Description: This article discusses experimental evidence for a discrete transition to channeling for 1.0-MeV protons in Si〈100〉. Abstract: The present work reports the experimental evidence of anomalies exhibited by the energy loss and energy straggling of channeled protons in silicon in transmission measurements versus the incident angle. Results are presented for 1.0-MeV protons channeled along the 〈100〉 axis for a silicon foil of 3.8 μm thickness. It is shown that the transition from random to a channeling condition is discrete. The energy spectra of transmitted ions show a random peak (lower energy) and a channeled peak (higher energy). The random peak has a fixed energy, while the energy of the channeled peak increases as the target crystal's axis approaches alignment with the direction of the incident ion beam. The results support a model suggesting that the channeled ions lose energy only to valence electrons and are concentrated in a narrow cone about the direction of incidence when they emerge from the crystal. The energy straggling of channeled particles reaches a minimum in the hyper-channeled condition. Both the energy loss and the energy straggling of channeled protons show a dependence on the local electron density.

Description: This article discusses fractional Brownian motion as a nonstationary process. Abstract: The long-range correlations in DNA sequences are currently interpreted as an example of stationary fractional Brownian motion (FBM). First the authors show that the dynamics of a dichotomous stationary process with long-range correlations such as that used to model DNA sequences should correspond to Lévy statistics and not to FBM. To explain why, in spite of this, the statistical analysis of the data seems to be compatible with FBM, the authors notice that an initial Gaussian condition, generated by a process foreign to the mechanism establishing the long-range correlations and consequently implying a departure from the stationary condition is maintained approximately unchanged for very long times. This is so because due to the nature itself of the long-range correlation process, it takes virtually an infinite time for the system to reach the genuine stationary state. Then the authors discuss a possible generator of initial Gaussian conditions, based on a folding mechanism of the nucleic acid in the cell nucleus. The model adopted is compatible with the known biological and physical constraints, namely, it is shown to be consistent with the information of current biological literature on folding as well ...

Description: This article discusses high-valent transition-metal alkylidene complexes. Abstract: An ab initio investigation into the effects of ligand and substituent modification on the metal-carbon double bond is reported. Prototypical group IVB (Ti, Zr, Hf) and Group VB (Nb, Ta) alkylidenes are chosen for this study. The MC/LMO/CI (multiconfiguration/localized molecular orbital/configuration interaction) procedure is used to examine the electronic structures of these complexes in terms of the prime resonance contributors to the ground-state wave function. The main conclusion drawn from this work is that the intrinsic nature of the metal-carbon double bond can typically be changed only within certain limits by modification of the electronegativity of the ligands (L) and substituents (Z). In other words, the Ta=C bond in H₃TaCCl₂ and Cl₃TaCH₂ and presumably in experimentally characterized analogues with larger ligands and substituents, e.g., Cp and neopentyl. Significant changes in the electronic structure are effected in three ways: The first way is through the introduction of a highly electropositive substituent, e.g., Li. This makes the metal-carbon bond closer to a triple bond for the Ta-alkylidenes. The second way to change the electronic structure of the alkylidenes significantly is to change the central metal atom. The heaviest members of groups IVB (Hf) and ...

Description: This article discusses K-shell x-ray-production cross sections. Abstract: K-shell x-ray-production cross sections are reported for elements with K-shell x-ray energies between 277 eV (C) and 1487 eV (Al). The x-ray measurements were made with a windowless Si(Li) detector that was calibrated for efficiency by comparing bremsstrahlung spectra from electron bombardment of thin foils of aluminum, silver, and gold with theoretically determined bremsstrahlung spectral distributions. The x-ray-production cross-section measurements are compared to first-order Born and perturbed-stationary-state with energy-loss, Coulomb deflection, and relativistic corrections (ECPSSR) ionization theories using single-hole fluorescence yields. The ECPSSR and first-order Born theoretical predictions are, in general, in close agreement with each other and both generally fit the data quite well.

Description: This article discusses the linear response of Hamiltonian chaotic systems as a function of the number of degrees of freedom. Abstract: Using numerical simulations we show that the response to weak perturbations of a variable of Hamiltonian chaotic systems depend on the number of degrees of freedom: When this is small (≈2) the response is not linear, in agreement with the well known objections to the Kubo linear response theory, while, for a larger number of degrees of freedom, the response becomes linear. This is due to the fact that increasing the number of degrees of freedom the shape of the distribution function, projected onto the subspace of the variable of interest, becomes fairly "regular."