A new analytical method had been developed to enable high-spatial-resolution (U–Th)/He dating of accessory minerals. It involves the use of a focused ArF excimer to ablate pits in a polished grain surface, with the evolved gases spiked for isotope-dilution measurement of radiogenic He. These data are converted to concentrations by precise measurement of each pit using an optical interferometric...

A binary CSP instance satisfying the broken-triangle property (BTP) can be solved in polynomial time. Unfortunately, in practice, few instances satisfy the BTP. We show that a local version of the BTP allows the merging of domain values in arbitrary instances of binary CSP, thus providing a novel polynomial-time reduction operation. Extensive experimental trials on benchmark instances demonstra...

Introduction A significant portion of patients treated in emergency departments have nasal fracture. It is important that the otolaryngologist know how to treat such damage. Objectives To evaluate the effectiveness of nasal fracture reduction under local anesthesia and tolerance to the procedure. Methods Twenty-four patients treated in the emergency department with closed reduction under local ...

We consider contributions of R-parity conserving softly broken supersymmetry (SUSY) to neutrinoless double beta (0νββ) decay via the (B-L)-violating sneutrino mass term. The latter is a generic ingredient of any weak-scale SUSY model with a Majorana neutrino mass. The new R-parity conserving SUSY contributions to 0νββ are realized at the level of box diagrams. We derive the effective Lagrangian...

According to amoebic self theory, the boundary defining the self encompasses 3 levels of self-representation--bodily, social, and spatial-symbolic. Study 1 related a newly developed measure of individual differences in sensitivity to boundary threat across these 3 domains to values and disgust sensitivity. Four subsequent studies focused on spatial-symbolic threat sensitivity and related it to ...

In November 2003, after receiving a discrimination complaint from a county employee, the Los Angeles County Office of Affirmative Action Compliance sent a memo to all its equipment vendors asking that they stop using the words “master” and “slave” in reference to computer hardware and other equipment.{1} The memo read in part: “Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles Coun...

Introduction: All presolar graphite grains analyzed to date were extracted from their host meteorite using acid dissolution techniques [1-3]. However, recent studies have suggested that the use of harsh acids may significantly alter the outer surface of presolar SiC grains extracted in this way [4], and similarly may also affect graphite grains. We have previously described a technique for " ge...

Efficient computation of lattice defect geometries such as point defects, dislocations, disconnections, grain boundaries, interfaces, and free surfaces requires accurate coupling of displacements near the defect to the long-range elastic strain. Flexible boundary condition methods embed a defect in infinite harmonic bulk through the lattice Green function. We demonstrate an efficient and accura...

Hooks and other sub-surface features in continuous-cast ultralow-carbon steel samples were examined using optical microscopy, electron backscattering diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and electron probe microanalysis techniques. Special etching reagents revealed dendrites growing from both sides of the line of hook origin. This line was found to represent the frozen meniscus an...