Shifts in Redox Formal Potentials Accompanying the Incorporation of Cationic Complexes in Perfluoro Polycarboxylate and Polysulfonate Coatings on Graphite Electrodes

The formal potentials of several redox couples incorporated in coatings of a perfluoropolycarboxylate on graphite electrodes were measured and compared with the formal potentials of the same couples in homogeneous solution. The differences observed agreed with those calculated from the Nernst equation with the independently measured incorporationcoefficients for both halves of the redox couples. The dependences of the shifts in formal potentials on the nature of theincorporating complex ion, the ionic strength, and the temperature were determined and indicated that the incorporationequilibrium is governed by electrostatic and hydrophobic interactions that act in opposite directions. The incorporation ofmost cations examined was driven by large increases in entropy which overcame the usually unfavorable enthalpy changes

Carbon XANES Data from Six Aerogel Picokeystones Cut from the Top and Bottom Sides of the Stardust Comet Sample Tray

Great care and a large effort was made to minimize the amount of organic matter contained within the flight aerogel used to collect Comet 81P/Wild 2 samples. Even so, by the very nature of the production process and silica aerogel s affinity for volatile organics keeping silica aerogel free from organics is a monumental task. Silica aerogel from three production batches was flown on the Stardust sample return mission. All 3 types had layered densities varying from 5mg/ml to 50 mg/ml where the densest aerogel was farthest away from the collection area. A 2 step gelation process was used to make the flight aerogel and organics used in this process were tetraethylorthosilicate, ethanol and acetonitrile. Both ammonium hydroxide and nitric acid were also used in the aerogel production process. The flight aerogel was baked at JPL at 300 C for 72 hours, most of the baking was done at atmosphere but twice a day the oven was pumped to 10 torr for hour [1]. After the aerogel was baked it was stored in a nitrogen purged cabinet until flight time. One aerogel cell was located in the SRC away from any sample collection area as a witness to possible contamination from out gassing of the space craft, re-entry gases and any other organic encounter. This aerogel was aerogel used in the interstellar collection sample tray and is the least dense of the 3 batches of aerogel flown. Organics found in the witness tile include organics containing Si-CH3 bonds, amines and PAHS. Besides organic contamination, hot spots of calcium were reported in the flight aerogel. Carbonates have been detected in comet 81P/Wild2 samples . During preflight analyses, no technique was used to analyze for carbonates in aerogel. To determine if the carbonates found in 81P/Wild2 samples were from the comet, it is necessary to analyze the flight aerogel for carbonate as well as for organics

Mass Hierarchy, Mixing, CP-Violation and Higgs Decay---or Why Rotation is Good for Us

The idea of a rank-one rotating mass matrix (R2M2) is reviewed detailing how it leads to ready explanations both for the fermion mass hierarchy and for the distinctive mixing patterns between up and down fermion states, which can be and have been tested against experiment and shown to be fully consistent with existing data. Further, R2M2 is seen to offer, as by-products: (i) a new solution of the strong CP problem in QCD by linking the theta-angle there to the Kobayashi-Maskawa CP-violating phase in the CKM matrix, and (ii) some novel predictions of possible anomalies in Higgs decay observable in principle at the LHC. A special effort is made to answer some questions raised.Comment: 47 pages, 9 figure

The Stardust – a successful encounter with the remarkable comet Wild 2

On January 2, 2004 the Stardust spacecraft completed a close flyby of comet Wild2 (P81). Flying at a relative speed of 6.1 km/s within 237km of the 5 km nucleus, the spacecraft took 72 close-in images, measured the flux of impacting particles and did TOF mass spectrometry

The Rotating Mass Matrix, the Strong CP Problem and Higgs Decay

We investigate a recent solution to the strong CP problem, obtaining a theta-angle of order unity, and show that a smooth trajectory of the massive eigenvector of a rank-one rotating mass matrix is consistent with the experimental data for both fermion masses and mixing angles (except for the masses of the lightest quarks). Using this trajectory we study Higgs decay and find suppression of $\Gamma(H\to c\bar{c})$ compared to the standard model predictions for a range of Higgs masses. We also give limits for flavour violating decays, including a relatively large branching ratio for the $\tau^-\mu^+$ mode.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures; improvements to introduction and preliminarie

Microcraters in aluminum foils exposed by Stardust

We will present preliminary results on the nature and size frequency distribution of microcraters that formed in aluminum foils during the flyby of comet Wild 2 by the Stardust spacecraft

A Nonabelian Yang-Mills Analogue of Classical Electromagnetic Duality

The classic question of a nonabelian Yang-Mills analogue to electromagnetic duality is here examined in a minimalist fashion at the strictly 4-dimensional, classical field and point charge level. A generalisation of the abelian Hodge star duality is found which, though not yet known to give dual symmetry, reproduces analogues to many dual properties of the abelian theory. For example, there is a dual potential, but it is a 2-indexed tensor $T_{\mu\nu}$ of the Freedman-Townsend type. Though not itself functioning as such, $T_{\mu\nu}$ gives rise to a dual parallel transport, $\tilde{A}_\mu$, for the phase of the wave function of the colour magnetic charge, this last being a monopole of the Yang-Mills field but a source of the dual field. The standard colour (electric) charge itself is found to be a monopole of $\tilde{A}_\mu$. At the same time, the gauge symmetry is found doubled from say $SU(N)$ to $SU(N) \times SU(N)$. A novel feature is that all equations of motion, including the standard Yang-Mills and Wong equations, are here derived from a `universal' principle, namely the Wu-Yang (1976) criterion for monopoles, where interactions arise purely as a consequence of the topological definition of the monopole charge. The technique used is the loop space formulation of Polyakov (1980).Comment: We regret that, due to a technical hitch, parts of the reference list were mixed up. This is the corrected version. We apologize to the authors whose papers were misquote

High Density out-of-Plane Microprobe Array

MEMS technology has been developed rapidly in the last few years. More and more special micro structures were discussed in several publications. However, all of the structures were produced by consist of the three fundamental structures, which included bridge, cantilever and membrane structures. Even the more complex structures were no exception. The cantilever with the property of simple design and easy fabrication among three kinds of fundamental structure, therefore, it was popular used in the design of MEMS device.Comment: Submitted on behalf of EDA Publishing Association (http://irevues.inist.fr/handle/2042/16838