Extension of the range of resonator scanning spectrometer into submillimeter band and some perspectives of its further developments

Extension of the working frequency of modern resonator spectrometers into submillimeter wave range is described. Experimental record of atmospheric absorption spectrum covering 45-370 GHz range is demonstrated for the first time, and measured water vapor J′_{ka′, kc′}-J_{ka, kc} = 5_1,5-4_2,2 at 325 GHz line parameters are presented. For the first time pressure lineshift for the 325-GHz water vapor line is measured. Further extension of working range is discussed. New estimations of physical limits of time needed for measurements of absorption in the whole Backward Wave Oscillator (BWO) range are given for phase continuous synthesizer regime. Basic schemes of fast broadband continuous phase synthesized sources are discussed. Verification of the previous measurements of water vapor 3_1,3-2_2,0 at 183 GHz line parameters is presented. Comparisons with ringdown resonator spectrometers are given.     

The epitaxial sexiphenyl (0 0 1) monolayer on TiO2(1 1 0): A grazing incidence X-ray diffraction study

A para-sexiphenyl monolayer of near up-right standing molecules (nominal thickness of 30 Å) is investigated in-situ by X-ray diffraction using synchrotron radiation and ex-situ by atomic force microscopy. A terrace like morphology is observed, the step height between the terraces is approximately one molecular length. The monolayer terraces, larger than 20 μm in size, are extended along the [0 0 1] direction of the TiO₂(1 1 0) substrate i.e. along the Ti-O rows of the reconstructed substrate surface. The structure of the monolayer and its epitaxial relationship to the substrate is determined by grazing incidence X-ray diffraction. Extremely sharp diffraction peaks reveal high crystalline order within the monolayer, which was found to have the bulk structure of sexiphenyl. The monolayer terraces are epitaxially oriented with the (0 0 1) plane parallel to the substrate surface (out-of-plane order). Four epitaxial relationships are observed. This in-plane alignment is determined by the arrangement of the terminal phenyl rings of the sexiphenyl molecules parallel to the oxygen rows of the substrate.     

Scheduling multi-stage parallel-processor services to minimize average response time

The problem of scheduling on a multi-stage parallel-processor architecture in computer centres is addressed with the objective of minimizing average completion time of a set of requests. The problem is modelled as a flexible flowshop problem for which few heuristics exist in the flowshop scheduling literature. A new three-phase heuristic is proposed in this paper. An extensive computational experiment has been conducted to compare the performance of the existing heuristics and the proposed heuristic. The results indicate that the proposed heuristic significantly outperforms the existing ones. More specifically, the overall average error of the best existing heuristic is about five times that of the proposed heuristic while the overall average CPU time of the proposed heuristic is about half of the best existing one. More importantly, as the number of requests increases, the CPU time of the proposed heuristic decreases considerably (compared to the best existing heuristic) while the ratio of the error (of the best existing to the proposed heuristic) of about five times remains almost the same.     

Electrospray deposition in vacuum

We have used the established technique of electrospray in developing a portable vacuum electrospray system which can deposit, in vacuo, dissolved molecules onto a sample which may then be analysed by UHV techniques. As an initial test of the system we have analysed silicon samples with an electrosprayed layer of poly(ethylene) oxide (PEO) using atomic force microscopy (AFM). The polymer forms different structures depending on the voltage applied to the emitter, and solution composition. The system is part of our ongoing effort to deposit other materials such as nanoparticles, and large dye molecules for developing molecular dye sensitised solar cells.     

Active Q-switching of the Alexandrite laser

An alexandrite-laser rod was actively Q-switched in the transversal fundamental mode at λ = 758 nm with an double crystal KD^*P Pockels cell. Pulse width, pulse energy and optical pulse delay (the build-up time of the photon field in the resonator) were measured as functions of pumping energy, rod temperature and reflectivity of the output coupling mirror. As the laser gain of alexandrite strongly depends on temperature, the pulse width and pulse energy were also investigated as functions of the temperature of the active material. A comparison of experimental data with theory was made.     

Neutron emission under particular nonequilibrium conditions from Pd and Ti electrolytically charged with deuterium

Summary We report on neutron emission in palladium and titanium electrolitically charged with deuterium. The detection of neutrons is observed after thermal treatment of the electrode. In the hypothesis that neutrons came from cold fusion processes, we estimate a fusion rate as high as 1.3·10⁻²¹ fusions/deuteron pair/second.     

Efficient domain partitioning algorithms for global optimization of rational and Lipschitz continuous functions

A domain partitioning algorithm for minimizing or maximizing a Lipschitz continuous function is enhanced to yield two new, more efficient algorithms. The use of interval arithmetic in the case of rational functions and the estimates of Lipschitz constants valid in subsets of the domain in the case of others and the addition of local optimization have resulted in an algorithm which, in tests on standard functions, performs well.