Addressing the Risk of Surface Water Intrusion in Old Romanian Salt Mines

In Romania, surface waters near underground salt mines represent a significant risk to the stability of the mine workings. Such problems occur in many salt exploiting facilities, i.e. Slanic Prahova, Targu Ocna, Praid. In this paper, the authors present a method of dealing with this issue at the Praid salt mine with research targeted at avoiding the hazard presented by intrusion of surface waters into old mine workings. Monitoring activities are proposed to prevent damage due to the seepage of Corund Creek water into the subsurface salt body, which could compromise and even produce collapses in the salt mine sanatorium and old and new mines.     

Optimizing polarization states in a figure-8 laser using anonreciprocal phase shifter

The polarization states in a figure and laser are analyzed using Jones matrices. The analysis shows that a figure-8 laser in CW operation does not give enough information to allow the optimization of the birefringence for mode-locking. A switchable nonreciprocal phase shifter is proposed to provide a simple way to optimize the birefringence for a mode-locked figure-8 laser. Using this device, the mode-locking of a diode-pumped figure-8 laser was started, with a probability better than 99%, by following a sequence of predetermined mechanical adjustment. With the proposed nonreciprocal phase shifter, the optimization and starting of a figure-8 laser can easily be automated     

Wavelength dependence of irreversible photobleaching of dye-doped polymer waveguide materials

We report the irreversible bleaching characteristics of 4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-methyl-6-(p-dimethyl aminostyryl)-4H-pyran (DCM) doped into perfluorocyclobutene (PFCB) and a new material known as DH-6 doped into amorphous polycarbonate (APC) by a monochromatic bleaching source. The wavelength dependent rate constants for the irreversible bleaching process are found, and the experimental bleaching characteristics are compared to the theoretical bleaching characteristics determined from a kinetic model of the bleaching process.     

Conformal anodic oxidation of aluminum thin films

Membrane-based synthesis, also called template synthesis, is a very general approach used to prepare arrays of nanomaterials with monodispersed geometrical features. The most commonly used porous templates are track-etched polycarbonate and porous anodic alumina membranes. Common to all these templates is the fact that the pores are perpendicular to the surface of the membrane. Here, a novel approach is presented, where the pores are synthesized parallel to the surface of the membrane. For the first time, the anodic oxidation of an aluminum thin film is performed laterally, i.e., parallel to the surface of the substrate, instead of perpendicular as usually done. For low anodic oxidation voltages (between 3 and 5 V) we obtain highly regular and ordered pore arrays, at least over a few hundred nanometers length, with a minimum pore size of approximately 3 to 4 nm. With such porous alumina structures, the controlled in-plane organization of arrays of template-grown nanowires and carbon nanotubes for reproducible device fabrication should be much easier.     

PARAMETERS ESTIMATION FOR A FIRST ORDER IRREVERSIBLE REACTION. A STOCHASTIC APPROACH

A first order irreversible reaction is investigated using a stochastic model in order to account for the perturbations inherent to any chemical process. The main conclusion is that the concentration is distributed according to a lognormal law rather than to a normal one. This approach leads to a maximum likelihood estimate of the kinetic constant which is different with respect to the usual least squares estimate. Moreover, the stochastic model allows us to predict not only the expected value of the concentration, but to get a confidence interval, too. Statistical tests are provided in order to detect outliers, high-leverage and influential points.     

Polarization Induced Spin Wave Damping in Spin Polarized Liquid 3He–4He

We have measured the temperature and polarization dependence of Silin spin wave spectra in a saturated ³He–⁴He mixture with a concentration of 9.4% at a pressure of 8 bars. The mixture has been cooled and polarized by a Leiden dilution refrigerator to temperatures in the range 10–15 mK and polarizations as high as 9.2% corresponding to 3.4 times the equilibrium polarization of 2.7% in the external magnetic field of 11.36 T. The analysis takes into account the dipolar interactions and results in the relaxation time τ _⊥ and spin diffusion constant D _⊥ . We find that τ _⊥ and D _⊥ are proportional to where T is the temperature, is the polarization enhancement factor and T _a0 is the anisotropy temperature for the mixture at equilibrium in the external field. Our result T _a0=3.66±0.14 mK is 30% higher than the theoretical prediction for very dilute mixtures and is evidence for the existence of polarization induced relaxation of transverse spin currents.     

High-throughput fabrication of organic nanowire devices with preferential internal alignment and improved performance

We demonstrate that arrays of nanowires of conjugated polymers can be easily produced by a simple embossing protocol, compatible with very large scale integration technology. The embossing process is shown to have the supplementary virtue to increase the internal degree of order of the nanowires, significantly enhancing their performance. This is applied to the fabrication of nanowire-based devices consisting of a liquid crystalline light-emitting polymer, of a liquid crystalline semiconducting polymer, and of an amorphous conducting polymer, illustrating the versatility and wide applicability of the method.