Low Temperature Physics at the Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Pulsés in Toulouse

An overview over past and present activities and future developments at the Toulouse pulsed magnetic field facility is given, both as far as technical developments of the infrastructure, as well as low temperature physics performed at the LNCMP are concerned.     

Extractive Properties of Synergistic Mixtures of Dipicolinic Acid Diamides and Chlorinated Cobalt Dicarbollide

Extraction of Cs, Sr, Eu, U, Np, and Am with mixtures of dipicolinic acid diamides with chlorinated cobalt dicarbollide was studied. A synergistic effect was revealed.     

Prolonged tamoxifen exposure selects a breast cancer cell clone that is stable in vitro and in vivo

The effects of long-term tamoxifen exposure on cell growth and cell cycle kinetics were compared between oestrogen receptor (ER)-positive (MCF-7) and ER-negative (MDA-MB-231) cell lines. In the MCF-7 cell line, prolonged tamoxifen exposure (0.5 mumol/l for > 100 days) blocked cells in G0-G1 of the cell cycle, and slowed the doubling time of cells from 30 to 59 h. These effects corresponded to an increase in the cellular accumulation of tamoxifen over time [mean area under concentration curve (AUC) = 77.92 mumoles/10(6)/cells/day]. In contrast, in the MDA-MB-231 cell line, long-term tamoxifen exposure had no obvious effect on the doubling time, and reduced cellular tamoxifen accumulation (mean AUC = 50.50 mumoles/10(6)/cells/day) compared to the MCF-7 cells. Flow cytometric analysis of MDA-MB-231 cells demonstrated that a new tetraploid clone emerged following 56 days of tamoxifen exposure. Inoculation of the MDA-MB-231 tetraploid clone and MDA-MB-231 wildtype cells into the opposite flanks of athymic nude mice resulted in the rapid growth of tetraploid tumours. The tetraploid tumours maintained their ploidy following tamoxifen treatment for nine consecutive serial transplantations. Histological examination of the fifth transplant generation xenografts revealed that the tetraploid tumour had a 25-30 times greater mass, area of haemorrhage and necrosis, a slightly higher mitotic index and was more anaplastic than the control neoplasm. The control wildtype MDA-MB-231 tumours maintained a stable ploidy following tamoxifen treatment until the eighth and ninth transplantation, when a tetraploid population appeared, suggesting that tamoxifen treatment may select for this clone in vivo. These studies suggest that prolonged tamoxifen exposure may select for new, stable, fast growing cell clones in vitro as well as in vivo.     

Interdisciplinary research: roles for self-organization

No generally accepted principles and guidelines currently exist to help engineers design local interaction mechanisms that result in a desired global behavior. However, several communities have developed ways of approaching this problem in the context of niched application areas. Because the ideas underlying these approaches are often obscured or underemphasized in technical papers, the authors review the role of self-organization in their work. They provide a better picture of the status of the emerging field of self-organizing systems or autonomic computing.     

Crisis phenomena upon evaporation in grid capillary and porous coatings and arterial structures of heat pipes

The article presents the results of experimental investigations of critical (limit) heat fluxes upon evaporation on porous coatings, and it substantiates the physical model of the process.Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 607–614, October, 1985.     

Producing rules for ascertaining meanings of minimal semantic-syntactic text units

The task of ascertaining minimal semantic-syntactic text units within the framework of the task of the semantic analysis of texts in the Russian language is considered. The use of the DSM-method for producing rules for ascertaining the meanings of syntaxemes is described, the setting of the goal of producing rules in DSM-method terminology is presented. The analysis of the results of computer experiments and the causes of the presence of contradictory rules are given.     

The unsteady-state thermohydraulic calculation of a stacked core

NIKIÉT. Translated from Atomnaya Énergiya, Vol. 75, No. 4, pp. 265-269, October, 1993.     

Magnetometric determination of the angular position of an object

A method is described for finding the angular position of an object by measuring at two selected points in space the components of an alternating magnetic field set up by two sources. The angular position of the object and its coordinates can be measured even if the object is moved or rotated about any axis through 0 to 360° in the presence of magnetic interference. Translated from Izmeritel'naya Tekhnika, No. 12, pp. 34–37, December, 1996.     

Circular core polarization-maintaining optical fibers withelliptical stress-induced cladding

The reproducible technology for producing high-birefringence fibers with stress-induced elliptical cladding and circular core is described. The authors have obtained fibers that have a birefringence of about (1-3) 10^-4, a mode coupling parameter of about (2-7) 10 ^-5 m^-1, and loss of less than 0.5 dB/km at 1.6 μm. The authors have found effects restricting the capability of test fibers to maintain the state of linear polarization