Three Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 single crystals with di€erent annealing processes have been measured in terms of complex AC susceptibilities vn ˆ vn ÿ iv00 n (n ˆ 1; 3) to reveal the e€ect of ̄ux-pinning strength. The third harmonic susceptibility changes dramatically when the pinning strengths are di€erent due to di€erent annealing processes, although the fundamental susceptibilities are quite similar. Th...

The Maeslant storm surge barrier in the Netherlands is an interesting case in system reliability, first because of the great effort that has been put into making its operation reliable and into assessing its reliability, and second, because it has characteristics that make reliability assessment extremely hard. From its history a number of interesting conclusions can be drawn, of which the most...

Observations of the cosmological large-scale structure provide wellestablished neutrino mass limits. We extend this argument to thermal relic axions. We calculate the axion thermal freeze-out temperature and thus their cosmological abundance on the basis of their interaction with pions. For hadronic axions we find a new mass limit ma < 1.05 eV (95% CL), corresponding to a limit on the axion dec...