776 research outputs found
Investigation into time dependant degradation and atmospheric conditions on the wettability of nylon 6,6 which has undergone CO2 laser surface modification
Modification of the wettability of polymers has been demonstrated previously; however, it is known that the wettability modifications of these materials can degrade or vary over time. This can be seen to be crucial from a commercial point of view as this would indicate that a shelf-life has to be established. But at the same time, atmospheric parameters may affect the contact angle and must therefore be accounted for as a control variable in any long-term study of wettability. In this study four CO2 laser patterned nylon 6,6 samples with differing topographical patterns and one as-received sample were analysed over a 30 week period whilst stored in ambient air. By obtaining the characteristic contact angle every two weeks it was found that the contact angle varied erratically before ultimately increasing for all samples after the 30 weeks. White light interferometry analysis determined that the laser patterning gave rise to peak heights of up to 3 ÎĽm with roughness parameters Ra and Sa of up to 0.305 and 0.408 ÎĽm, respectively. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy found that surface oxygen content increased by up to 7 %At. It was identified that there was a significant correlation between changes in barometric air pressure and contact angle, highlighting the need for further study to determine if this is a dominant factor
Approaches to inform redevelopment of brownfield sites: an example from the Leeds area of the West Yorkshire coalfield, UK
Government-led regeneration schemes and policies encouraging the use of brownfield land present a challenge, particularly in coalfield areas. Coalfields have typically experienced multiple phases of development and can be susceptible to a suite of problematic ground conditions that may be rooted in the near-surface geology or result from anthropogenic activity. Such problems, related to the nature of void backfill, undermined and unstable ground and the presence of contaminated land in the near-surface, may deter investment in the very areas earmarked for redevelopment. An understanding of previous developments within coalfields is required to identify potential geological hazards, so that regeneration proposals include measures that address these issues. Public records of landfill and site investigations, and minerals exploration including opencast mine plans can reveal the distribution, thickness and high-level descriptions of fill materials, although the coverage of data typically precludes a comprehensive analysis of entire cities. The best way to show the spatial distribution of fill materials is currently as a two dimensional national/regional scale dataset. Depending on the distribution of data points, however, 3D modelling can be possible, which is much more detailed and accurate. Focusing on the heavily urbanised county of West Yorkshire in northern England, the assessment of opencast coal mining on the landscape and benefits of quantifying the impact are discussed. We demonstrate how certain types of publicly available data allow a greater understanding of the interaction between human activity and natural superficial and bedrock geology. If successful, this approach can help lessen the impact of delays and increased financial costs caused by unforeseen ground conditions
Interaction of CO2 laser-modified nylon with osteoblast cells in relation to wettability
It has been amply demonstrated previously that CO2 lasers hold the ability to surface modify various polymers. In addition, it has been observed that these surface enhancements can augment the biomimetic nature of the laser irradiated materials. This research has employed a CO2 laser marker to produce trench and hatch topographical patterns with peak heights of around 1 ÎĽm on the surface of nylon 6,6. The patterns generated have been analysed using white light interferometery, optical microscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was employed to determine the surface oxygen content. Contact angle measurements were used to characterize each sample in terms of wettability. Generally, it was seen that as a result of laser processing the contact angle, surface roughness and surface oxygen content increased whilst the apparent polar and total surface energies decreased. The increase in contact angle and reduction in surface energy components was found to be on account of a mixed intermediate state wetting regime owing to the change in roughness due to the induced topographical patterns. To determine the biomimetic nature of the modified and as-received control samples each one was seeded with 2Ă—104 cells/ml normal human osteoblast cells and observed after periods of 24 hours and 4 days using optical microscopy and SEM to determine mean cell cover densities and variations in cell morphology. In addition a haeymocytometer was used to show that the cell count for the laser patterned samples had increased by up to a factor of 1.5 compared to the as-received control sample after 4 days of incubation. Significantly, it was determined that all laser-induced patterns gave rise to better cell response in comparison to the as-received control sample studied due to increased preferential cell growth on those surfaces with increased surface roughness
Quasistatic Scale-free Networks
A network is formed using the sites of an one-dimensional lattice in the
shape of a ring as nodes and each node with the initial degree .
links are then introduced to this network, each link starts from a distinct
node, the other end being connected to any other node with degree randomly
selected with an attachment probability proportional to . Tuning
the control parameter we observe a transition where the average degree
of the largest node changes its variation from to
at a specific transition point of . The network is scale-free i.e.,
the nodal degree distribution has a power law decay for .Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure
Axion-like particles as ultra high energy cosmic rays?
If Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECRs) with E>4 10^{19} eV originate from
BL Lacertae at cosmological distances as suggested by recent studies, the
absence of the GZK cutoff can not be reconciled with Standard-Model particle
properties. Axions would escape the GZK cutoff, but even the coherent
conversion and back-conversion between photons and axions in large-scale
magnetic fields is not enough to produce the required flux. However, one may
construct models of other novel (pseudo)scalar neutral particles with
properties that would allow for sufficient rates of particle production in the
source and shower production in the atmosphere to explain the observations. As
an explicit example for such particles we consider SUSY models with light
sgoldstinos.Comment: 5 pages, 2 postscript figures, ref. adde
Hierarchical Organization in Complex Networks
Many real networks in nature and society share two generic properties: they
are scale-free and they display a high degree of clustering. We show that these
two features are the consequence of a hierarchical organization, implying that
small groups of nodes organize in a hierarchical manner into increasingly large
groups, while maintaining a scale-free topology. In hierarchical networks the
degree of clustering characterizing the different groups follows a strict
scaling law, which can be used to identify the presence of a hierarchical
organization in real networks. We find that several real networks, such as the
World Wide Web, actor network, the Internet at the domain level and the
semantic web obey this scaling law, indicating that hierarchy is a fundamental
characteristic of many complex systems
Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays from Neutrino Emitting Acceleration Sources?
We demonstrate by numerical flux calculations that neutrino beams producing
the observed highest energy cosmic rays by weak interactions with the relic
neutrino background require a non-uniform distribution of sources. Such sources
have to accelerate protons at least up to 10^{23} eV, have to be opaque to
their primary protons, and should emit the secondary photons unavoidably
produced together with the neutrinos only in the sub-MeV region to avoid
conflict with the diffuse gamma-ray background measured by the EGRET
experiment. Even if such a source class exists, the resulting large
uncertainties in the parameters involved in this scenario does currently not
allow to extract any meaningful information on absolute neutrino masses.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX styl
Current-carrying cosmic string loops 3D simulation: towards a reduction of the vorton excess problem
The dynamical evolution of superconducting cosmic string loops with specific
equations of state describing timelike and spacelike currents is studied
numerically. This analysis extends previous work in two directions: first it
shows results coming from a fully three dimensional simulation (as opposed to
the two dimensional case already studied), and it now includes fermionic as
well as bosonic currents. We confirm that in the case of bosonic currents,
shocks are formed in the magnetic regime and kinks in the electric regime. For
a loop endowed with a fermionic current with zero-mode carriers, we show that
only kinks form along the string worldsheet, therefore making these loops
slightly more stable against charge carrier radiation, the likely outcome of
either shocks or kinks. All these combined effects tend to reduce the number
density of stable loops and contribute to ease the vorton excess problem. As a
bonus, these effects also may provide new ways of producing high energy cosmic
rays.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX 4 format, 8 figures, submitted to PR
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