No abstract

A newly devised procedure of time series analysis, which is a linearized version of the nonlinear least squares method combined with the maximum entropy spectral analysis method, was proposed and applied to the annual sunspot number data from 1700 to 1991. Multiple periodicities of the temporal variation were elucidated in detail. The solar cycle of a 11.04-year period accompanied with the solar cycle multiplets, the periods of 50.41 years, the so-called “Yoshimura cycle”, and 107.11 years corresponding to the cycle of century-scale minima, for example, were clearly observed. The optimum least squares fitting curve for the data was extended over the past two millennia and the next millennium. The past grand minima such as the Maunder minimum were confirmed in the past extrapolation curve, and the next centennial minimum was predicted to occur between 2000 and 2030.

No abstract

The proximity effect in condensed matter physics is a mechanism that naturally produces weak superconductivity. We argue that a braneworld can similarly produce a low-energy breaking of the electroweak symmetry, provided that in addition to the "normal" region, occupied by the conventional phase of QCD, there is a bulk region where the color is in an anisotropic (layered) state with a larger confinement scale. The W and Z bosons, as well as the quarks, acquire masses by scattering off the layered region. A peculiar feature of this scenario is that the strongly interacting sector responsible for the symmetry breaking can be much lighter than the conventional 1 TeV.

The structure factors for heavy water at 25, 50, 70, and 95 °C were determined in the range of Q, 1.4–20 Å−1, by means of the time-of-flight (TOF) neutron diffraction method using the electron linear accelerator (LINAC). An analysis of the neutron diffraction data was made by applying a new general theoretical procedure of analysis for the fluid system composed of molecular clusters with various sizes. Structure factors were calculated according to the general procedure for the pentamer-monomer mixture model as a mixture of regular tetrahedral pentamers and non-bonded monomers with a due assignment of pentamer fraction at each temperature. Excellent agreement was obtained between the calculated and observed structure factors at temperatures in 25–95 °C. Combined with the preceding result (N. Ohtomo, K. Tokiwano, and K. Arakawa, Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn., 54, 1802 (1981)), it was concluded that the pentamer-monomer mixture model is the best one for water from room temperature to near the boiling point.