Isotopic ratios, concentration of noble gases and mineral and bulk composition of extraterrestrial dust particles in Dome Fuji ice core, East Antarctica

Two silicate-rich dust layers were found in the Dome Fuji ice core in East Antarctica, at Marine Isotope Stages 12 and 13. Morphologies, textures, and chemical compositions of constituent particles reveal that they are high-temperature melting products and are of extraterrestrial origin. Because similar layers were found ~2000 km east of Dome Fuji, at EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica)-Dome C, particles must have rained down over a wide area 434 and 481 ka. The strewn fields occurred over an area of at least 3 × 10**6 km**2. Chemical compositions of constituent phases and oxygen isotopic composition of olivines suggest that the upper dust layer was produced by a high-temperature interaction between silicate-rich melt and water vapor due to an impact explosion or an aerial burst of a chondritic meteoroid on the inland East Antarctic ice sheet. An estimated total mass of the impactor, on the basis of particle flux and distribution area, is at least 3 × 10**9 kg. A possible parent material of the lower dust layer is a fragment of friable primitive asteroid or comet. A hypervelocity impact of asteroidal/cometary material on the upper atmosphere and an explosion might have produced aggregates of sub-µm to µm-sized spherules. Total mass of the parent material of the lower layer must exceed 1 × 10**9 kg. The two extraterrestrial horizons, each a few millimeters in thickness, represent regional or global meteoritic events not identified previously in the Southern Hemisphere.

Exposure to particles from laser printers operating within office workplaces

While recent research has provided valuable information as to the composition of laser printer particles, their formation mechanisms, and explained why some printers are emitters whilst others are low emitters, fundamental questions relating to the potential exposure of office workers remained unanswered. In particular, (i) what impact does the operation of laser printers have on the background particle number concentration (PNC) of an office environment over the duration of a typical working day?; (ii) what is the airborne particle exposure to office workers in the vicinity of laser printers; (iii) what influence does the office ventilation have upon the transport and concentration of particles?; (iv) is there a need to control the generation of, and/or transport of particles arising from the operation of laser printers within an office environment?; (v) what instrumentation and methodology is relevant for characterising such particles within an office location? We present experimental evidence on printer temporal and spatial PNC during the operation of 107 laser printers within open plan offices of five buildings. We show for the first time that the eight-hour time-weighted average printer particle exposure is significantly less than the eight-hour time-weighted local background particle exposure, but that peak printer particle exposure can be greater than two orders of magnitude higher than local background particle exposure. The particle size range is predominantly ultrafine (< 100nm diameter). In addition we have established that office workers are constantly exposed to non-printer derived particle concentrations, with up to an order of magnitude difference in such exposure amongst offices, and propose that such exposure be controlled along with exposure to printer derived particles. We also propose, for the first time, that peak particle reference values be calculated for each office area analogous to the criteria used in Australia and elsewhere for evaluating exposure excursion above occupational hazardous chemical exposure standards. A universal peak particle reference value of 2.0 x 104 particles cm-3 has been proposed.

Ultrasonic Guided Wave Based Damage Detection Using Low-dimensional Data from Laser Doppler Scan

In the current state of the art, it remains an open problem to detect damage with partial ultrasonic scan data and with measurements at coarser spatial scale when the location of damage is not known. In the present paper, a recent development of finite element based model reduction scheme in frequency domain that employs master degrees of freedom covering the surface scan region of interests is reported in context of non-contact ultrasonic guided wave based inspection. The surface scan region of interest is grouped into master and slave degrees of freedom. A finite element wise damage factor is derived which represents damage state over distributed areas or sharp condition of inter-element boundaries (for crack). Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV) scan data obtained from plate type structure with inaccessible surface line crack are considered along with the developed reduced order damage model to analyze the extent of scan data dimensional reduction. The proposed technique has useful application in problems where non-contact monitoring of complex structural parts are extremely important and at the same time LDV scan has to be done on accessible surfaces only.

Chemically tagging the Hyades stream: does it partly originate from the Hyades cluster?

The Hyades stream has long been thought to be a dispersed vestige of the Hyades cluster. However, recent analyses of the parallax distribution, of the mass function, and of the action-space distribution of stream stars have shown it to be rather composed of orbits trapped at a resonance of a density disturbance. This resonant scenario should leave a clearly different signature in the element abundances of stream stars than the dispersed cluster scenario, since the Hyades cluster is chemically homogeneous. Here, we study the metallicity as well as the element abundances of Li, Na, Mg, Fe, Zr, Ba, La, Ce, Nd and Eu for a random sample of stars belonging to the Hyades stream, and compare them with those of stars from the Hyades cluster. From this analysis: (i) we independently confirm that the Hyades stream cannot be solely composed of stars originating in the Hyades cluster; (ii) we show thatsomestars (namely 2/21) from the Hyades stream nevertheless have abundances compatible with an origin in the cluster; (iii) we emphasize that the use of Li as a chemical tag of the cluster origin of main-sequence stars is very efficient in the range 5500K ≤Teff≤ 6200K, since the Li sequence in the Hyades cluster is very tight, while at the same time spanning a large abundance range; (iv) we show that, while this evaporated population has a metallicity excess of ~0.2 dex with respect to the local thin-disc population, identical to that of the Hyades cluster, the remainder of the Hyades stream population has still a metallicity excess of ~0.06-0.15 dex, consistent with an origin in the inner Galaxy and (v) we show that the Hyades stream can be interpreted as an inner 4:1 resonance of the spiral pattern: this then also reproduces an orbital family compatible with the Sirius stream, and places the origin of the Hyades stream up to 1kpc inwards from the solar radius, which might explain the observed metallicity excess of the stream population. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS.

He-like x-ray line emission from laser irradiated sources

Photon yields for the 1s(2)-1s2p (He-alpha) transition of He- like ions have been measured for laser irradiated, thin foils of Ti, V and Fe. The laser pulses were of 0.527 mum wavelength and of either 80 or 300 ps duration. The data shows significant shot-to-shot variation but the Ti data is broadly consistent with previous results. In this work, we extend the previous results to include, new elements, longer pulse lengths and yields measured for emission from both surfaces of the foils. We compare our data to simulations using a hydrodynamic code and a collisional radiative model.

Optical Thomson scatter from laser-ablated plumes

We have obtained density and temperature informations on an expanding KrF laser-ablated magnesium plume via optical Thomson scatter with a frequency doubled Nd:YAG laser. The electron temperature was found to decay with the expected Te t-1 dependence. However, we have found the electron density to have a time dependence ne t-4.95 which can be explained by strong recombination processes. We also observed atomic Raman satellites originating from transitions between the different angular momentum levels of the metastable 3P0 term in Mg I.

Coherent X-ray production via pulse reflection from laser-driven dense electron sheets

A scheme to obtain brilliant x-ray sources by coherent reflection of a counter-propagating pulse from laser-driven dense electron sheets is theoretically and numerically investigated in a self-consistent manner. A radiation pressure acceleration model for the dynamics of the electron sheets blown out from laser-irradiated ultrathin foils is developed and verified by PIC simulations. The first multidimensional and integral demonstration of the scheme by 2D PIC simulations is presented. It is found that the reflected pulse undergoes Doppler-upshift by a factor 4?z2, where ?z = (1- vz2/c2)-1/2 is the effective Lorentz factor of the electron sheet al ong its normal direction. Meanwhile the pulse electric field is intensified by a factor depending on the electron density of the sheet in its moving frame ne/?, where ? is the full Lorentz factor.