Geometric model for nuclear absorption from microscopic theory

A parameter-free geometric model for nuclear absorption is derived from microscopic theory. The expression for the absorption cross section in the eikonal approximation taken in integral form is separated into a geometric contribution, described by an energy-dependent effective radius, and two surface terms which are shown to cancel in an asymptotic series expansion. For collisions of light nuclei, an expression for the effective radius is derived using harmonic-oscillator nuclear density functions. A direct extension to heavy nuclei with Woods-Saxon densities is made by identifying the equivalent half density radius for the harmonic-oscillator functions. Coulomb corrections are incorporated and a simplified geometric form of the Bradt-Peters type obtained. Results spanning the energy range of 1 MeV/nucleon to 1 GeV/nucleon are presented. Good agreement with experimental results are obtained.     

Effect of sillimanite beach sand composition on mullitization and properties of Al<Subscript>2</Subscript>O<Subscript>3</Subscript>-SiO<Subscript>2</Subscript> system

Mullite was developed by reaction sintering of sillimanite beach sand and calcined alumina. Two varieties of sillimanite beach sand viz. S and Z having different compositions were selected. Synthesis and properties of mullite were very much dependent on the sillimanite beach sand composition. Presence of higher amount of impurities in the Z-variety of sillimanite sand favours the densification by liquid phase formation. Presence of zircon in Z-variety increases the hardness and fracture toughness. Alumina addition improves the mechanical/thermomechanical properties of the samples. Mullite retains the usual orthorhombic habit of sillimanite. Rounded to sub rounded zirconia dispersed within the mullite matrix of the sample ZA is noticed.     

A model for accurate predictions of self-diffusivities in liquid metals, semimetals, and semiconductors

By combining the modified Stokes-Einstein formula with the authors’ model for the melting-point viscosity, the authors present a model for accurate predictions of self-diffusivity of liquid metallic elements. The model is expressed in terms of well-known physical quantities and has been applied to various liquid metallic elements for which experimental data are available. The results of calculations show that agreement with experimental data is excellent; the uncertainties in the calculations of the self-diffusivities in various liquid metallic elements are equal to the uncertainties associated with experimental measurements. Also, the authors propose an expression for the temperature dependence of self-diffusivity in liquid metallic elements in terms of melting-point temperature. Using the model, self-diffusivity data are predicted for liquid iron, cobalt, nickel, titanium, aluminum, magnesium, silicon, and so forth.     

Performance analysis of long-lived transaction processing systemswith rollbacks and aborts

Increasing the parallelism in transaction processing and maintaining data consistency appear to be two conflicting goals in designing distributed database systems (DDBSs). This problem is especially difficult if the DDBS is serving long-lived transactions (LLTs). A special case of LLTs, called sagas, has been introduced that addresses this problem. A DDBS with sagas provides high parallelism to transactions by allowing sagas to release their locks as early as possible. However, it is also subject to an overhead, due to the efforts needed to restore data consistency in the case of failure. We conduct a series of simulation studies to compare the performance of LLT systems with and without saga implementation in a faulty environment. The studies show that saga systems outperform their nonsaga counterparts under most of conditions, including heavy failure cases. We thus propose an analytical queuing model to investigate the performance behavior of saga systems. The development of this analytical model assists us to quantitatively study the performance penalty of a saga implementation due to the failure recovery overhead. Furthermore, the analytical solution can be used by system administrators to fine-tune the performance of a saga system. This analytical model captures the primary aspects of a saga system, namely data locking, resource contention and failure recovery. Due to the complicated nature of the analytical modeling, we solve the model approximately for various performance metrics using decomposition methods, and validate the accuracy of the analytical results via simulations     

Effect of laser irradiation on the electrical properties of amorphous germanium films

Amorphous films of germanium were grown using a vacuum evaporation technique, on glass substrates kept at room temperature. As-grown films were irradiated with Q-Switched Nd-YAG laser pulses (=1.06 m, 20nsec, 10 to 50Jcm^–2). The d.c. conductivity measurements were made in the temperature range 77 to 300 K. It was observed that the effect of laser irradiation was similar to the effect caused by the thermal annealing of the films. The d.c. conductivity data were analysed in the light of Mott's theory of a variable range hopping conduction process.