Isotopic production cross sections of residues in reactions induced by relativistic heavy ions with protons and deuterons

The isotopic production cross sections of heavy residues in relativistic heavy-ion collisions have been investigated in inverse kinematics. The primary reaction products were fully identified in mass and atomic number prior to beta decay using the fragment separator FRS. The huge collection of data obtained helps in the understanding of the two main reaction mechanisms involved: fragmentation and fission. These data provide basic information for future radioactive ion beam facilities and for technical applications like intense neutron sources by means of spallation targets.     

Adaptive application of operators in standard representation

Recently adaptive wavelet methods have been developed which can be shown to exhibit an asymptotically optimal accuracy/work balance for a wide class of variational problems including classical elliptic boundary value problems, boundary integral equations as well as certain classes of noncoercive problems such as saddle point problems. A core ingredient of these schemes is the approximate application of the involved operators in standard wavelet representation. Optimal computational complexity could be shown under the assumption that the entries in properly compressed standard representations are known or computable in average at unit cost. In this paper we propose concrete computational strategies and show under which circumstances this assumption is justified in the context of elliptic boundary value problems. Dedicated to Charles A. Micchelli on the occasion of his 60th birthday Mathematics subject classifications (2000) 41A25, 41A46, 65F99, 65N12, 65N55. This work has been supported in part by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft SFB 401, the first and third author are supported in part by the European Community's Human Potential Programme under contract HPRN-CT-202-00286 (BREAKING COMPLEXITY). The second author acknowledges the financial support provided through the European Union's Human Potential Programme, under contract HPRN-CT-2002-00285 (HASSIP) and through DFG grant DA 360/4–1.     

Swelling of cross-linked polyelectrolyte gels

The European Physical Journal E - A model of a cross-linked polyelectrolyte gel has been examined using Monte Carlo simulations. The simple model contained a charged defect-free network represented...     

Luminescent Labels—More than Just an Alternative to Radioisotopes?

Chemical, chromatographic, or spectrometric methods are generally unsuitable for the detection of molecules in the nano and subnanogram region because of their low sensitivity. The radioimmunoassay (RIA) developed by Yalow and Berson in 1959 combined the high sensitivity of radioactively labeled substances with the high specificity of immunological reactions for the first time. In this way it was possible to detect quantitatively the tiniest traces of substances in the presence of an excess of other, in some cases, similar foreign substances without prior enrichment. Immunoassays have certainly developed to become the most valuable analytical tool of in vitro diagnostics and are today routinely employed for the detection of endogenous and exogenous substances (e.g. hormones, tumor-associated proteins, bacteria, viruses, toxins, drugs, etc). The many disadvantages of radioactivity such as the required handling licenses, disposal costs, precautions necessary to prevent risks to health, short shelf-life, and limited sensitivity soon led to the search for other nonradioactive labeling methods. Encouraged by the development of light measuring techniques and the commercial availability of highly sensitive apparatus, radioactive isotopes as labels are today being replaced increasingly by enzymes, fluorophores, or luminophores. Some of the new luminescent labels have, however, not only facilitated replacement of radioisotopes, but also a breakthrough into what has until now been unattainable levels of sensitivity. The following article reviews the methods of luminescent labeling and their applications mainly in the area of immunoassays.     

Electronic structure of Sc2AC (A=Al, Ga, In, Tl)

Using ab initio calculations, we have studied Sc₂AC with A=Al, Ga, In and Tl. We show that C 2p and Sc 3d as well as A p and Sc 3d states are hybridized, but the antibonding states in the vicinity of the Fermi level weaken the overall bonding. In terms of the chemical bonding, the influence of the size of the A element is minute. Furthermore, the bulk modulus of the corresponding binary transition metal carbide is not conserved in these phases. Therefore, Sc₂AC can be classified as weakly coupled MAX phases according to Sun and co-workers [Z. Sun, D. Music, R. Ahuja, S. Li, J.M. Schneider, Phys. Rev. B 70 (2004) 092102]. It is our ambition that these calculations will stimulate experimental research on these compounds.