10,966 research outputs found

    The effects of belongingness on the Simultaneous Lightness Contrast: A virtual reality study

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    Simultaneous Lightness Contrast (SLC) is the phenomenon whereby a grey patch on a dark background appears lighter than an equal patch on a light background. Interestingly, the lightness difference between these patches undergoes substantial augmentation when the two backgrounds are patterned, thereby forming the articulated-SLC display. There are two main interpretations of these phenomena: The midlevel interpretation maintains that the visual system groups the luminance within a set of contiguous frameworks, whilst the high-level one claims that the visual system splits the luminance into separate overlapping layers corresponding to separate physical contributions. This research aimed to test these two interpretations by systematically manipulating the viewing distance and the horizontal distance between the backgrounds of both the articulated and plain SLC displays. An immersive 3D Virtual Reality system was employed to reproduce identical alignment and distances, as well as isolating participants from interfering luminance. Results showed that reducing the viewing distance resulted in increased contrast in both the plain- and articulated-SLC displays and that, increasing the horizontal distance between the backgrounds resulted in decreased contrast in the articulated condition but increased contrast in the plain condition. These results suggest that a comprehensive lightness theory should combine the two interpretations

    Behavior of nanoparticle clouds around a magnetized microsphere under magnetic and flow fields

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    When a micron-sized magnetizable particle is introduced into a suspension of nanosized magnetic particles, the nanoparticles accumulate around the microparticle and form thick anisotropic clouds extended in the direction of the applied magnetic field. This phenomenon promotes colloidal stabilization of bimodal magnetic suspensions and allows efficient magnetic separation of nanoparticles used in bioanalysis and water purification. In the present work, size and shape of nanoparticle clouds under the simultaneous action of an external uniform magnetic field and the flow have been studied in details. In experiments, dilute suspension of iron oxide nanoclusters (of a mean diameter of 60 nm) was pushed through a thin slit channel with the nickel microspheres (of a mean diameter of 50μ\mum) attached to the channel wall. The behavior of nanocluster clouds was observed in the steady state using an optical microscope. In the presence of strong enough flow, the size of the clouds monotonically decreases with increasing flow speed in both longitudinal and transverse magnetic fields. This is qualitatively explained by enhancement of hydrodynamic forces washing the nanoclusters away from the clouds. In the longitudinal field, the flow induces asymmetry of the front and the back clouds. To explain the flow and the field effects on the clouds, we have developed a simple model based on the balance of the stresses and particle fluxes on the cloud surface. This model, applied to the case of the magnetic field parallel to the flow, captures reasonably well the flow effect on the size and shape of the cloud and reveals that the only dimensionless parameter governing the cloud size is the ratio of hydrodynamic-to-magnetic forces - the Mason number. At strong magnetic interactions considered in the present work (dipolar coupling parameter α2\alpha \geq 2), the Brownian motion seems not to affect the cloud behavior

    A chip-scale integrated cavity-electro-optomechanics platform

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    We present an integrated optomechanical and electromechanical nanocavity, in which a common mechanical degree of freedom is coupled to an ultrahigh-Q photonic crystal defect cavity and an electrical circuit. The sys- tem allows for wide-range, fast electrical tuning of the optical nanocavity resonances, and for electrical control of optical radiation pressure back-action effects such as mechanical amplification (phonon lasing), cooling, and stiffening. These sort of integrated devices offer a new means to efficiently interconvert weak microwave and optical signals, and are expected to pave the way for a new class of micro-sensors utilizing optomechanical back-action for thermal noise reduction and low-noise optical read-out.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

    Interface Characteristics at an Organic/Metal Junction: Pentacene on Cu Stepped Surfaces

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    The adsorption of pentacene on Cu(221), Cu(511) and Cu(911) is investigated using density functional theory (DFT) with the self-consistent inclusion of van der Waals (vdW) interactions. Cu(211) is a vicinal of Cu(111) while Cu(511) and (911) are vicinals of Cu(100). For all the three surfaces, we found pentacene to prefer to adsorb parallel to the surface and near the steps. The addition of vdW interactions resulted in an enhancement in adsorption energies, with reference to the PBE functional, of around 2 eV. With vdWs inclusion, the adsorption energies were found to be 2.98 eV, 3.20 eV and 3.49 eV for Cu(211), Cu(511) and Cu(911) respectively. These values reflect that pentacene adsorbs stronger on (100) terraces with a preference for larger terraces. The molecule tilts upon adsorption with a small tilt angle on the (100) vicinals (about a few degrees) as compared to a large one on Cu(221) where the tilt angle is found to be about 20o. We find that the adsorption results in a net charge transfer to the molecule of ~1 electron, for all surfaces.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

    Facile synthesis of metal-free organic dyes featuring a thienylethynyl spacer for dye sensitized solar cells

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    In this article, we report the facile synthesis of metal-free dyes 6 and 7, their solution-based optical and redox properties and their use as sensitizers in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). Our studies indicate that the addition of the second thiophene unit in dye 7, decreases the oxidation and reduction potential and consequently the band gap of the molecule compared to 6. Furthermore, increasing the length of the conjugated spacer also affects on the properties of the DSSCs, with dye 7 providing a higher power conversion efficiency compared to 6 (η = 4.49 versus 3.23%)
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