Plasma and Sol-Gel Technology for Creating Nanostructured Surfaces of Fibrous Polymers

For a modification of natural and synthetic fibrous polymers low-pressure ICRF plasma and liquid repellent sol-gel fluoroalkyl-functional siloxane precursor were used. Plasma induced surface chemical and morphological changes on fluorinated poly(ethylene terephthalate) and cellulose were analysed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). Wettability properties of sol-gel functionalized polymers were determined by the goniometric water contact angles and water sliding angle measurements. After plasma treatment the oxygen content on the surface of both polymers increased (increase of O/C ratio) and a nanostructured surface roughness appeared. Plasma ablation caused partially defluorinated nanostructured surface of fluorinated poly(ethylene terephthalate) polymer and increased its hydrophilicity. Plasma activation and etching of cellulose polymer contributed to the creation of highly adhesive and wash resistant sol-gel coating with superhydrophobic, oleophobic and self-cleaning properties. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3539

The Effects of Twitter Sentiment on Stock Price Returns

Social media are increasingly reflecting and influencing behavior of other complex systems. In this paper we investigate the relations between a well-know micro-blogging platform Twitter and financial markets. In particular, we consider, in a period of 15 months, the Twitter volume and sentiment about the 30 stock companies that form the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) index. We find a relatively low Pearson correlation and Granger causality between the corresponding time series over the entire time period. However, we find a significant dependence between the Twitter sentiment and abnormal returns during the peaks of Twitter volume. This is valid not only for the expected Twitter volume peaks (e.g., quarterly announcements), but also for peaks corresponding to less obvious events. We formalize the procedure by adapting the well-known "event study" from economics and finance to the analysis of Twitter data. The procedure allows to automatically identify events as Twitter volume peaks, to compute the prevailing sentiment (positive or negative) expressed in tweets at these peaks, and finally to apply the "event study" methodology to relate them to stock returns. We show that sentiment polarity of Twitter peaks implies the direction of cumulative abnormal returns. The amount of cumulative abnormal returns is relatively low (about 1-2%), but the dependence is statistically significant for several days after the events

Social democracy, embeddedness and decommodification: On the conceptual innovations and intellectual affiliations of Karl Polanyi

Of the several debates that revolve around the work of the economic historian and political economist Karl Polanyi, one that continues to exercise minds concerns his analysis of, and political attitudes toward, post-war capitalism and the welfare state. Simplified a little, it is a debate with two sides. To borrow Iván Szelényi's terms, one side constructs a ‘hard’ Karl Polanyi, the other a ‘soft’ one. The former advocated a socialist mixed economy dominated by redistributive mechanisms. He was a radical socialist for whom the market should never be the dominant mechanism of economic coordination. His ‘soft’ alter ego insisted that the market system remain essentially intact but be complemented by redistributive mechanisms. The ‘double movement’ – the central thesis of his ‘Great Transformation’ – acts, in this reading, as a self-correcting mechanism that moderates the excesses of market fundamentalism; its author was positioned within the social-democratic mainstream for which the only realistic desirable goal is a regulated form of capitalism. In terms of textual evidence there is much to be said for both interpretations. In this article I suggest a different approach, one that focuses upon the meaning of Polanyi's concepts in relation to their socio-political and intellectual environment

Phytoplankton across Tropical and Subtropical Regions of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans

Postprint4,411

Plasma-wall interaction studies within the EUROfusion consortium: Progress on plasma-facing components development and qualification

This work has been carried out within the framework of the EUROfusion Consortium and has received funding from the Euratom research and training programme 2014-2018 under grant agreement No 633053. The views and opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.The provision of a particle and power exhaust solution which is compatible with first-wall components and edge-plasma conditions is a key area of present-day fusion research and mandatory for a successful operation of ITER and DEMO. The work package plasma-facing components (WP PFC) within the European fusion programme complements with laboratory experiments, i.e. in linear plasma devices, electron and ion beam loading facilities, the studies performed in toroidally confined magnetic devices, such as JET, ASDEX Upgrade, WEST etc. The connection of both groups is done via common physics and engineering studies, including the qualification and specification of plasma-facing components, and by modelling codes that simulate edge-plasma conditions and the plasma-material interaction as well as the study of fundamental processes. WP PFC addresses these critical points in order to ensure reliable and efficient use of conventional, solid PFCs in ITER (Be and W) and DEMO (W and steel) with respect to heat-load capabilities (transient and steady-state heat and particle loads), lifetime estimates (erosion, material mixing and surface morphology), and safety aspects (fuel retention, fuel removal, material migration and dust formation) particularly for quasi-steady-state conditions. Alternative scenarios and concepts (liquid Sn or Li as PFCs) for DEMO are developed and tested in the event that the conventional solution turns out to not be functional. Here, we present an overview of the activities with an emphasis on a few key results: (i) the observed synergistic effects in particle and heat loading of ITER-grade W with the available set of exposition devices on material properties such as roughness, ductility and microstructure; (ii) the progress in understanding of fuel retention, diffusion and outgassing in different W-based materials, including the impact of damage and impurities like N; and (iii), the preferential sputtering of Fe in EUROFER steel providing an in situ W surface and a potential first-wall solution for DEMO.European Commission; Consortium for Ocean Leadership 633053; Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01-2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART

H+\mathrm{H^+} processing of Ni/Al multilayer structures

The method of heat transfer in low pressure weakly ionized hydrogen plasma was used for the thermal processing of samples of an Ni/Al multilayer structure on well polished silicon substrates. The samples were exposed to hydrogen plasma under different conditions. The sample temperature increased typically at a rate of 10 °C s−1, remained constant for several minutes, and decreased at a rate of 10 °C s−1. The steady temperature was between 300 °C and 1000 °C. The samples were analyzed using Auger electron spectroscopy and extended X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy. The results show that the coating obtained after thermal processing is a mixture of nickel, aluminum and nickel aluminides, different from NiAl binary alloy. At high temperatures, evaporation of aluminum from the coating was observed

Sterilization of polypropylene membranes of facepiece respirators by ionizing radiation

Ionizing radiation has been identified as an option for sterilization of disposable filtering facepiece respirators in situations where the production of the respirators cannot keep up with demand. Gamma radiation and high energy electrons penetrate deeply into the material and can be used to sterilize large batches of masks within a short time period. In relation to reports that sterilization by ionizing radiation reduces filtration efficiency of polypropylene membrane filters on account of static charge loss, we have demonstrated that both gamma and electron beam irradiation can be used for sterilization, provided that the respirators are recharged afterwards

Sentiment of Emojis

There is a new generation of emoticons, called emojis, that is increasingly being used in mobile communications and social media. In the past two years, over ten billion emojis were used on Twitter. Emojis are Unicode graphic symbols, used as a shorthand to express concepts and ideas. In contrast to the small number of well-known emoticons that carry clear emotional contents, there are hundreds of emojis. But what are their emotional contents? We provide the first emoji sentiment lexicon, called the Emoji Sentiment Ranking, and draw a sentiment map of the 751 most frequently used emojis. The sentiment of the emojis is computed from the sentiment of the tweets in which they occur. We engaged 83 human annotators to label over 1.6 million tweets in 13 European languages by the sentiment polarity (negative, neutral, or positive). About 4% of the annotated tweets contain emojis. The sentiment analysis of the emojis allows us to draw several interesting conclusions. It turns out that most of the emojis are positive, especially the most popular ones. The sentiment distribution of the tweets with and without emojis is significantly different. The inter-annotator agreement on the tweets with emojis is higher. Emojis tend to occur at the end of the tweets, and their sentiment polarity increases with the distance. We observe no significant differences in the emoji rankings between the 13 languages and the Emoji Sentiment Ranking. Consequently, we propose our Emoji Sentiment Ranking as a European language-independent resource for automated sentiment analysis. Finally, the paper provides a formalization of sentiment and a novel visualization in the form of a sentiment bar