is hardly any study that explains the influence of the Internet usage on social and psychological aspects of grassroots level inventors (GLIS). Therefore, the existing knowledge on how the Internet usage influence on social capital, connectedness, success and subjective well-being of inventive community in developing countries is not exact. Present study explores the influence of the Internet usage on social capital, community connectedness, inventive achievements and subjective well-being of the grassroots level inventive community of Sri Lanka. Findings suggest that the Internet has significant direct influence on the subjective wellbeing of GLIS in Sri Lanka. Further The Internet usages indirectly influence the subjective well-being through social capital and connectedness. However, The Internet usage has not significantly influenced on the objective inventive achievements of the GLIS in Sri Lanka

Enantiospecific Detection of Chiral Nanosamples Using Photoinduced Force

We propose a high-resolution microscopy technique for enantiospecific detection of chiral samples down to sub-100-nm size based on force measurement. We delve into the differential photoinduced optical force ΔF exerted on an achiral probe in the vicinity of a chiral sample when left and right circularly polarized beams separately excite the sample-probe interactive system. We analytically prove that ΔF is entangled with the enantiomer type of the sample enabling enantiospecific detection of chiral inclusions. Moreover, we demonstrate that ΔF is linearly dependent on both the chiral response of the sample and the electric response of the tip and is inversely related to the quartic power of probe-sample distance. We provide physical insight into the transfer of optical activity from the chiral sample to the achiral tip based on a rigorous analytical approach. We support our theoretical achievements by several numerical examples highlighting the potential application of the derived analytic properties. Lastly, we demonstrate the sensitivity of our method to enantiospecify nanoscale chiral samples with chirality parameter on the order of 0.01 and discuss how the sensitivity of our proposed technique can be further improved

Scanning thermal profiler

Journal ArticleA new high-resolution profilometer has been demonstrated based upon a noncontacting nearfield thermal probe. The thermal probe consists of a thermocouple sensor with dimensions approaching 100 nm. Profiling is achieved by scanning the heated sensor above but close to the surface of a solid. The conduction of heat between tip and sample via the air provides a means for maintaining the sample spacing constant during the lateral scan. The large difference in thermal properties between air and solids makes the profiling technique essentially independent of the material properties of the solid. Noncontact profiling of resist and metal films has shown a lateral resolution of 100 nm and a depth solution of 3 nm. The basic theory of the new probe is described and the results presented