1,553 research outputs found
Investigating worn surfaces of nanoscale TiAlN/VN multilayer coating using FIB and TEM
TiAlN/VN multilayer coatings exhibit excellent dry sliding wear resistance and low friction coefficient, believed to be associated with the formation of tribo-films comprising Magnéli phases such as V2O5. In order to investigate this hypothesis, dry sliding wear of TiAlN/VN coatings was undertaken against Al2O3. Focused ion beam was used to generate site-specific TEM specimens. A thin (2-20nm) tribo-film was observed at the worn surface, with occasional 'roll-like' wear debris (φ 5-40nm). Both were amorphous and contained the same Ti, Al and V ratio as the coating, but with the nitrogen largely replaced by oxygen. No evidence of Magnéli phases was found. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd
A Pair of Disjoint 3-GDDs of type g^t u^1
Pairwise disjoint 3-GDDs can be used to construct some optimal
constant-weight codes. We study the existence of a pair of disjoint 3-GDDs of
type and establish that its necessary conditions are also sufficient.Comment: Designs, Codes and Cryptography (to appear
Self-nanomicellizing solid dispersion of edaravone: part I – oral bioavailability improvement
Background: Edaravone (EDR) is known for its free radical scavenging, antiapoptotic, antinecrotic, and anticytokine effects in neurological and non-neurological diseases. It is currently available clinically as Radicava® and Radicut®, intravenous medications, recently approved for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and cerebral infarction. However, the oral use of EDR is still restricted by its poor oral bioavailability (BA) due to poor aqueous solubility, stability, rapid metabolism, and low permeability. The present study reports the development of novel EDR formulation (NEF) using self-nanomicellizing solid dispersion (SNMSD) strategy with the aim to enable its oral use. Materials and methods: The selection of a suitable carrier for the development of NEF was performed based on the miscibility study. The optimization of EDR-to-carrier ratio was conducted via kinetic solubility study after preparing SNMSDs using solvent evaporation technique. The drug–polymer carrier interaction and self-nanomicellizing properties of NEF were investigated with advanced characterization studies. In vitro permeation, metabolism, and dissolution study was carried out to examine the effect of the presence of a carrier on physicochemical properties of EDR. Additionally, the dose-dependent pharmacokinetic study of NEF was conducted and compared with the EDR suspension. Results: Soluplus® (SOL) as a carrier was selected based on the potential for improving aqueous solubility. The NEF containing EDR and SOL (1:5) resulted in the highest enhancement in aqueous solubility (17.53-fold) due to amorphization, hydrogen bonding interaction, and micellization. Moreover, the NEF demonstrated significant improvement in metabolism, permeability, and dissolution profile of EDR. Furthermore, the oral BA of NEF showed 10.2-, 16.1-, and 14.8-fold enhancement compared to EDR suspension at 46, 138, and 414 µmol/kg doses. Conclusion: The results demonstrated that SNMSD strategy could serve as a promising way to enhance EDR oral BA and NEF could be a potential candidate for the treatment of diseases in which oxidative stress plays a key role in their pathogenesis.Ankit Parikh, Krishna Kathawala, Chun Chuan Tan, Sanjay Garg, Xin-Fu Zho
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Unimodal late fusion for NIST i-vector challenge on speaker detection
Speaker detection is a very interesting machine learning task for which the latest i-vector challenge has been coordinated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). A simple late fusion approach for the speaker detection task on the i-vector challenge is presented. The approach is based on the late fusion of scores from the cosine distance method (the baseline) and the scores obtained from linear discriminant analysis. The results show that by adapting the simple late fusion approach, the framework can outperform the baseline score for the decision cost function on the NIST i-vector machine learning challenge
Studies of Prototype CsI(Tl) Crystal Scintillators for Low-Energy Neutrino Experiments
Crystal scintillators provide potential merits for the pursuit of low-energy
low-background experiments. A CsI(Tl) scintillating crystal detector is being
constructed to study low-energy neutrino physics at a nuclear reactor, while
projects are underway to adopt this technique for dark matter searches. The
choice of the geometrical parameters of the crystal modules, as well as the
optimization of the read-out scheme, are the results of an R&D program.
Crystals with 40 cm in length were developed. The detector requirements and the
achieved performance of the prototypes are presented. Future prospects for this
technique are discussed.Comment: 32 pages, 14 figure
An angle-resolved photoemission spectral function analysis of the electron doped cuprate Nd_1.85Ce_0.15CuO_4
Using methods made possible by recent advances in photoemission technology,
we perform an indepth line-shape analysis of the angle-resolved photoemission
spectra of the electron doped (n-type) cuprate superconductor
Nd_1.85Ce_0.15CuO_4. Unlike for the p-type materials, we only observe weak mass
renormalizations near 50-70 meV. This may be indicative of smaller
electron-phonon coupling or due to the masking effects of other interactions
that make the electron-phonon coupling harder to detect. This latter scenario
may suggest limitations of the spectral function analysis in extracting
electronic self-energies when some of the interactions are highly momentum
dependent.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
Surprises in the Orbital Magnetic Moment and g-Factor of the Dynamic Jahn-Teller Ion C_{60}^-
We calculate the magnetic susceptibility and g-factor of the isolated
C_{60}^- ion at zero temperature, with a proper treatment of the dynamical
Jahn-Teller effect, and of the associated orbital angular momentum, Ham-reduced
gyromagnetic ratio, and molecular spin-orbit coupling. A number of surprises
emerge. First, the predicted molecular spin-orbit splitting is two orders of
magnitude smaller than in the bare carbon atom, due to the large radius of
curvature of the molecule. Second, this reduced spin-orbit splitting is
comparable to Zeeman energies, for instance, in X-band EPR at 3.39KGauss, and a
field dependence of the g-factor is predicted. Third, the orbital gyromagnetic
factor is strongly reduced by vibron coupling, and so therefore are the
effective weak-field g-factors of all low-lying states. In particular, the
ground-state doublet of C_{60}^- is predicted to show a negative g-factor of
\sim -0.1.Comment: 19 pages RevTex, 2 postscript figures include
Electronic structure in underdoped cuprates due to the emergence of a pseudogap
The phenomenological Green's function developed in the works of Yang, Rice
and Zhang has been very successful in understanding many of the anomalous
superconducting properties of the deeply underdoped cuprates. It is based on
considerations of the resonating valence bond spin liquid approximation and is
designed to describe the underdoped regime of the cuprates. Here we emphasize
the region of doping, , just below the quantum critical point at which the
pseudogap develops. In addition to Luttinger hole pockets centered around the
nodal direction, there are electron pockets near the antinodes which are
connected to the hole pockets by gapped bridging contours. We determine the
contours of nearest approach as would be measured in angular resolved
photoemission experiments and emphasize signatures of the Fermi surface
reconstruction from the large Fermi contour of Fermi liquid theory (which
contains hole states) to the Luttinger pocket (which contains hole
states). We find that the quasiparticle effective mass renormalization
increases strongly towards the edge of the Luttinger pockets beyond which it
diverges.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure
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