Impact of two mass scale oscillations on the analysis of atmospheric and reactor neutrino data

We study the stability of the results of the three-neutrino oscillation analysis of atmospheric and reactor neutrino data under departures of the one dominant mass scale approximation. In order to do so we perform the analysis of atmospheric and reactor neutrino data in terms of three-neutrino oscillations where the effect of both mass differences is explicitly considered. We study the allowed parameter space resulting from this analysis as a function of the mass splitting hierarchy parameter which parameterizes the departure from the one dominant mass scale approximation. We consider schemes with both direct and inverted mass ordering. Our results show that in the analysis of the atmospheric data the derived range of the largest mass splitting, , is stable, while the allowed ranges of mixing angles and are wider than those obtained in the one dominant mass scale approximation. Inclusion of the CHOOZ reactor data in the analysis results in the reduction of the parameter space in particular for the mixing angles. As a consequence the final allowed ranges of the parameters from the combined analysis are only slightly broader than when obtained in the one dominant mass scale approximation. Received: 31 May 2002 / Revised version: 10 July 2002 / Published online: 31 October 2002     

Photothermal techniques applied to the determination of the water vapor diffusion coefficient and thermal diffusivity of edible films.

Water vapor diffusion coefficient (WVDC) and thermal diffusivity (alpha) were determined in gelatin-starch films through photothermal techniques. The effect of different variables in the elaboration of these films, such as starch and glycerol concentrations and pH, were evaluated through the response surface methodology. The results indicated that an increase in the glycerol concentration and pH favored the WVDC of the films. On the other hand, alpha was influenced principally by the starch content and pH of the film-forming solution. The minimum alpha value was 4.5 x 10(-4) cm2/s, which is compared with alpha values reported for commercial synthetic polymers.     

Solution of the hyperbolic mild‐slope equation using the finite volume method

A finite volume solver for the 2D depth‐integrated harmonic hyperbolic formulation of the mild‐slope equation for wave propagation is presented and discussed. The solver is implemented on unstructured triangular meshes and the solution methodology is based upon a Godunov‐type second‐order finite volume scheme, whereby the numerical fluxes are computed using Roe's flux function. The eigensystem of the mild‐slope equations is derived and used for the construction of Roe's matrix. A formulation that updates the unknown variables in time implicitly is presented, which produces a more accurate and reliable scheme than hitherto available. Boundary conditions for different types of boundaries are also derived. The agreement of the computed results with analytical results for a range of wave propagation/transformation problems is very good, and the model is found to be virtually paraxiality‐free. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Asymptotic analysis of a large closed queueing network with discriminatory processor sharing

In this paper the steady-state behavior of a closed queueing network with multiple classes and large populations is investigated. One of the two nodes of the network simply introduces random delays and the discipline in the other node is discriminatory processor sharing. The network is not product-form, so not even the steady-state behavior is known. We assume that the usage is moderately heavy, and obtain two-term asymptotic approximations to the mean number of jobs, and the mean sojourn time, of each class of jobs in the processor node. We also obtain the leading term in the asymptotic approximation to the joint distribution of the number of jobs in the processor node, which is a zero-mean multivariate Gaussian distribution around a line through the origin.     

Superconductivity in the intermetallic compound YRhAl

The intermetallic compound, YRhAl, has been prepared and is found to be isomorphic with RRhAl (R=Pr, Nd, Gd, Ho and Tm) compounds crystallizing in the orthorhombic TiNiSi-type structure (space group Pnma). Heat capacity and electrical resistivity measurements in the He-3 temperature range reveal that this compound is superconducting with a transition temperature, T_c, of 0.9 K. The electronic specific heat coefficient, γ, and the Debye temperature are found to be 6.1 mJ/mol K and 197 K, respectively. The specific heat jump at the superconducting transition is found to be consistent with the BCS weak-coupling limit. This combined with the earlier observation of superconductivity in LaRhAl (T_c=2.4 K) having a different structure than that of YRhAl, suggests that the underlying structure is not very crucial for the occurrence of superconductivity in RRhAl series of compounds.     

Differentiation of species of the Baccharis genus by HPLC and chemometric methods.

Phytochemical investigation of the aerial parts of three Baccharis species (Asteraceae family) was performed using HPLC and chemometric methods, with the objective of distinguishing between three morphologically very similar species: Baccharis genistelloides Persoon var. trimera (Less.) DC, B. milleflora (Less.) DC and B. articulata (Lam.) Persoon. With the help of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and variance weights, it was possible to characterize the chromatographic profiles of the alcoholic extracts of the three species. Application of Soft Independent Modeling of Class Analogy (SIMCA) and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) methods on a training set of 74 extracts resulted in models that correctly classified all eight samples in an independent test set.