Prediction of thermally induced fracture from notch and crack front

The strain energy density criterion is applied to predict fracture trajectories emanating from existing notch and crack front in nonisothermal environments. When temperature gradients are raised sufficiently high across a notch or crack, the resulting fracture trajectories are non-self-similar and curved in shape. Influence of mechanical loading is also considered in addition to stresses induced by thermal changes. Increase in the applied mechanical load tends to shift or restore the fracture trajectories toward the plane of notch or crack symmetry. The notch sharpness can be varied by adjusting the ration of the minor to major axes of an elliptical cavity. Narrowing the notch primarily increases the local intensity of the strain energy density function dW/dV that is inversely proportional to the radial distance measured from the focal point of the ellipse. This singular character of dW/dV prevails, in general, for all materials and loadings. Numerical results are obtained and displayed graphically for several examples involving fracture trajectory shapes that are not intuitively obvious.     

Dictator game giving: Rules of fairness versus acts of kindness

In both dictator and impunity games, one player, the dictator, divides a fixed amount of money between himself and one other, the recipient. Recent lab studies of these games have produced seemingly inconsistent results, reporting substantially divergent amounts of dictator giving. Also, one prominent explanation for some of these differences, the impact of experimenter observation, displayed weak explanatory power in a different but related lab game. Data from the new experiment reported here offers some explanations. We find that dictators determine how much they will give on the basis of the total money available for the entire experimental session, not on the basis of what is available per game. This explains the reported differences between impunity and dictator studies. When distributing a gift among several recipients, individual dictators show little tendency towards equal treatment. Also, we find no evidence for the experimenter observation effect. Comparison with earlier experiments suggests that differences in the context of the game, affected by differences in written directions and independent of experimenter observation, account for differences across dictator studies. We propose a hypothetical decision procedure, based on the notion that dictator giving originates with personal and social rules that effectively constrain self-interested behavior. The procedure provides a link between dictator behavior and a broader class of laboratory phenomena. Received August 1993/Final version April 1994     

MONOLAYER STUDIES OF 5-(4-CARB- OXYPHENYL)-10,15,20-TRITOLYL-PORPHYRIN-II. PHOTOVOLTAIC STUDY OF MULTILAYER SANDWICH CELLS*

The photovoltaic behavior of multilayer sandwich cells fabricated from the title compound has been examined. These multilayers are amorphous and contain a wide range of aggregated species. The action spectrum of the photocurrent agrees qualitatively with the absorption spectrum. This indicates that the photocurrent arises from all species in the film. The shape of the dark current-voltage characteristics varied with the porphyrin thickness. For thin films, (1 and 3 monolayers) the current can be described by a tunnelling mechanism. For thick cells (29 monolayers) the current-voltage characteristic can be fitted using either of two models: a modified Shockley equation (suggesting that the dye acts as a p-type semiconductor) or a combination of Schottky and Frenkel–Poole emission (suggesting that the porphyrin acts as an insulator). The former interpretation is preferred because it is consistent with the observed rectification characteristics; nevertheless, the latter is in agreement with the magnitude of the conductivity of the films. The power-conversion efficiencies of these cells were quite low (∼4 × 10^-4% for incident white light of intensity 2.72 W m^-2) owing to the very large internal resistance of the cells. The high resistance can be explained by observing that the molecules are in a very unfavorable orientation; maximum conductivity would be expected for the porphyrin ring systems perpendicular to the direction of current flow to give maximum overlap of the systems.     

The application of cepstral techniques to the measurement of transfer functions and acoustical reflection coefficients

Cepstral processing techniques in principle allow the separation of superposed pulses, such as those which occur in acoustic reflection, where a reflected pulse is a delayed and distorted version of the incident pulse. Additionally, the impulse response of the reflecting system, or equivalently its reflection coefficient, can also be determined. In practice, the accurate extraction of the impulse response is rendered difficult by the mathematical and computational properties of the power cepstrum procedure. In particular, spectral irregularity of the incident pulse, experimental noise and cepstral aliasing can cause the impulse response in the cepstrum to be masked. However, by careful selection of the incident signal, anti-aliasing filter, sampling frequency and echo delay in relation to the total sampling time, and the use of signal processing techniques such as time domain averaging, recursive filtering in the cepstral domain and zero padding, it is possible to produce good quality cepstra in which the reflector impulse response appears as an isolated feature. Experiments conducted on an electrical analogue of the acoustical reflection process have allowed the cepstral technique to be developed and evaluated. The acoustical reflector is simulated by a passive electrical filter network; the objective of the measurement and subsequent processing is the determination of the transfer function of this network. Good agreement is obtained between theoritical and measured transfer functions for a variety of filter networks indicating that cepstral techniques may be useful for acoustical reflection measurements given adequate transducer properties and environmental conditions.     

Homolytic reactions of polyfluoroaromatic compounds. X. Biphenylyl radicals in the thermolysis of aroyl peroxides in polyfluoroaromatic solvents

The thermolyses of a number of aroyl peroxides in hexafluorobenzene, and of benzoyl peroxide in octafluorotoluene, gave the corresponding biaryls which were isolated by steam distillation. Mass spectrometry of the residues showed evidence of biphenylyl radicals arising from the arylation of the peroxides themselves or, possibly, of the derived aroic acids. Terphenyls, and the corresponding σ-intermediate radicals, could be found, and the relative molecular masses of the latter components showed that subsequent arylation of the main binuclear products was not the main source of terphenyls.     

Comparative decay characteristics of the light generated free radical in chromatophores and chloroplasts

Abstract— Chromatophores of Rhodospirillum rubrum when illuminated exhibit a free radical which ordinarily shows a biphasic decay. When chromatophores are dehydrated at room temperature the time course of the appearance of the light-induced free radical is unaffected, but the decay pattern has been altered. Only the fast component remains, the slow component is no longer evident. Scanning the magnetic field reveals the presence of a dark signal which is stable as long as the preparation remains dehydrated. This signal has the same peak-to-peak line width of ? 10 G and the same g factor as the signal evident in the light. The amplitude of this signal is equal to the amplitude of the slow decay component seen in aqueous chromatophore suspensions. Chromatophores frozen in an aqueous medium at —150°C exhibit a behavior identical with dehydrated preparations. The effects produced by lyophilization or by freezing at low temperatures are entirely reversible. When a lyophilized preparation is re-hydrated, the stabilized portion of the signal now decays in the dark; the same is observed when preparations frozen at —150°C are thawed. When such thawed or re-hydrated preparations are illuminated again, they exhibit the usual light-induced ESR signal showing a biphasic dark decay. A comparison was made between the behavior of the light-induced ESR signal of chromatophores and that of system I of chloroplasts. This comparison revealed that there is a greater similarity in some of the decay characteristics of these signals than had been recognized previously. In chloroplasts, temperature insensitive, non-enzymatic back-reactions of the light-induced free radical appear to be nil, and in chromatophores a distinct portion of the light-induced free radicals exhibit the same characteristics. Another portion of the chromatophore free radicals must be able to back-react by electron tunneling, a mechanism which appears to be absent in the chloroplast system.     

Search for ZH → l+ l- bb production in 4.2 fb(-1) of pp collisions at sqrt[s] =1 .96 TeV

We present a search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson in 4.2 fb(-1) of pp collisions, collected with the D0 detector at the Fermilab Tevatron at sqrt[s] =1 .96 TeV. Selected events contain one reconstructed Z → e+ e- or Z → μ+ μ- candidate and at least two jets, including at least one b-tagged jet. In the absence of an excess over the background expected from other standard model processes, limits on the ZH cross section multiplied by the branching ratios are set. The limit at M(H) = 115 GeV is a factor of 5.9 larger than the standard model prediction.     

Changes in single-walled carbon nanotube chirality during growth and regrowth

A simple model for joining two single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with different, arbitrary chiralities is used to systematically label junction structures which contain pentagon-heptagon pairs. The model is also used, together with density functional theory, to study the energetics of diameter and chirality changes of thin SWNTs during catalyzed growth or regrowth. We choose zigzag and armchair SWNTs attached to a Ni(55) cluster for our case studies.