High-temperature deformation and microstructural analysis for Si3N4-Sc2O3

It was indicated that Si3N4 doped with Sc2O3 may exhibit high temperature mechanical properties superior to Si3N4 systems with various other oxide sintered additives. High temperature deformation of samples was studied by characterizing the microstructures before and after deformation. It was found that elements of the additive, such as Sc and O, exist in small amounts at very thin grain boundary layers and most of them stay in secondary phases at triple and multiple grain boundary junctions. These secondary phases are devitrified as crystalline Sc2Si2O7. Deformation of the samples was dominated by cavitational processes rather than movements of dislocations. Thus the excellent deformation resistance of the samples at high temperature can be attributed to the very small thickness of the grain boundary layers and the crystalline secondary phase

A two-phase approach for detecting recombination in nucleotide sequences

Genetic recombination can produce heterogeneous phylogenetic histories within a set of homologous genes. Delineating recombination events is important in the study of molecular evolution, as inference of such events provides a clearer picture of the phylogenetic relationships among different gene sequences or genomes. Nevertheless, detecting recombination events can be a daunting task, as the performance of different recombinationdetecting approaches can vary, depending on evolutionary events that take place after recombination. We recently evaluated the effects of postrecombination events on the prediction accuracy of recombination-detecting approaches using simulated nucleotide sequence data. The main conclusion, supported by other studies, is that one should not depend on a single method when searching for recombination events. In this paper, we introduce a two-phase strategy, applying three statistical measures to detect the occurrence of recombination events, and a Bayesian phylogenetic approach in delineating breakpoints of such events in nucleotide sequences. We evaluate the performance of these approaches using simulated data, and demonstrate the applicability of this strategy to empirical data. The two-phase strategy proves to be time-efficient when applied to large datasets, and yields high-confidence results.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Chan CX, Beiko RG and Ragan MA (2007). A two-phase approach for detecting recombination in nucleotide sequences. In Hazelhurst S and Ramsay M (Eds) Proceedings of the First Southern African Bioinformatics Workshop, 28-30 January, Johannesburg, 9-1

Nonfrustrated magnetoelectric with incommensurate magnetic order in magnetic field

We discuss a model nonfrustrated magnetoelectric in which strong enough magnetoelectric coupling produces incommensurate magnetic order leading to ferroelectricity. Properties of the magnetoelectric in magnetic field directed perpendicular to wave vector describing the spin helix are considered in detail. Analysis of classical energy shows that in contrast to naive expectation the onset of ferroelectricity takes place at a field $H_{c1}$ that is lower than the saturation field $H_{c2}$. One has $H_{c1}=H_{c2}$ at strong enough magnetoelectric coupling. We show that at H=0 the ferroelectricity appears at $T=T_{FE}<T_N$. Qualitative discussion of phase diagram in $H-T$ plane is presented within mean field approach.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, accepted in JET

Tunneling magnetoresistance in (La,Pr,Ca)MnO3 nanobridges

The manganite (La,Pr,Ca)MnO3 is well known for its micrometer scale phase separation into coexisting ferromagnetic metallic and antiferromagnetic insulating (AFI) regions. Fabricating bridges with widths smaller than the phase separation length scale has allowed us to probe the magnetic properties of individual phase separated regions. We observe tunneling magnetoresistance across naturally occurring AFI tunnel barriers separating adjacent ferromagnetic regions spanning the width of the bridges. Further, near the Curie temperature, a magnetic field induced metal-to-insulator transition among a discrete number of regions within the narrow bridges gives rise to abrupt and colossal low-field magnetoresistance steps at well defined switching fields.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Applied Physics Letter

Near-Complete Teleportation of a Superposed Coherent State

The four Bell-type entangled coherent states, |\alpha>|-\alpha> \pm |-\alpha> |\alpha> and |\alpha>|\alpha> \pm |-\alpha> |-\alpha>, can be discriminated with a high probability using only linear optical means, as long as |\alpha| is not too small. Based on this observation, we propose a simple scheme to almost completely teleport a superposed coherent state. The nonunitary transformation, that is required to complete the teleportation, can be achieved by embedding the receiver's field state in a larger Hilbert space consisting of the field and a single atom and performing a unitary transformation on this Hilbert space.Comment: 4 pages,3 figures, Two columns, LaTex2