Supralinearity in nuclear research emulsions

Nuclear emulsions processed in discriminating developers, intended to suppress small latent image sites, exhibit supralinear sensitometric blackness-exposure curves, whose character varies according to developing time, concentration, and composition, yielding hittedness ranging from 1 to 8, singly and in combination. These emulsion-processing combinations display the phenomena called ion-kill (sensitization by the transit of a single charged particle) and gamma- kill (sensitization by the overlap of secondary electron paths, whether from x-rays or from the delta-rays of heavy ions) in radiobiology. Here emulsions are blackened by x-rays when these same plates reveal no electron tracks, or no alpha-particle tracks, or even no fission fragment tracks. The supralinearity of the emulsion response to x-rays, and the consequent suppression of low LET radiations suggest that these materials have the potential to mimic the response of biological systems to particulate radiations of different charge and speed.     

Pseudo‐R 2’s in the ordinal probit model*

This paper presents an analysis of the combining mechanism for status information postulated by the mathematical formulation of the theory of status characteristics and expectation states. Six lemmas on the basic features of the combining mechanism are derived from the formulation and discussed. Further, four theorems that illustrate the implications of the particular combining mechanism for power and prestige orders are presented and proven.     

Conformation-dependent state selectivity in O-O cleavage of ONOONO: an "inorganic cope rearrangement" helps explain the observed negative activation energy in the oxidation of nitric oxide by dioxygen

ONOONO has been proposed as an intermediate in the oxidation of nitric oxide by dioxygen to yield nitrogen dioxide. The O-O bond breaking reactions of this unusual peroxide, and subsequent rearrangements, were evaluated using CBS-QB3 and B3LYP/6-311G hybrid density functional theory. The three stable conformers (cis,cis-, cis,trans-, and trans,trans-ONOONO, based on the O-N-O-O dihedral angles of either approximately 0 degrees or approximately 180 degrees ) are predicted to have very different O-O cleavage barriers: 2.4, 13.0, and 29.8 kcal/mol, respectively. These large differences arise because bond breaking leads to correlation of the nascent NO(2) fragments with either the ground (2)A(1) state or the excited (2)B(2) state of NO(2), depending on the starting ONOONO conformation. A cis-oriented NO(2) fragment correlates with the (2)A(1) state, whereas a trans-oriented NO(2) fragment correlates with the (2)B(2) state. Each NO(2) fragment that correlates with (2)A(1) lowers the O-O homolysis energy by approximately 15 kcal/mol, similar to the approximately 17-25 kcal/mol (2)A(1) --> (2)B(2) energy difference in NO(2). Hence, this provides an unusual example of conformation-dependent electronic state selectivity. The O-O bond homolysis of cis,cis-ONOONO is particularly interesting because it has a very low barrier and arises from the most stable ONOONO conformer, and also due to obvious similarities to the well-known [3,3]-sigmatropic shift of 1,5-hexadiene, i.e., the Cope rearrangement. As an additional proof of our state selectivity postulate, a comparison is also made to breakage of the O-O bond of cis,cis-formyl peroxide, where no significant stabilization of the transition state is available because the (2)A(1) and (2)B(2) states of formyloxy radical are near-degenerate in energy. In the case of trans,trans-ONOONO, the O-O bond breaking transition state is a concerted rearrangement yielding O(2)NNO(2), whereas for cis,cis- and cis,trans-ONOONO, the initially formed NO(2) radical pairs can undergo further rearrangement to yield ONONO(2). It is proposed that previous spectroscopic observations of certain N=O stretching frequencies in argon-matrix-isolated products from the reaction of NO with O(2) (or (18)O(2)) are likely from ONONO(2), not the OONO radical as reported.     

Tunable blue laser based on intracavity frequency doubling with a fan-structured periodically poled LiTaO(3) crystal

We introduce a new concept for a wavelength-tunable frequency-doubled laser diode with a single control parameter. The concept is based on intracavity frequency doubling in an external resonator geometry with spatial separation of the spectral components. The use of a fan-structured periodically poled LiTaO(3) crystal permits tuning of both the fundamental and the second harmonic simultaneously with one aperture. We demonstrate tunability over more than 10 nm in the blue (480.4 to 490.6 nm) with output powers of the order of 50 nW.     

A combinatorial interior point method for network flow problems

For solving minimum cost flow problems, we develop a combinatorial interior point method based on a variant of the algorithm of Karmarkar, described in Gonzaga [3, 4]. Gonzaga proposes search directions generated by projecting certain directions onto the nullspace ofA. By the special combinatorial structure of networks any projection onto the nullspace ofA can be interpreted as a flow in the incremental graph ofG. In particular, to evaluate the new search direction, it is sufficient to choose a negative circuit subject to costs on the arcs depending on the current solution. That approach results in an O(mn ² L) algorithm wherem denotes the number of vertices,n denotes the number of arcs, andL denotes the total length of the input data.