1,777 research outputs found
Island, pit, and groove formation in strained heteroepitaxy
2005-2006 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe
The 2017 Magnetism Roadmap
Building upon the success and relevance of the 2014 Magnetism Roadmap, this 2017 Magnetism Roadmap edition follows a similar general layout, even if its focus is naturally shifted, and a different group of experts and, thus, viewpoints are being collected and presented. More importantly, key developments have changed the research landscape in very relevant ways, so that a novel view onto some of the most crucial developments is warranted, and thus, this 2017 Magnetism Roadmap article is a timely endeavour. The change in landscape is hereby not exclusively scientific, but also reflects the magnetism related industrial application portfolio. Specifically, Hard Disk Drive technology, which still dominates digital storage and will continue to do so for many years, if not decades, has now limited its footprint in the scientific and research community, whereas significantly growing interest in magnetism and magnetic materials in relation to energy applications is noticeable, and other technological fields are emerging as well. Also, more and more work is occurring in which complex topologies of magnetically ordered states are being explored, hereby aiming at a technological utilization of the very theoretical concepts that were recognised by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics. Given this somewhat shifted scenario, it seemed appropriate to select topics for this Roadmap article that represent the three core pillars of magnetism, namely magnetic materials, magnetic phenomena and associated characterization techniques, as well as applications of magnetism. While many of the contributions in this Roadmap have clearly overlapping relevance in all three fields, their relative focus is mostly associated to one of the three pillars. In this way, the interconnecting roles of having suitable magnetic materials, understanding (and being able to characterize) the underlying physics of their behaviour and utilizing them for applications and devices is well illustrated, thus giving an accurate snapshot of the world of magnetism in 2017. The article consists of 14 sections, each written by an expert in the field and addressing a specific subject on two pages. Evidently, the depth at which each contribution can describe the subject matter is limited and a full review of their statuses, advances, challenges and perspectives cannot be fully accomplished. Also, magnetism, as a vibrant research field, is too diverse, so that a number of areas will not be adequately represented here, leaving space for further Roadmap editions in the future. However, this 2017 Magnetism Roadmap article can provide a frame that will enable the reader to judge where each subject and magnetism research field stands overall today and which directions it might take in the foreseeable future. The first material focused pillar of the 2017 Magnetism Roadmap contains five articles, which address the questions of atomic scale confinement, 2D, curved and topological magnetic materials, as well as materials exhibiting unconventional magnetic phase transitions. The second pillar also has five contributions, which are devoted to advances in magnetic characterization, magneto-optics and magneto-plasmonics, ultrafast magnetization dynamics and magnonic transport. The final and application focused pillar has four contributions, which present non-volatile memory technology, antiferromagnetic spintronics, as well as magnet technology for energy and bio-related applications. As a whole, the 2017 Magnetism Roadmap article, just as with its 2014 predecessor, is intended to act as a reference point and guideline for emerging research directions in modern magnetism
Changes in cytokine production in healthy subjects practicing Guolin Qigong : a pilot study
BACKGROUND: Guolin Qigong is a combination of meditation, controlled breathing and physical movement designed to control the vital energy (qi) of the body and consequently to improve spiritual, physical and mental health. Practice of Qigong has been reported to alter immunological function, but there have been few studies of its effects on cytokines, the key regulators of immunity. METHODS: Numbers of peripheral blood cytokine-secreting cells were determined by ELISPOT in 19 healthy volunteers aged 27 â 55, before they were taught the practice of Qigong and after 3, 7 and 14 weeks of daily practice. The effect of Qigong on blood cortisol was also examined. RESULTS: Numbers of IL4 and IL12-secreting cells remained stable. IL6 increased at 7 weeks and TNFα increased in unstimulated cultures at 3 and 7 weeks but decreased at these times in LPS and SAC-stimulated cultures. Of particular interest, IFNÎł-secreting cells increased and IL10-secreting cells decreased in PHA-stimulated cultures, resulting in significant increases in the IFNÎł:IL10 ratio. Cortisol, a known inhibitor of type 1 cytokine production, was reduced by practicing Qigong. CONCLUSION: These preliminary studies in healthy subjects, although not necessarily representative of a randomized healthy population and not including a separate control group, have indicated that blood levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol may be lowered by short-term practice of Qigong and that there are concomitant changes in numbers of cytokine-secreting cells. Further studies of the effect of Qigong in patients with clinical diseases known to be associated with type 2 cytokine predominance are merited
Sensitivity of nucleon-nucleus scattering to the off-shell behavior of on-shell equivalent NN potentials
The sensitivity of nucleon-nucleus elastic scattering to the off-shell
behavior of realistic nucleon-nucleon interactions is investigated when
on-shell equivalent nucleon-nucleon potentials are used. The study is based on
applications of the full-folding optical model potential for an explicit
treatment of the off-shell behavior of the nucleon-nucleon effective
interaction. Applications were made at beam energies between 40 and 500 MeV for
proton scattering from 40Ca and 208Pb. We use the momentum-dependent Paris
potential and its local on-shell equivalent as obtained with the
Gelfand-Levitan and Marchenko inversion formalism for the two nucleon
Schroedinger equation. Full-folding calculations for nucleon-nucleus scattering
show small fluctuations in the corresponding observables. This implies that
off-shell features of the NN interaction cannot be unambiguously identified
with these processes. Inversion potentials were also constructed directly from
NN phase-shift data (SM94) in the 0-1.3 GeV energy range. Their use in
proton-nucleus scattering above 200 MeV provide a superior description of the
observables relative to those obtained from current realistic NN potentials.
Limitations and scope of our findings are presented and discussed.Comment: 17 pages tightened REVTeX, 8 .ps figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Analysis of NN Amplitudes up to 2.5 GeV: An Optical Model and Geometric Interpretation
We analyse the SM97 partial wave amplitudes for nucleon--nucleon (NN)
scattering to 2.5 GeV, in which resonance and meson production effects are
evident for energies above pion production threshold. Our analyses are based
upon boson exchange or quantum inversion potentials with which the
sub-threshold data are fit perfectly. Above 300 MeV they are extrapolations, to
which complex short ranged Gaussian potentials are added in the spirit of the
optical models of nuclear physics and of diffraction models of high energy
physics. The data to 2.5 GeV are all well fit. The energy dependences of these
Gaussians are very smooth save for precise effects caused by the known
and N resonances. With this approach, we confirm that the geometrical
implications of the profile function found from diffraction scattering are
pertinent in the regime 300 MeV to 2.5 GeV and that the overwhelming part of
meson production comes from the QCD sector of the nucleons when they have a
separation of their centres of 1 to 1.2 fm. This analysis shows that the
elastic NN scattering data above 300 MeV can be understood with a local
potential operator as well as has the data below 300 MeV.Comment: 49 pages, including 23 figures, LaTeX2e/RevTeX/ps fil
IceCube - the next generation neutrino telescope at the South Pole
IceCube is a large neutrino telescope of the next generation to be
constructed in the Antarctic Ice Sheet near the South Pole. We present the
conceptual design and the sensitivity of the IceCube detector to predicted
fluxes of neutrinos, both atmospheric and extra-terrestrial. A complete
simulation of the detector design has been used to study the detector's
capability to search for neutrinos from sources such as active galaxies, and
gamma-ray bursts.Comment: 8 pages, to be published with the proceedings of the XXth
International Conference on Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics, Munich 200
The detection and location estimation of disasters using Twitter and the identification of Non-Governmental Organisations using crowdsourcing
status: publishe
The search for transient astrophysical neutrino emission with IceCube-DeepCore
We present the results of a search for astrophysical sources of brief transient neutrino emission using IceCube and DeepCore data acquired between 2012 May 15 and 2013 April 30. While the search methods employed in this analysis are similar to those used in previous IceCube point source searches, the data set being examined consists of a sample of predominantly sub-TeV muon-neutrinos from the Northern Sky (-5 degrees < delta < 90 degrees) obtained through a novel event selection method. This search represents a first attempt by IceCube to identify astrophysical neutrino sources in this relatively unexplored energy range. The reconstructed direction and time of arrival of neutrino events are used to search for any significant self-correlation in the data set. The data revealed no significant source of transient neutrino emission. This result has been used to construct limits at timescales ranging from roughly 1 s to 10 days for generic soft-spectra transients. We also present limits on a specific model of neutrino emission from soft jets in core-collapse supernovae
All-particle cosmic ray energy spectrum measured with 26 IceTop stations
We report on a measurement of the cosmic ray energy spectrum with the IceTop
air shower array, the surface component of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at
the South Pole. The data used in this analysis were taken between June and
October, 2007, with 26 surface stations operational at that time, corresponding
to about one third of the final array. The fiducial area used in this analysis
was 0.122 km^2. The analysis investigated the energy spectrum from 1 to 100 PeV
measured for three different zenith angle ranges between 0{\deg} and 46{\deg}.
Because of the isotropy of cosmic rays in this energy range the spectra from
all zenith angle intervals have to agree. The cosmic-ray energy spectrum was
determined under different assumptions on the primary mass composition. Good
agreement of spectra in the three zenith angle ranges was found for the
assumption of pure proton and a simple two-component model. For zenith angles
{\theta} < 30{\deg}, where the mass dependence is smallest, the knee in the
cosmic ray energy spectrum was observed between 3.5 and 4.32 PeV, depending on
composition assumption. Spectral indices above the knee range from -3.08 to
-3.11 depending on primary mass composition assumption. Moreover, an indication
of a flattening of the spectrum above 22 PeV were observed.Comment: 38 pages, 17 figure
- âŠ