At 09:09 PM 2/5/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
There was no repeated daily activity that might account for it either, such as firing up the linear accelerator in the next room. That is not done on a strict daily or nightly schedule. The accelerator has no effect on the experiment. That's not surprising; it is behind a 1-meter thick steel door, on railroad tracks. Under the wooden floor is about 1 meter of water, and the whole thing is buried way underground.
I really can't tell what to make of this without the full paper. How significant are the variations? How consistent were they over the run, the abstract has a short plot, and the data has not been well analyzed (in that plot) to show significance.
The variations shown were of D loading ratio and cell pressure. These were not necessarily variations in NAE formation and activity.
However, this leads me to see more importance in one of my research and development goals: to find markers of nuclear activity that are instantaneous rather than cumulative or secondary.
"Cumulative" would be, for example, the evidence of neutrons that I expect to replicate. The rate is too low to be of much use for a study of diurnal variation, I expect, though I suppose I could use several sets of detectors and place and replace them on a daily schedule, thus accumulating results for various time periods. However, wouldn't it be nice to have some "readout" of nuclear activity?
Thus my plan to sense pressure waves with piezo detectors could turn out to be of importance. If the pressure waves seen by the SPAWAR group are associated with the reactions, and are different from, say, bubble noise that is also expected to be present, then I could get fast level data as to reaction rate. SPAWAR detected pressure spikes with a cathode that was a piezo detector used as the sustrate for codeposition, I'm not going to do that, so I'm not at all sure what I'll find. But it's cheap to look.
My own work is presently impeded by multiple factors, not the least of which is my own distraction, and I have other unrelated tasks which are urgent to complete, so Stuff Gets Put Off. However, I do have, now, available for sale, all the necessary materials for small codeposition cells.
My plan is to offer ready-to-use cells, with cathodes and anodes prefabricated on their polyethylene supports, and premixed electrolyte, plus SSNTDs, for under $100. However, the materials themselves can be purchased for substantially less than that, in quantities sufficient to make a few cells, and I can quickly put together a "cell materials kit" which isn't prefabricated for quite a bit less. Currently I'm only offering LR-115 material, because I'm working on what form of CR-39 detectors to offer, the first material I tried is probably not usable.
Landauer was such a pain to deal with that I put that possibility off, the 1/16th inch material they offer isn't ideal anyway. Thinner is better. Cheaper is also better, as long as it works.
http://lomaxdesign.com/coldfusion
