X-ray CT in the detection of palm weevils

Early detection of the red palm weevils (RPW) is a major challenge in agriculture among all kinds of palm trees due to the nature of the insect and the difficulty to trace them through their life stages associated with the tree life. Many methods have been applied for the weevil detection such as X-ray diffraction techniques, fluoroscopy and ultrasound. On the other hand, the idea of tomography has been used for other purposes such as the determination of the age of the tree and for applied environmental studies. Such technology can also reveal the weevil in principle. In this study, we explore the use of X-ray CT for weevil detection with the Monte Carlo method. A model of the stem of a palm tree is developed for simulations. MCNPX is chosen to carry out the simulations for the radiography tally in the code. The tally records the 2D data of the X-ray beams irradiating the tree model. An iterative reconstruction method for cone beam CT is applied to obtain the 3D slices of the tree model. We are exploring the minimum number of projection angles and the detectability of the weevil. We shall also report the sensitivity of weevil detection using X-ray CT with a large set of simulations with different weevil sizes and tree diameters.     

Systematic event generator tuning for the LHC

In this article we describe Professor, a new program for tuning model parameters of Monte Carlo event generators to experimental data by parameterising the per-bin generator response to parameter variations and numerically optimising the parameterised behaviour. Simulated experimental analysis data is obtained using the Rivet analysis toolkit. This paper presents the Professor procedure and implementation, illustrated with the application of the method to tunes of the Pythia 6 event generator to data from the LEP/SLD and Tevatron experiments. These tunes are substantial improvements on existing standard choices, and are recommended as base tunes for LHC experiments, to be themselves systematically improved upon when early LHC data is available.     

The Proalgebraic Completion of Rigid Groups

A finitely generated group is called representation rigid (briefly, rigid) if for every n, has only finitely many classes of simple representations in dimension n. Examples include higher rank S-arithmetic groups. By Margulis super rigidity, the latter have a stronger property: they are representation super rigid; i.e., their proalgebraic completion is finite dimensional. We construct examples of nonlinear rigid groups which are not super rigid, and which exhibit every possible type of infinite dimensionality. Whether linear representation rigid groups are super rigid remains an open question.     

Hydrolysis of a sulfonamide by a novel elimination mechanism generated by carbanion formation in the leaving group

The alkaline hydrolysis of N-alpha-methoxycarbonyl benzyl-beta-sultam occurs 10(3) times faster than the corresponding carboxylate and with rapid D-exchange at the alpha-carbon: the pH rate profile indicates pre-equilibirum CH ionisation and together with formation of benzoyl formate as a product this suggests a novel mechanism for hydrolysis.     

Imaging delocalized electron clouds: photoionization of C(60) in Fourier reciprocal space

The dynamics of the photoionization of the two outermost orbitals of C(60) has been studied in the oscillatory regime from threshold to the carbon K edge. We show that geometrical properties of the fullerene electronic hull, such as its diameter and thickness, are contained in the partial photoionization cross sections by examining ratios of partial cross sections as a function of the photon wave number in the Fourier conjugated space. Evaluated in this unconventional manner photoemission data reveal directly the desired spatial information.     

Decomposition of the optical transfer function: wavefront coding imaging systems

We describe the mapping of the optical transfer function (OTF) of an incoherent imaging system into a geometrical representation. We show that for defocused traditional and wavefront-coded systems the OTF can be represented as a generalized Cornu spiral. This representation provides a physical insight into the way in which wavefront coding can increase the depth of field of an imaging system and permits analytical quantification of salient OTF parameters, such as the depth of focus, the location of nulls, and amplitude and phase modulation of the wavefront-coding OTF.     

N1...N3 hydrogen bonds of A:U base pairs of RNA are stronger than those of A:T base pairs of DNA

Trans-hydrogen-bond deuterium isotope effects of Watson-Crick A:U and A:T base pairs of 10 homologous RNA and DNA duplexes are compared. The isotope effect at 13C2 of adenosine residues due to deuterium/protium substitution at the imino H3 site, 2hDelta13C2, is larger in RNA than in DNA. The virtually consistent larger isotope effects in RNA suggest that the N1...N3 hydrogen bonds of A:U base pairs of RNA are stronger than those of the A:T base pairs of DNA.