Deep inelastic weak and electromagnetic processes are considered within the parton framework taking the partons to be integrally charged quarks and coloured gluons. Despite the participation of the spin-one gluons in these processes, scaling is shown to be maintained by treating the problem in a unified gauge model based on the groupSU (3)_colour⊗SU_L (2)⊗U(1). This is a consequence of the vector-dominance type of couplings between the gluons and the weak or electromagnetic vector bosons which are induced by the spontaneous breakdown of gauge symmetry. As a further consequence it is found that in the asymptotic region far above the gluon masses the colour octet parts of the weak and electromagnetic currents of the quarks are damped so that, in particular, the integrally charged quarks behave as fractionally charged quarks in this region.

A couple of normalisation criteria have been proposed to assess liquid structure data over the past decade. In this paper, a critical examination of these and other plausible criteria is made. Neutron diffraction data from liquid krypton measured by Clayton and Heaton is used to study these criteria. It is shown that if the structure factorS (Q)=1+γ (Q) satisfies the Krogh-Moe relation, namely$$\rho _{0 = \frac{1}{{2\pi ^2 }}} {\text{ }}\mathop \smallint \limits_{\text{0}}^\infty {\text{ }}Q^{\text{2}} {\text{ }}\gamma {\text{ (}}Q{\text{) }}dQ$$ whereQ is the wavevector transfer andρ₀ the mean atomic number density,S (Q) is properly normalised. Subjecting such data to the other criteria would reveal, however, the quality of data in so far as systematic errors and/or termination errors are concerned. If the data is measured with reasonable accuracy to sufficiently large values of the wavevector transfer all these criteria would assess the quality of the data to almost the same extent. This is established in this paper by improving and extending the liquid krypton data by procedures similar to that of Kaplow, Strong and Averbach and subjecting this revised data to the various criteria. It is concluded, thereby, that (i) one can study the neutron diffraction data from liquids using any of the criteria mentioned in the paper to improve the quality of the data and (ii) for normalisation purposes the simple relation {ie328-2} would suffice.

The effect of deuteration on the electrochemiluminescence (ECL) efficiencies of the mixed systems containing anthracene or phenathrene has been examined using the single light pulse in the double potential programme. Deuteration of anthracene or phenanthrene decreases the ECL efficiencies by factors of 1·2–16·0. This decrease appears to arise from the quenching of the triplets by radical ions in solution. The quenching factors are estimated by using Marcus theory of electron transfer reactions.

A pulse technique has been presented for generating a complete Langmuir probe characteristic curve in a short time interval which can be varied from 1 sec to 1 millisec. The method has been applied successfully to different plasma systems of our laboratory. Several examples have been given for indicating the type of diagnostic studies being carried out with this pulsed probe.