Determination of micro-scale plastic strain caused by orthogonal cutting

An electron beam lithography technique has been used to produce microgrids in order to measure local plastic strains, induced during an orthogonal cutting process, at the microscopic scale in the shear zone and under the machined surface. Microgrids with a 10 μm pitch and a line width less than 1 μm have been printed on the polished surface of an aluminium alloy AA 5182 to test the applicability of the technique in metal cutting operations. Orthogonal cutting tests were carried out at 40 mm/s. Results show that the distortion of the grids could successfully be used to compute plastic strains due to orthogonal cutting with higher accuracy compared to other techniques reported in the literature. Strain maps of the machined specimens have been produced and show high-strain gradients very close to the machined surface with local values reaching 2.2. High-resolution strain measurements carried out in the primary deformation zone also provide new insight into the material deformation during the chip formation process

Cosmic Strings in the Abelian Higgs Model with Conformal Coupling to Gravity

Cosmic string solutions of the abelian Higgs model with conformal coupling to gravity are shown to exist. The main characteristics of the solutions are presented and the differences with respect to the minimally coupled case are studied. An important difference is the absence of Bogomolnyi cosmic string solutions for conformal coupling. Several new features of the abelian Higgs cosmic strings of both types are discussed. The most interesting is perhaps a relation between the angular deficit and the central magnetic field which is bounded by a critical value.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev.

Modelling Tropical Deforestation: A Comparison of Approaches

International audienceTropical deforestation, as an important factor in global change, is a topic that recently has received considerable attention. GIS-based spatially explicit models that intend to predict the location of land use/cover change (LUCC) can help scientists and policy makers to understand, anticipate and possibly prevent the adverse effects of land-use change. There are many approaches and softwares to model LUCC such as CLUE-S, DINAMICA GEOMOD and IDRISI. This study intends to compare these four modelling approaches. First, a review of methods and tools employed by each software to carry out the simulation was done. Then, the four packages were applied to a "virtual" case which involves a map of deforestation, which comprises two types of deforestation (forest to shifting agriculture and forest to pasture lands), along with several explanatory variables (drivers). Deforestation was modelled using the four approaches and the output maps were compared

The STAR Silicon Strip Detector (SSD)

The STAR Silicon Strip Detector (SSD) completes the three layers of the Silicon Vertex Tracker (SVT) to make an inner tracking system located inside the Time Projection Chamber (TPC). This additional fourth layer provides two dimensional hit position and energy loss measurements for charged particles, improving the extrapolation of TPC tracks through SVT hits. To match the high multiplicity of central Au+Au collisions at RHIC the double sided silicon strip technology was chosen which makes the SSD a half million channels detector. Dedicated electronics have been designed for both readout and control. Also a novel technique of bonding, the Tape Automated Bonding (TAB), was used to fullfill the large number of bounds to be done. All aspects of the SSD are shortly described here and test performances of produced detection modules as well as simulated results on hit reconstruction are given.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

Complete Classification of the String-like Solutions of the Gravitating Abelian Higgs Model

The static cylindrically symmetric solutions of the gravitating Abelian Higgs model form a two parameter family. In this paper we give a complete classification of the string-like solutions of this system. We show that the parameter plane is composed of two different regions with the following characteristics: One region contains the standard asymptotically conic cosmic string solutions together with a second kind of solutions with Melvin-like asymptotic behavior. The other region contains two types of solutions with bounded radial extension. The border between the two regions is the curve of maximal angular deficit of $2\pi$.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Detection and Determination of Released Ions in the Presence of Nanoparticles: Selectivity or Strategy?

Metallic nanoparticles can release ionic species, but also both species can occur in the same samples. Therefore, there is a need of efficient and cost-effective methods to determine these ionic species in the presence of the corresponding nanoparticles. Electroanalytical techniques open the door to this selective detection of NPs and their ions. In this work, a methodology that allows the direct determination of ionic silver (Ag+) in the presence of silver nanoparticles based on anodic stripping voltammetry was implemented. Silver nanoparticles were determined, after acidic digestion of the sample, by difference with respect to the total content of silver. The method was validated in terms of specific identification of silver ions, linearity, working range, limit of detection, limit of quantification, recovery, repeatability and ruggedness. All parameters are adequate for an analytical method following Eurachem recommendations. The validated method was used to determine the concentration of Ag+ and total silver in two commercial products of colloidal silver. The results were compared with those obtained by atomic absorption spectrometry in combination with an ultrafiltration step for isolation of ionic silver. There were no significant differences in the results. The proposed methodology benefits from the intrinsic selectivity of the electroanalysis methods, allowing to eliminate the steps of pretreatments of the samples, which are necessary in other techniques. The novelty of the article lies in the direct determination of Ag (I) ions in the presence of AgNPs, without the use of previous separation steps

Evaluation of agarose gel electrophoresis for characterization of silver nanoparticles in industrial products

Agarose gel electrophoresis (AGE) has been used extensively for characterization of pure nanomaterials or mixtures of pure nanomaterials. We have evaluated the use of AGE for characterization of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) in an industrial product (described as strong antiseptic). Influence of different stabilizing agents (PEG, SDS, and sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate), buffers (TBE and Tris Glycine), and functionalizing agents (mercaptosuccinic acid (TMA) and proteins) has been investigated for the characterization of AgNPs in the industrial product using different sizes-AgNPs standards. The use of 1% SDS, 0.1% TMA, and Tris Glycine in gel, electrophoresis buffer and loading buffer led to the different sizes-AgNPs standards moved according to their size/charge ratio (obtaining a linear relationship between apparent mobility and mean diameter). After using SDS and TMA, the behavior of the AgNPs in the industrial product (containing a casein matrix) was completely different, being not possible their size characterization. However we demonstrated that AGE with LA-ICP-MS detection is an alternative method to confirm the protein corona formation between the industrial product and two proteins (BSA and transferrin) maintaining NPs-protein binding (what is not possible using SDS-PAGE)

Topological Defects as Seeds for Eternal Inflation

We investigate the global structure of inflationary universe both by analytical methods and by computer simulations of stochastic processes in the early Universe. We show that the global structure of the universe depends crucially on the mechanism of inflation. In the simplest models of chaotic inflation the Universe looks like a sea of thermalized phase surrounding permanently self-reproducing inflationary domains. In the theories where inflation occurs near a local extremum of the effective potential corresponding to a metastable state, the Universe looks like de Sitter space surrounding islands of thermalized phase. A similar picture appears even if the state $\phi = 0$ is unstable but the effective potential has a discrete symmetry $\phi \to =-\phi$. In this case the Universe becomes divided into domains containing different phases. These domains will be separated from each other by domain walls. However, unlike ordinary domain walls, these domain walls will inflate, and their thickness will exponentially grow. In the theories with continuous symmetries inflation generates exponentially expanding strings and monopoles surrounded by thermalized phase. Inflating topological defects will be stable, and they will unceasingly produce new inflating topological defects. This means that topological defects may play a role of indestructible seeds for eternal inflation.Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures (not included), Stanford University preprint SU--ITP--94--

Search for direct production of charginos and neutralinos in events with three leptons and missing transverse momentum in √s = 7 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for the direct production of charginos and neutralinos in final states with three electrons or muons and missing transverse momentum is presented. The analysis is based on 4.7 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded with the ATLAS detector. Observations are consistent with Standard Model expectations in three signal regions that are either depleted or enriched in Z-boson decays. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in R-parity conserving phenomenological minimal supersymmetric models and in simplified models, significantly extending previous results

Search for composite and exotic fermions at LEP 2

A search for unstable heavy fermions with the DELPHI detector at LEP is reported. Sequential and non-canonical leptons, as well as excited leptons and quarks, are considered. The data analysed correspond to an integrated luminosity of about 48 pb^{-1} at an e^+e^- centre-of-mass energy of 183 GeV and about 20 pb^{-1} equally shared between the centre-of-mass energies of 172 GeV and 161 GeV. The search for pair-produced new leptons establishes 95% confidence level mass limits in the region between 70 GeV/c^2 and 90 GeV/c^2, depending on the channel. The search for singly produced excited leptons and quarks establishes upper limits on the ratio of the coupling of the excited fermio