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2009

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Articles 1231 - 1260 of 7616

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

The Influences Of Cell Type And Zno Nanoparticle Size On Immune Cell Cytotoxicity And Cytokine Induction, Cory Hanley, Aaron Thurber, Charles Hanna, Alex Punnoose, Jianhui Zhang, Denise G. Wingett Sep 2009

The Influences Of Cell Type And Zno Nanoparticle Size On Immune Cell Cytotoxicity And Cytokine Induction, Cory Hanley, Aaron Thurber, Charles Hanna, Alex Punnoose, Jianhui Zhang, Denise G. Wingett

Physics Faculty Publications and Presentations

Nanotechnology represents a new and enabling platform that promises to provide a range of innovative technologies for biological applications. ZnO nanoparticles of controlled size were synthesized, and their cytotoxicity towards different human immune cells evaluated. A differential cytotoxic response between human immune cell subsets was observed, with lymphocytes being the most resistant and monocytes being the most susceptible to ZnO nanoparticle-induced toxicity. Significant differences were also observed between previously activated memory lymphocytes and naive lymphocytes, indicating a relationship between cell-cycle potential and nanoparticle susceptibility. Mechanisms of toxicity involve the generation of reactive oxygen species, with monocytes displaying the highest levels, …


Neutrons And Hadronic Parity Violation, Br Holstein Sep 2009

Neutrons And Hadronic Parity Violation, Br Holstein

Barry R Holstein

The history and phenomenology of hadronic parity violation are reviewed, and the important role of the neutron in unlocking the physics of this subject is outlined.


Optimal Site-Centered Electronic Structure Basis Set From A Displaced-Center Expansion: Improved Results Via A Priori Estimates Of Saddle Points In The Density, Aftab Alam, Duane D. Johnson Sep 2009

Optimal Site-Centered Electronic Structure Basis Set From A Displaced-Center Expansion: Improved Results Via A Priori Estimates Of Saddle Points In The Density, Aftab Alam, Duane D. Johnson

Duane D. Johnson

Site-centered, electronic-structure methods use an expansion inside nonoverlapping “muffin-tin” (MT) spheres plus an interstitial basis set. As the boundary separating the more spherical from nonspherical density between atoms, the “saddle-point” radii (SPR) in the density provide an optimal spherical region for expanding in spherical harmonics, as used in augmented plane wave, muffin-tin orbital, and multiple-scattering [Korringa, Kohn, and Rostoker (KKR)] methods. These MT-SPR guarantee unique, convex Voronoi polyhedra at each site, in distinction to Bader topological cells. We present a numerically fast, two-center expansion to find SPR a priori from overlapping atomic charge densities, valid also for disordered alloys. We …


Hydro-Economic Models: Concepts, Design, Applications, And Future Prospects, Julien Harou, Manuel Pulido-Velazquez, David E. Rosenberg, Josue Medellin-Azuara, Jay Lund, Richard Howitt Sep 2009

Hydro-Economic Models: Concepts, Design, Applications, And Future Prospects, Julien Harou, Manuel Pulido-Velazquez, David E. Rosenberg, Josue Medellin-Azuara, Jay Lund, Richard Howitt

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Future water management will shift from building new water supply systems to better operating existing ones. The variation of water values in time and space will increasingly motivate efforts to address water scarcity and reduce water conflicts. Hydro-economic models represent spatially distributed water resource systems, infrastructure, management options and economic values in an integrated manner. In these tools water allocations and management are either driven by the economic value of water or economically evaluated to provide policy insights and reveal opportunities for better management. A central concept is that water demands are not fixed requirements but rather functions where quantities …


A Comparison Of New Methods For Generating Energy-Minimizing Configurations Of Patchy Particles, Eric Jankowski, Sharon C. Glotzer Sep 2009

A Comparison Of New Methods For Generating Energy-Minimizing Configurations Of Patchy Particles, Eric Jankowski, Sharon C. Glotzer

Eric Jankowski

Increasingly complex particles are pushing the limits of traditional simulation techniques used to study self-assembly. In this work, we test the use of a learning-augmented Monte Carlo method for predicting low energy configurations of patchy particles shaped like “Tetris®” pieces. We extend this method to compare it against Monte Carlo simulations with cluster moves and introduce a new algorithm—bottom-up building block assembly—for quickly generating ordered configurations of particles with a hierarchy of interaction energies.


A Spectral Time-Domain Method For Computational Electrodynamics, James V. Lambers Sep 2009

A Spectral Time-Domain Method For Computational Electrodynamics, James V. Lambers

Faculty Publications

We present a new approach to the numerical solution of Maxwell’s equations in the case of spatially‐varying electric permittivity and/or magnetic permeability, based on Krylov subspace spectral (KSS) methods. KSS methods for scalar equations compute each Fourier coefficient of the solution using techniques developed by Gene Golub and Gérard Meurant for approximating elements of functions of matrices by Gaussian quadrature in the spectral, rather than physical, domain. We show how they can be generalized to coupled systems of equations, such as Maxwell’s equations, by choosing appropriate basis functions that, while induced by this coupling, still allow efficient and robust computation …


Visualization Of Hyperspectral Images, Mindy Schockling, Roberto Bonce, Angel Gutierrez, Stefan Robila Sep 2009

Visualization Of Hyperspectral Images, Mindy Schockling, Roberto Bonce, Angel Gutierrez, Stefan Robila

Department of Computer Science Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Hyperspectral images provide an innovative means for visualizing information about a scene or object that exists outside of the visible spectrum. Among other capabilities, hyperspectral image data enable detection of contamination in soil, identification of the minerals in an unfamiliar material, and discrimination between real and artificial leaves in a potted plant that are otherwise indistinguishable to the human eye. One of the drawbacks of working with hyperspectral data is that the massive amounts of information they provide requiring efficient means of being processed. In this study wavelet analysis was used to approach this problem by investigating the capabilities it …


Multi-Lepton Production At High Transverse Momentum At Hera, S. Chekanov, M. Derrick, S. Magill, B. Musgrave, D. Nicholass, J. Repond, R. Yoshida, Margarita C. K. Mattingly, P. Antonioli, G. Bari, L. Bellagamba, D. Boscherini, A. Bruni, G. Bruni, F. Cindolo, M. Corradi, G. Iacobucci, A. Margotti, R. Nania, A. Polini, S. Antonelli, M. Basile, M. Bindi, L. Cifarelli, A. Contin, S. De Pasquale, G. Sartorelli, A. Zichichi, D. Bartsch, I. Brock, H. Hartmann Sep 2009

Multi-Lepton Production At High Transverse Momentum At Hera, S. Chekanov, M. Derrick, S. Magill, B. Musgrave, D. Nicholass, J. Repond, R. Yoshida, Margarita C. K. Mattingly, P. Antonioli, G. Bari, L. Bellagamba, D. Boscherini, A. Bruni, G. Bruni, F. Cindolo, M. Corradi, G. Iacobucci, A. Margotti, R. Nania, A. Polini, S. Antonelli, M. Basile, M. Bindi, L. Cifarelli, A. Contin, S. De Pasquale, G. Sartorelli, A. Zichichi, D. Bartsch, I. Brock, H. Hartmann

Faculty Publications

A search for events containing two or more high-transverse-momentum isolated leptons has been performed in ep collisions with the ZEUS detector at HERA using the full collected data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 480 pb -1. The number of observed events has been compared with the prediction from the Standard Model, searching for possible deviations, especially for multi-lepton events with invariant mass larger than 100 GeV. Good agreement with the Standard Model has been observed. Total and differential cross sections for di-lepton production have been measured in a restricted phase space dominated by photon-photon collisions. © 2009 Elsevier …


Exclusive Photoproduction Of ϒmesons At Hera, S. Chekanov, M. Derrick, S. Magill, B. Musgrave, D. Nicholass, J. Repond, R. Yoshida, Margarita C. K. Mattingly, P. Antonioli, G. Bari, L. Bellagamba, D. Boscherini, G. Bruni, F. Cindolo, M. Corradi, G. Iacobucci, A. Margotti, R. Nania, A. Polini, S. Antonelli, M. Basile, M. Bindi, L. Cifarelli, A. Contin, S. De Pasquale, G. Sartorelli, A. Zichichi, D. Bartsch, I. Brock, H. Hartmann, E. Hilger Sep 2009

Exclusive Photoproduction Of ϒmesons At Hera, S. Chekanov, M. Derrick, S. Magill, B. Musgrave, D. Nicholass, J. Repond, R. Yoshida, Margarita C. K. Mattingly, P. Antonioli, G. Bari, L. Bellagamba, D. Boscherini, G. Bruni, F. Cindolo, M. Corradi, G. Iacobucci, A. Margotti, R. Nania, A. Polini, S. Antonelli, M. Basile, M. Bindi, L. Cifarelli, A. Contin, S. De Pasquale, G. Sartorelli, A. Zichichi, D. Bartsch, I. Brock, H. Hartmann, E. Hilger

Faculty Publications

The exclusive photoproduction reaction γ p → Υ{hooked} p has been studied with the ZEUS experiment in ep collisions at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 468 pb-1. The measurement covers the kinematic range 60 < W < 220 GeV and Q2 < 1 GeV2, where W is the photon-proton centre-of-mass energy and Q2 is the photon virtuality. These results, which represent the analysis of the full ZEUS data sample for this channel, are compared to predictions based on perturbative QCD. © 2009 Elsevier B.V.


Dynamical Quantum Error Correction Of Unitary Operations With Bounded Controls, Kaveh Khodjasteh, Lorenza Viola Sep 2009

Dynamical Quantum Error Correction Of Unitary Operations With Bounded Controls, Kaveh Khodjasteh, Lorenza Viola

Dartmouth Scholarship

Dynamically corrected gates were recently introduced [K. Khodjasteh and L. Viola, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 080501 (2009)] as a tool to achieve decoherence-protected quantum gates based on open-loop Hamiltonian engineering. Here, we further expand the framework of dynamical quantum error correction, with emphasis on elucidating under what conditions decoherence suppression can be ensured while performing a generic target quantum gate, using only available bounded-strength control resources. Explicit constructions for physically relevant error models are detailed, including arbitrary linear decoherence and pure dephasing on qubits. The effectiveness of dynamically corrected gates in an illustrative non-Markovian spin-bath setting is investigated numerically, …


Guided Testing For Automatic Error Discovery In Concurrent Software, Neha Shyam Rungta Sep 2009

Guided Testing For Automatic Error Discovery In Concurrent Software, Neha Shyam Rungta

Theses and Dissertations

The quality and reliability of software systems, in terms of their functional correctness, critically relies on the effectiveness of the testing tools and techniques to detect errors in the system before deployment. A lack of testing tools for concurrent programs that systematically control thread scheduling choices has not allowed concurrent software development to keep abreast with hardware trends of multi-core and multi-processor technologies. This motivates a need for the development of systematic testing techniques that detect errors in concurrent programs. The work in this dissertation presents a potentially scalable technique that can be used to detect concurrency errors in production …


Vuv Photostability Of Prebiotic Species, M. Schwell, Y. Bénilan, M.-C. Gazeau, N. Fray, A. Jolly, Et. Es-Sebbar, N. Champion, S. Leach, H. W Jochims, H. Baumgärtel, E. Rühl Sep 2009

Vuv Photostability Of Prebiotic Species, M. Schwell, Y. Bénilan, M.-C. Gazeau, N. Fray, A. Jolly, Et. Es-Sebbar, N. Champion, S. Leach, H. W Jochims, H. Baumgärtel, E. Rühl

Dr. Et-touhami Es-sebbar

No abstract provided.


S.E.T.U.P. Experimental And Theoretical Simulations Useful For Planetology- Related Studies In The Frame Of A Program Of Titan’S Atmosphere Laboratory Simulations, M.-C. Gazeau, Et. Es-Sebbar, E. Arzoumanian, C. Romanzin, A. Jolly, S. Perrier, Y. Bénilan Sep 2009

S.E.T.U.P. Experimental And Theoretical Simulations Useful For Planetology- Related Studies In The Frame Of A Program Of Titan’S Atmosphere Laboratory Simulations, M.-C. Gazeau, Et. Es-Sebbar, E. Arzoumanian, C. Romanzin, A. Jolly, S. Perrier, Y. Bénilan

Dr. Et-touhami Es-sebbar

No abstract provided.


Verifying Stateful Timed Csp Using Implicit Clocks And Zone Abstraction, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jin Song Dong, Xian Zhang Sep 2009

Verifying Stateful Timed Csp Using Implicit Clocks And Zone Abstraction, Jun Sun, Yang Liu, Jin Song Dong, Xian Zhang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work, we study model checking of compositional real-time systems. A system is modeled using mutable data variables as well as a compositional timed process. Instead of explicitly manipulating clock variables, a number of compositional timed behavioral patterns are used to capture quantitative timing requirements, e.g. delay, timeout, deadline, timed interrupt, etc. A fully automated abstraction technique is developed to build an abstract finite state machine from the model. The idea is to dynamically create/delete clocks, and maintain/solve a constraint on the clocks. The abstract machine weakly bi-simulates the model and, therefore, LTL model checking or trace-refinement checking are …


Redefining Cpg Islands Using A Hideen Markov Model, Hao Wu, Brain Caffo, Harris A. Jaffee, Andrew P. Feinberg, Rafael A. Irizarry Sep 2009

Redefining Cpg Islands Using A Hideen Markov Model, Hao Wu, Brain Caffo, Harris A. Jaffee, Andrew P. Feinberg, Rafael A. Irizarry

Johns Hopkins University, Dept. of Biostatistics Working Papers

The DNA of most vertebrates is depleted in CpG dinucleotides; C followed by a G in the 5’ to 3’ direction. CpGs are the target for DNA methylation, a chemical modification of cytosine (C) heritable during cell division and the most well characterized epigenetic mechanism. The remaining CpGs tend to cluster in regions referred to as CpG islands (CGI). Knowing CGI locations is important because they mark functionally relevant epigenetic loci in development and disease. For various mammals, including human, a readily available and widely used list of CGI is available from the UCSC Genome Browser. This list was derived …


Photopolymers: Beyond The Standard Approach To Photosensitisation, Izabela Naydenova, Suzanne Martin, Vincent Toal Sep 2009

Photopolymers: Beyond The Standard Approach To Photosensitisation, Izabela Naydenova, Suzanne Martin, Vincent Toal

Articles

A photopolymerizable material for use in the visible normally consists of a dye sensitizer, a free radical generator, monomer/monomers and, optionally, a binder, and is prepared usually as a dry or liquid film. Upon illumination with light of appropriate wavelength, a photopolymerisation reaction is triggered, leading to a change in the film’s refractive index. Because the presence of the dye is essential, the film is usually made sensitive to light during its preparation. Here we separate the film preparation and the sensitisation processes. In this way the photopolymerisation process can be used to detect dye labelled analytes, providing an alternative …


Progress Toward The Synthesis Of A Truncated Ergoline, Ryan D. Enck, Matthew Hart Sep 2009

Progress Toward The Synthesis Of A Truncated Ergoline, Ryan D. Enck, Matthew Hart

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

Many people are diagnosed with thyroid related disorders, and many more are unaware of their existing thyroid problems. T1AM, a naturally occurring metabolite of the thyroid hormone (TH), has been shown to activate the Trace Amine Associated Receptor 1 (TAAR1) and exhibits effects that oppose those of the TH. It is, therefore, likely that there is regulatory relationship between T1AM and the TH. In order to better understand this relationship, a compound must be developed that will effectively block TAAR1. Previously our lab has examined the two different mirror images of apomorphine. One of the mirror images inhibited and the …


Five Planets And An Independent Confirmation Of Hd 196885ab From Lick Observatory, Debra A. Fischer, Peter Driscoll, Howard Isaacson, Matthew J. Giguere, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Jeff A. Valenti, Jason T. Wright, Gregory W. Henry, John Asher Johnson, Andrew W. Howard, Kathryn M. G. Peek, Chris Mccarthy Sep 2009

Five Planets And An Independent Confirmation Of Hd 196885ab From Lick Observatory, Debra A. Fischer, Peter Driscoll, Howard Isaacson, Matthew J. Giguere, Geoffrey W. Marcy, Jeff A. Valenti, Jason T. Wright, Gregory W. Henry, John Asher Johnson, Andrew W. Howard, Kathryn M. G. Peek, Chris Mccarthy

Information Systems and Engineering Management Research Publications

We present time series Doppler data from Lick Observatory that reveal the presence of long-period planetary companions orbiting nearby stars. The typical eccentricity of these massive planets are greater than the mean eccentricity of known exoplanets. HD 30562b has Msin i = 1.29 MJup, with semimajor axis of 2.3 AU and eccentricity 0.76. The host star has a spectral type F8V and is metal rich. HD 86264b has Msin i = 7.0 MJup, arel = 2.86 AU, an eccentricity e = 0.7 and orbits a metal-rich, F7V star. HD 87883b has Msin i = 1.78 MJup, arel = 3.6 AU, …


A Statistical Method For Integrated Data Cleaning And Imputation, Chris Mayfield, Jennifer Neville, Sunil Prabhakar Sep 2009

A Statistical Method For Integrated Data Cleaning And Imputation, Chris Mayfield, Jennifer Neville, Sunil Prabhakar

Department of Computer Science Technical Reports

No abstract provided.


Dissecting Galaxy Formation. I. Comparison Between Pure Dark Matter And Baryonic Models, Emilio Romano-Diaz, Isaac Shlosman, Clayton Heller, Yehuda Hoffman Sep 2009

Dissecting Galaxy Formation. I. Comparison Between Pure Dark Matter And Baryonic Models, Emilio Romano-Diaz, Isaac Shlosman, Clayton Heller, Yehuda Hoffman

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We compare assembly of dark matter (DM) halos with and without baryons from identical initial conditions, within the context of cosmological evolution in the ΛCDM WMAP3 Universe (baryons+DM, hereafter BDM model, and pure DM, PDM model). In representative PDM and BDM models, we find that baryons contribute decisively to the evolution of the central region, leading to an isothermal DM cusp, and thereafter to a flat DM density core—the result of heating by dynamical friction of the DM+baryon substructure during a quiescent evolution epoch. This process ablates the cold gas from an embedded disk, cutting the star formation rate by …


Refactoring Pipe-Like Mashups For End-User Programmers, Kathryn T. Stolee, Sebastian Elbaum Sep 2009

Refactoring Pipe-Like Mashups For End-User Programmers, Kathryn T. Stolee, Sebastian Elbaum

CSE Technical Reports

Mashups are becoming increasingly popular as end users are able to easily access, manipulate, and compose data from many web sources. We have observed, however, that mashups tend to suffer from deficiencies that propagate as mashups are reused. To address these deficiencies, we would like to bring some of the benefits of software engineering techniques to the end users creating these programs. In this work, we focus on identifying code smells indicative of the deficiencies we observed in web mashups programmed in the popular Yahoo! Pipes environment. Through an empirical study, we explore the impact of those smells on end-user …


Collaborative Research: Drillsite Reconnaissance And Snow Chemistry Survey In Denali National Park, Karl J. Kreutz Sep 2009

Collaborative Research: Drillsite Reconnaissance And Snow Chemistry Survey In Denali National Park, Karl J. Kreutz

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

This is a collaborative proposal by Principal Investigators from the Universities of New Hampshire (UNH) and Maine. Understanding the mechanisms responsible for interannual to decadal-scale climate variability during the late Holocene remains a fundamental research problem in Arctic science. The Principal Investigator's will: 1) perform a detailed reconnaissance to identify suitable locations in Denali National Park (DNP) from which to recover and develop high resolution ice core records; and (2) develop detailed snow chemistry records that document the spatial (both horizontally and vertically) and seasonal variation of major ion and trace element deposition in the region. This will be the …


Search For Gravitational Wave Ringdowns From Perturbed Black Holes In Ligo S4 Data, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, R. Adhikari, P. Ajith, B. Allen, G. Allen, R. S. Amin, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, Rodica Martin Sep 2009

Search For Gravitational Wave Ringdowns From Perturbed Black Holes In Ligo S4 Data, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, R. Adhikari, P. Ajith, B. Allen, G. Allen, R. S. Amin, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, Rodica Martin

Department of Physics and Astronomy Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

According to general relativity a perturbed black hole will settle to a stationary configuration by the emission of gravitational radiation. Such a perturbation will occur, for example, in the coalescence of a black hole binary, following their inspiral and subsequent merger. At late times the waveform is a superposition of quasinormal modes, which we refer to as the ringdown. The dominant mode is expected to be the fundamental mode, l=m=2. Since this is a well-known waveform, matched filtering can be implemented to search for this signal using LIGO data. We present a search for gravitational waves from black hole ringdowns …


Classes Of Commutative Clean Rings, Wolf Iberkleid, Warren William Mcgovern Sep 2009

Classes Of Commutative Clean Rings, Wolf Iberkleid, Warren William Mcgovern

Mathematics Faculty Articles

Let A be a commutative ring with identity and I an ideal of A. A is said to be I-clean if for every element α∈A there is an idempotent e = e2A such that α−e is a unit and αe belongs to I. A filter of ideals, say F, of A is Noetherian if for each IF there is a finitely generated ideal JF such that JI. We characterize I-clean rings for the ideals 0, n(A), J( …


Deriving Optimal Composite Scores: Relating Observational/Longitudinal Data With A Primary Endpoint, Rhonda Ellis Sep 2009

Deriving Optimal Composite Scores: Relating Observational/Longitudinal Data With A Primary Endpoint, Rhonda Ellis

Theses and Dissertations

In numerous clinical/experimental studies, multiple endpoints are measured on each subject. It is often not clear which of these endpoints should be designated as of primary importance. The desirability function approach is a way of combining multiple responses into a single unitless composite score. The response variables may include multiple types of data: binary, ordinal, count, interval data. Each response variable is transformed to a 0 to1 unitless scale with zero representing a completely undesirable response and one representing the ideal value. In desirability function methodology, weights on individual components can be incorporated to allow different levels of importance to …


Input To The Nas Ctbt Study, David Hafemeister Sep 2009

Input To The Nas Ctbt Study, David Hafemeister

Physics

No abstract provided.


Search For Gravitational Wave Ringdowns From Perturbed Black Holes In Ligo S4 Data, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, R. Adhikari, P. Ajith, B. Allen, G. Allen, R. S. Amin, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, M. A. Arain, M. Araya, H. Armandula, P. Armor, Y. Aso, S. Aston, P. Aufmuth, C. Aulbert, S. Babak, P. Baker, S. Ballmer, C. Barker, D. Barker, B. Barr, P. Barriga, L. Barsotti, M. A. Barton, I. Bartos, R. Bassiri, M. Bastarrika, B. Behnke, M. Benacquista, Tiffany Z. Summerscales Sep 2009

Search For Gravitational Wave Ringdowns From Perturbed Black Holes In Ligo S4 Data, B. P. Abbott, R. Abbott, R. Adhikari, P. Ajith, B. Allen, G. Allen, R. S. Amin, S. B. Anderson, W. G. Anderson, M. A. Arain, M. Araya, H. Armandula, P. Armor, Y. Aso, S. Aston, P. Aufmuth, C. Aulbert, S. Babak, P. Baker, S. Ballmer, C. Barker, D. Barker, B. Barr, P. Barriga, L. Barsotti, M. A. Barton, I. Bartos, R. Bassiri, M. Bastarrika, B. Behnke, M. Benacquista, Tiffany Z. Summerscales

Faculty Publications

According to general relativity a perturbed black hole will settle to a stationary configuration by the emission of gravitational radiation. Such a perturbation will occur, for example, in the coalescence of a black hole binary, following their inspiral and subsequent merger. At late times the waveform is a superposition of quasinormal modes, which we refer to as the ringdown. The dominant mode is expected to be the fundamental mode, l=m=2. Since this is a well-known waveform, matched filtering can be implemented to search for this signal using LIGO data. We present a search for gravitational waves from black hole ringdowns …


Collaborative Research: Abandoned Elephant Seal Colonies In Antarctica: Integration Of Genetic, Isotopic, And Geologic Approaches Toward Understanding Holocene Environmental Change, Brenda L. Hall Sep 2009

Collaborative Research: Abandoned Elephant Seal Colonies In Antarctica: Integration Of Genetic, Isotopic, And Geologic Approaches Toward Understanding Holocene Environmental Change, Brenda L. Hall

University of Maine Office of Research Administration: Grant Reports

During previous NSF-sponsored research, the PI's discovered that southern elephant seal colonies once existed along the Victoria Land coast (VLC) of Antarctica, a region where they are no longer observed. Molted seal skin and hair occur along 300 km of coastline, more than 1000 km from any extant colony. The last record of a seal at a former colony site is at ~A.D. 1600. Because abandonment occurred prior to subantarctic sealing, disappearance of the VLC colony probably was due to environmental factors, possibly cooling and encroachment of land-fast, perennial sea ice that made access to haul-out sites difficult. The record …


De Vries Behavior In Smectics Near A Biaxiality Induced Smectic A - Smectic C Tricritical Point, Karl Saunders Sep 2009

De Vries Behavior In Smectics Near A Biaxiality Induced Smectic A - Smectic C Tricritical Point, Karl Saunders

Physics

We show that a generalized Landau theory for the smectic A and C phases exhibits a biaxiality induced AC tricritical point. Proximity to this tricritical point depends on the degree of orientational order in the system; for sufficiently large orientational order the AC transition is 3D XY-like, while for sufficiently small orientational order, it is either tricritical or 1st order. We investigate each of the three types of AC transitions near tricriticality and show that for each type of transition, small orientational order implies de Vries behavior in the layer spacing, an unusually small layer contraction. This result is consistent …


Flexoelectricity Of A Calamitic Liquid Crystal Elastomer Swollen With A Bent-Core Liquid Crystal, M. Chambers, R. Verduzco, J. T. Gleeson, S. Sprunt, Antal Jakli Sep 2009

Flexoelectricity Of A Calamitic Liquid Crystal Elastomer Swollen With A Bent-Core Liquid Crystal, M. Chambers, R. Verduzco, J. T. Gleeson, S. Sprunt, Antal Jakli

Antal Jakli

We have measured the electric current induced by mechanical distortion of a calamitic liquid crystal elastomer (LCE) swollen with a low molecular weight bent-core nematic (BCN) liquid crystal, and have determined, for the first time, the bend flexoelectric coefficient e(3) of such a BCN-LCE composite. In one method, we utilise air-pressure to induce a mechanical bend deformation and flexoelectric polarization in a BCN-LCE film, and then measure the polarization current as a function of time. An alternative technique uses a rotary-motor driven scotch yoke to periodically flex the BCN-LCE; in this case, the magnitude and phase of the induced current …