Limits on gravitational-wave emission from selected pulsars using LIGO data

We place direct upper limits on the amplitude of gravitational waves from 28 isolated radio pulsars by a coherent multidetector analysis of the data collected during the second science run of the LIGO interferometric detectors. These are the first direct upper limits for 26 of the 28 pulsars. We use coordinated radio observations for the first time to build radio-guided phase templates for the expected gravitational-wave signals. The unprecedented sensitivity of the detectors allows us to set strain upper limits as low as a few times 10(-24). These strain limits translate into limits on the equatorial ellipticities of the pulsars, which are smaller than 10(-5) for the four closest pulsars.     

Micelles and reverse micelles in the nickel bis(2-ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate/water/isooctane microemulsion

The ternary system Ni(2+)(AOT)(2) (nickel 2-bis[2-ethylhexyl] sulfosuccinate)/water/isooctane presents w/o and o/w microemulsions with a Winsor progression (2Phi-3Phi-2Phi), without the addition of salt; the "fish diagram" was obtained for alpha=0.5 and gamma=0.02-0.22. Using static and dynamic light scattering the micellar size, the ratio of water to surfactant, and the density of micelles for this system were estimated. In addition, the mean interfacial curvature as a function of temperature was obtained.     

Characterization of ellipses as uniformly dense sets with respect to a family of convex bodies

Let \(K\subset \mathbb R ^N\) be a convex body containing the origin. A measurable set \(G\subset \mathbb R ^N\) with positive Lebesgue measure is said to be uniformly \(K\) -dense if, for any fixed \(r>0\) , the measure of \(G\cap (x+r K)\) is constant when \(x\) varies on the boundary of \(G\) (here, \(x+r K\) denotes a translation of a dilation of \(K\) ). We first prove that \(G\) must always be strictly convex and at least \(C^{1,1}\) -regular; also, if \(K\) is centrally symmetric, \(K\) must be strictly convex, \(C^{1,1}\) -regular and such that \(K=G-G\) up to homotheties; this implies in turn that \(G\) must be \(C^{2,1}\) -regular. Then for \(N=2\) , we prove that \(G\) is uniformly \(K\) -dense if and only if \(K\) and \(G\) are homothetic to the same ellipse. This result was already proven by Amar et al. in 2008 . However, our proof removes their regularity assumptions on \(K\) and \(G\) , and more importantly, it is susceptible to be generalized to higher dimension since, by the use of Minkowski’s inequality and an affine inequality, avoids the delicate computations of the higher-order terms in the Taylor expansion near \(r=0\) for the measure of \(G\cap (x+r\,K)\) (needed in 2008).