Solar modulation of cosmic deuteron fluxes in the PAMELA experiment

The preliminary results from measurements of deuteron fluxes in galactic cosmic rays (GCR) in the vicinity of the Earth in 2006–2009 are presented. The results are obtained by analyzing data from the PAMELA experiment aboard the Resurs DK-1 satellite. High-precision detection instruments provided an opportunity to identify GCR deuterons and measure their spectrum in the energy interval of 90–650MeV/nucleon. Spectra averaged over six-month intervals from the summer of 2006 to the summer of 2009 (the solar activity minimum) are presented. The influence of solar modulation on the observed spectrum is clearly seen in the results.     

Fast fat-suppressed reduced field-of-view temperature mapping using 2DRF excitation pulses

The purpose of this study is to develop a fast and accurate temperature mapping method capable of both fat suppression and reduced field-of-view (rFOV) imaging, using a two-dimensional spatially-selective RF (2DRF) pulse. Temperature measurement errors caused by fat signals were assessed, through simulations. An 11×1140μs echo-planar 2DRF pulse was developed and incorporated into a gradient-echo sequence. Temperature measurements were obtained during focused ultrasound (FUS) heating of a fat-water phantom. Experiments both with and without the use of a 2DRF pulse were performed at 3T, and the accuracy of the resulting temperature measurements were compared over a range of TE values. Significant inconsistencies in terms of measured temperature values were observed when using a regular slice-selective RF excitation pulse. In contrast, the proposed 2DRF excitation pulse suppressed fat signals by more than 90%, allowing good temperature consistency regardless of TE settings. Temporal resolution was also improved, from 12 frames per minute (fpm) with the regular pulse to 28 frames per minute with the rFOV excitation. This technique appears promising toward the MR monitoring of temperature in moving adipose organs, during thermal therapies.     

Anharmonic stabilization of the high-pressure simple cubic phase of calcium

The phonon spectrum of the high-pressure simple cubic phase of calcium, in the harmonic approximation, shows imaginary branches that make it mechanically unstable. In this Letter, the phonon spectrum is recalculated by using density-functional theory ab initio methods fully including anharmonic effects up to fourth order at 50 GPa. Considering that the perturbation theory cannot be employed with imaginary harmonic frequencies, a variational procedure based on the Gibbs-Bogoliubov inequality is used to estimate the renormalized phonon frequencies. The results show that strong quantum anharmonic effects make the imaginary phonons become positive even at zero temperature so that the simple cubic phase becomes mechanically stable, as experiments suggest. Moreover, our calculations find a superconducting T(c) in agreement with experiments and predict an anomalous behavior of the specific heat.     

Retrospectively gated cardiac cine imaging with temporal and spatial acceleration

Parallel imaging methods are routinely used to accelerate the image acquisition process in cardiac cine imaging. The addition of a temporal acceleration method, whereby k-space is sampled differently for different time frames, has been shown in prior work to improve image quality as compared to parallel imaging by itself. However, such temporal acceleration strategies prove difficult to combine with retrospectively gated cine imaging. The only currently published method to feature such combination, by Hansen et al. [Magn Reson Med 55 (2006) 85-91] tends to be associated with prohibitively long reconstruction times. The goal of the present work was to develop a retrospectively gated cardiac cine method that features both parallel imaging and temporal acceleration, capable of achieving significant acceleration factors on commonly available hardware and associated with reconstruction times short enough for practical use in a clinical context.Seven cardiac patients and a healthy volunteer were recruited and imaged, with acceleration factors of 3.5 or 4.5, using an eight-channel product cardiac array on a 1.5-T system. The prescribed FOV value proved slightly too small in three patients, and one of the patients had a bigemini condition. Despite these additional challenges, good-quality results were obtained for all slices and all patients, with a reconstruction time of 0.98±0.07 s per frame, or about 20 s for a 20-frame slice, using a single processor on a single PC. As compared to using parallel imaging by itself, the addition of a temporal acceleration strategy provided much resistance to artifacts.     

Trapped Positrons and Electrons in the Inner Radiation Belt According to Data of the PAMELA Experiment

Measurements of secondary-electron and secondary-positron fluxes below the geomagnetic cutoff in near-Earth space were performed by means of the PAMELA magnetic spectrometer installed on board the Resurs-DK1 satellite launched on June 15, 2006, in an elliptical orbit of inclination 70° and altitude 350 to 600 km. This spectrometer permits measuring the fluxes of electrons and positrons over a wide energy range, as well as determining their spatial distributions to a precision of about 2°. A calculation of particle trajectories in the geomagnetic field makes it possible to separate electrons and positrons originating from cosmic-ray interactions in the Earth’s magnetosphere. The spatial distributions of quasitrapped, trapped, and short-lived albedo positrons and electrons of energy above 70 MeV in the radiation belt were analyzed. The ratio of the electron-to-positron fluxes and the energy spectra of the electrons and positrons in question are indicative of different productionmechanisms for stably trapped and quasitrapped secondary particles.     

Acoustic properties of wood in tridimensional representation of slowness surfaces

Mechanical behaviour of wood considered as an orthotropic solid can be determined with ultrasonic technique. The propagation phenomena in wood are complex and theoretically are regulated by Christoffel's equation. Three type of waves can propagate in wood. During the propagation phenomena three slowness sheets are observed, corresponding to a fast longitudinal wave (inner sheet) and two shear waves, one fast and one slow (outer sheet). These waves are submitted continuously to mode conversion phenomena. The polarization angle changes when the propagation direction is out of the principal directions of symmetry of the material. In this article an analysis of the propagation phenomena in tridimensional representation is performed for different wood species. This approach contributes to the understanding of dynamic aspects of particle displacement associated with the wave fronts propagation. Globally, the anisotropy of each species, expressed by their acoustical behaviour is well represented.     

The two-dimensional quantum Euclidean algebra

The algebra dual to Woronowicz's deformation of the two-dimensional Euclidean group is constructed. The same algebra is obtained from SU _q (2) via contraction on both the group and algebra levels.     

Vector fields on complex quantum groups

Using previous results we construct theq-analogues of the left invariant vector fields of the quantum enveloping algebra corresponding to the complex Lie algebras of typeA _n–1 ,B _n ,C _n , andD _n . These quantum vector fields are functionals over the complex quantum groupA. In the special caseA ₁ it is shown that this Hopf algebra coincides withU _q sl(2, ).