We provide measurements of the neutral hydrogen fraction xHI at z~6, by comparing semi-analytical models of the Lyalpha forest with observations of high-z quasars and Gamma Ray Bursts absorption spectra. We analyze the transmitted flux in a sample of
17 QSOs spectra at 5.74<zem<6.42 studying separately the narrow transmission windows (peaks) and the wide dark portions (gaps) in the observed absorption spectra. By comparing the statistics of these spectral features with our models, we conclude that xHI evolves smoothly from 10^{-4.4} at z=5.3 to 10^{-4.2} at z=5.6, with a robust upper limit xHI<0.36 at z=6.3. We show the results of the first-ever detected transverse proximity effect in the HI Lyalpha forest, produced by the HII region of the faint quasar RD J1148+5253 at z=5.70 intervening along the LOS of SDSS J1148+5251 at z=6.42. Moreover, we propose a novel method to study cosmic reionization using absorption line spectra of high-redshift GRBs afterglows. We show that the time evolution and the statistics of gaps in the observed spectra represent exquisite tools to discriminate among different reionization models. By applying our methods to GRB 050904 detected at z=6.29, we show that the observation of this burst provides strong indications of a highly ionized intergalactic medium at z~6, with an estimated mean neutral hydrogen fraction xHI=6.4pm 0.3times 10^{-5} along that line of sight.
We report the electrical detection of magnetization dynamics in an Al/AlOx/Ni80Fe20/Cu tunnel junction, where a Ni80Fe20 ferromagnetic layer is brought into precession under the ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) conditions. The dc voltage generated acros
s the junction by the precessing ferromagnet is enhanced about an order of magnitude compared to the voltage signal observed when the contacts in this type of multilayered structure are ohmic. We discuss the relation of this phenomenon to magnetic spin pumping and speculate on other possible underlying mechanisms responsible for the enhanced electrical signal.
