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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

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Physics

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The University of San Francisco

2004

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Thermoelectricity In Natural And Synthetic Hydrogels, Brandon R. Brown Sep 2004

Thermoelectricity In Natural And Synthetic Hydrogels, Brandon R. Brown

Physics and Astronomy

We describe a technique for measuring a Seebeck effect in gels and present data for three systems. notably distinct signals are obtained for gel originating in the electrosensitive organs of marine sharks, syntehtic collagen-based gel, and as a control, seawater, the gels' seawater simply confirms that gels suppress mass transport. The difference between synthetic gel and the gel of sharks shows that the charged polymers of the shark gel restrict mass transport much more successfully than the polumers of the collagen gel, and we submit that this sort of ion localization is key to the emergence of thermoelectricity in a …


Nucleosynthesis, Reionization, And The Mass Function Of The First Stars, Jason Tumlinson, Aparna Venkatesan, J Shull Jan 2004

Nucleosynthesis, Reionization, And The Mass Function Of The First Stars, Jason Tumlinson, Aparna Venkatesan, J Shull

Physics and Astronomy

We critique the hypothesisthat the first starswere very massive stars(VMSs; M > 140 M).We review the twomajor lines of evidencefor the existence ofVMSs: (1) that therelative metal abundances ofextremely metal-poor Galactic halostars show evidence ofVMS enrichment and (2)that the high electron-scatteringoptical depth (e) tothe cosmic microwave backgroundfound by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe(WMAP) requires VMSs forreionization in a concordanceCDM cosmology. The yieldpatterns of VMSs explodingas pair-instability supernovae areincompatible with the Fe-peakand r-process abundances inhalo stars. Models includingType II supernovae and/or"hypernovae" from zero-metallicity progenitorswith M = 840 Mcan better explain theobserved trends. We usethe …