27,947 research outputs found
Experimental investigation of tension and compression creep-ageing behaviour of AA2050 with different initial tempers
Strain-stress study of AlxGa1-xN/AlN heterostructures on c-plane sapphire and related optical properties
This work presents a systematic study of stress and strain of AlxGa1-xN/AlN
with composition ranging from GaN to AlN, grown on a c-plane sapphire by
metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, using synchrotron radiation
high-resolution X-ray diffraction and reciprocal space mapping. The c-plane of
the AlxGa1-xN epitaxial layers exhibits compressive strain, while the a-plane
exhibits tensile strain. The biaxial stress and strain are found to increase
with increasing Al composition, although the lattice mismatch between the
AlxGa1-xN and the buffer layer AlN gets smaller. A reduction in the lateral
coherence lengths and an increase in the edge and screw dislocations are seen
as the AlxGa1-xN composition is varied from GaN to AlN, exhibiting a clear
dependence of the crystal properties of AlxGa1-xN on the Al content. The
bandgap of the epitaxial layers is slightly lower than predicted value due to a
larger tensile strain effect on the a-axis compared to the compressive strain
on the c-axis. Raman characteristics of the AlxGa1-xN samples exhibit a shift
in the phonon peaks with the Al composition. The effect of strain is also
discussed on the optical phonon energies of the epitaxial layers. The
techniques discussed here can be used to study other similar materials.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, 2 table
1/t pressure and fermion behaviour of water in two dimensions
A variety of metal vacuum systems display the celebrated 1/t pressure, namely
power-law dependence on time t, with the exponent close to unity, the origin of
which has been a long-standing controversy. Here we propose a chemisorption
model for water adsorbates, based on the argument for fermion behaviour of
water vapour adsorbed on a stainless-steel surface, and obtain analytically the
power-law behaviour of pressure, with an exponent of unity. Further, the model
predicts that the pressure should depend on the temperature T according to
T^(3/2), which is indeed confirmed by our experiment. Our results should help
elucidate the unique characteristics of the adsorbed water.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure
Identifying influential spreaders and efficiently estimating infection numbers in epidemic models: a walk counting approach
We introduce a new method to efficiently approximate the number of infections
resulting from a given initially-infected node in a network of susceptible
individuals. Our approach is based on counting the number of possible infection
walks of various lengths to each other node in the network. We analytically
study the properties of our method, in particular demonstrating different forms
for SIS and SIR disease spreading (e.g. under the SIR model our method counts
self-avoiding walks). In comparison to existing methods to infer the spreading
efficiency of different nodes in the network (based on degree, k-shell
decomposition analysis and different centrality measures), our method directly
considers the spreading process and, as such, is unique in providing estimation
of actual numbers of infections. Crucially, in simulating infections on various
real-world networks with the SIR model, we show that our walks-based method
improves the inference of effectiveness of nodes over a wide range of infection
rates compared to existing methods. We also analyse the trade-off between
estimate accuracy and computational cost, showing that the better accuracy here
can still be obtained at a comparable computational cost to other methods.Comment: 6 page
Carrier-mediated antiferromagnetic interlayer exchange coupling in diluted magnetic semiconductor multilayers GaMnAs/GaAs:Be
We use neutron reflectometry to investigate the interlayer exchange coupling
between GaMnAs ferromagnetic semiconductor layers separated
by non-magnetic Be-doped GaAs spacers. Polarized neutron reflectivity measured
below the Curie temperature of GaMnAs reveals a
characteristic splitting at the wave vector corresponding to twice the
multilayer period, indicating that the coupling between the ferromagnetic
layers are antiferromagnetic (AFM). When the applied field is increased to
above the saturation field, this AFM coupling is suppressed. This behavior is
not observed when the spacers are undoped, suggesting that the observed AFM
coupling is mediated by charge carriers introduced via Be doping. The behavior
of magnetization of the multilayers measured by DC magnetometry is consistent
with the neutron reflectometry results.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Modulus Computational Entropy
The so-called {\em leakage-chain rule} is a very important tool used in many
security proofs. It gives an upper bound on the entropy loss of a random
variable in case the adversary who having already learned some random
variables correlated with , obtains some further
information about . Analogously to the information-theoretic
case, one might expect that also for the \emph{computational} variants of
entropy the loss depends only on the actual leakage, i.e. on .
Surprisingly, Krenn et al.\ have shown recently that for the most commonly used
definitions of computational entropy this holds only if the computational
quality of the entropy deteriorates exponentially in
. This means that the current standard definitions
of computational entropy do not allow to fully capture leakage that occurred
"in the past", which severely limits the applicability of this notion.
As a remedy for this problem we propose a slightly stronger definition of the
computational entropy, which we call the \emph{modulus computational entropy},
and use it as a technical tool that allows us to prove a desired chain rule
that depends only on the actual leakage and not on its history. Moreover, we
show that the modulus computational entropy unifies other,sometimes seemingly
unrelated, notions already studied in the literature in the context of
information leakage and chain rules. Our results indicate that the modulus
entropy is, up to now, the weakest restriction that guarantees that the chain
rule for the computational entropy works. As an example of application we
demonstrate a few interesting cases where our restricted definition is
fulfilled and the chain rule holds.Comment: Accepted at ICTS 201
Comparison of chemical profiles and effectiveness between Erxian decoction and mixtures of decoctions of its individual herbs : a novel approach for identification of the standard chemicals
Acknowledgements This study was partially supported by grants from the Seed Funding Programme for Basic Research (Project Number 201211159146 and 201411159213), the University of Hong Kong. We thank Mr Keith Wong and Ms Cindy Lee for their technical assistances.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
One-step Conjugation of Glycyrrhetinic Acid to Cationic Polymers for High-performance Gene Delivery to Cultured Liver Cell
Gene therapies represent a promising therapeutic route for liver cancers, but major challenges remain in the design of safe and efficient gene-targeting delivery systems. For example, cationic polymers show good transfection efficiency as gene carriers, but are hindered by cytotoxicity and non-specific targeting. Here we report a versatile method of one-step conjugation of glycyrrhetinic acid (GA) to reduce cytotoxicity and improve the cultured liver cell-targeting capability of cationic polymers. We have explored a series of cationic polymer derivatives by coupling different ratios of GA to polypropylenimine (PPI) dendrimer. These new gene carriers (GA-PPI dendrimer) were systematically characterized by UV-vis, 1 H NMR titration, electron microscopy, zeta potential, dynamic light-scattering, gel electrophoresis, confocal microscopy and flow cytometry. We demonstrate that GA-PPI dendrimers can efficiently load and protect pDNA, via formation of nanostructured GA-PPI/pDNA polyplexes. With optimal GA substitution degree (6.31%), GA-PPI dendrimers deliver higher liver cell transfection efficiency (43.5% vs 22.3%) and lower cytotoxicity (94.3% vs 62.5%, cell viability) than the commercial bench-mark DNA carrier bPEI (25kDa) with cultured liver model cells (HepG 2). There results suggest that our new GA-PPI dendrimer are a promising candidate gene carrier for targeted liver cancer therapy
- …