4,101 research outputs found
Thermodynamically stable noncomposite vortices in mesoscopic two-gap superconductors
In mesoscopic two-gap superconductors with sizes of the order of the
coherence length noncomposite vortices are found to be thermodynamically stable
in a large domain of the phase diagram. In these phases the vortex
cores of one condensate are spatially separated from the other condensate ones,
and their respective distributions can adopt distinct symmetries. The
appearance of these vortex phases is caused by a non-negligible effect of the
boundary of the sample on the superconducting order parameter and represents
therefore a genuine mesoscopic effect. For low values of interband Josephson
coupling vortex patterns with can arise in addition to the
phases with , where and are total vorticities in the two
condensates. The calculations show that noncomposite vortices could be observed
in thin mesoscopic samples of MgB.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, to be published in Europhysics Letter
Type-1.5 Superconductors
We demonstrate the existence of a novel superconducting state in high quality
two-component MgB2 single crystalline superconductors where a unique
combination of both type-1 (kappa_1 0.707)
superconductor conditions is realized for the two components of the order
parameter. This condition leads to a vortex-vortex interaction attractive at
long distances and repulsive at short distances, which stabilizes
unconventional stripe- and gossamer-like vortex patterns that we have
visualized in this type-1.5 superconductor using Bitter decoration and also
reproduced in numerical simulations.Comment: accepted in Phys. Rev. Let
Ultrafast trapping times in ion implanted InP
As⁺ and P⁺implantation was performed on semi-insulating (SI) and p-type InP samples for the purpose of creating a material suitable for ultrafast optoelectronic applications. SI InP samples were implanted with a dose of 1×10¹⁶ cm⁻² and p-type InP was implanted with doses between 1×10¹² and 1×10¹⁶ cm⁻². Subsequently, rapid thermal annealing at temperatures between 400 and 700 °C was performed for 30 sec. Hall-effect measurements, double-crystal x-ray diffraction, and time-resolved femtosecond differential reflectivity showed that, for the highest-annealing temperatures, the implanted SI InP samples exhibited high mobility, low resistivity, short response times, and minimal structural damage. Similar measurements on implantedp-type InP showed that the fast response time, high mobility, and good structural recovery could be retained while increasing the resistivity
Alpha-nucleus potential for alpha-decay and sub-barrier fusion
The set of parameters for alpha-nucleus potential is derived by using the
data for both the alpha-decay half-lives and the fusion cross-sections around
the barrier for reactions alpha+40Ca, alpha+59Co, alpha+208Pb. The alpha-decay
half-lives are obtained in the framework of a cluster model using the WKB
approximation. The evaluated alpha-decay half-lives and the fusion
cross-sections agreed well with the data. Fusion reactions between
alpha-particle and heavy nuclei can be used for both the formation of very
heavy nuclei and spectroscopic studies of the formed compound nuclei.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Giant vortices, vortex rings and reentrant behavior in type-1.5 superconductors
We predict that in a bulk type-1.5 superconductor the competing magnetic
responses of the two components of the order parameter can result in a vortex
interaction that generates group-stabilized giant vortices and unusual vortex
rings in the absence of any extrinsic pinning or confinement mechanism. We also
find within the Ginzburg-Landau theory a rich phase diagram with successions of
behaviors like type-1 -> type-1.5 -> type-2 -> type-1.5 as temperature
decreases.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Semi-supervised Convolutional Neural Networks for Flood Mapping using Multi-modal Remote Sensing Data
When floods hit populated areas, quick detection of flooded areas is crucial for initial response by local government, residents, and volunteers. Space-borne polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (PolSAR) is an authoritative data sources for flood mapping since it can be acquired immediately after a disaster even at night time or cloudy weather. Conventionally, a lot of domain-specific heuristic knowledge has been applied for PolSAR flood mapping, but their performance still suffers from confusing pixels caused by irregular reflections of radar waves. Optical images are another data source that can be used to detect flooded areas due to their high spectral correlation with the open water surface. However, they are often affected by day, night, or severe weather conditions (i.e., cloud). This paper presents a convolution neural network (CNN) based multimodal approach utilizing the advantages of both PolSAR and optical images for flood mapping. First, reference training data is retrieved from optical images by manual annotation. Since clouds may appear in the optical image, only areas with a clear view of flooded or non-flooded are annotated. Then, a semisupervised polarimetric-features-aided CNN is utilized for flood mapping using PolSAR data. The proposed model not only can handle the issue of learning with incomplete ground truth but also can leverage a large portion of unlabelled pixels for learning. Moreover, our model takes the advantages of expert knowledge on scattering interpretation to incorporate polarimetric-features as the input. Experiments results are given for the flood event that occurred in Sendai, Japan, on 12th March 2011. The experiments show that our framework can map flooded area with high accuracy (F1 = 96:12) and outperform conventional flood mapping methods
Pharmacology and clinical drug candidates in redox medicine
SIGNIFICANCE
Oxidative stress is suggested to be a disease mechanism common to a wide range of disorders affecting human health. However, so far, the pharmacotherapeutic exploitation of this, for example, based on chemical scavenging of pro-oxidant molecules, has been unsuccessful. Recent Advances: An alternative emerging approach is to target the enzymatic sources of disease-relevant oxidative stress. Several such enzymes and isoforms have been identified and linked to different pathologies. For some targets, the respective pharmacology is quite advanced, that is, up to late-stage clinical development or even on the market; for others, drugs are already in clinical use, although not for indications based on oxidative stress, and repurposing seems to be a viable option.
CRITICAL ISSUES
For all other targets, reliable preclinical validation and drug ability are key factors for any translation into the clinic. In this study, specific pharmacological agents with optimal pharmacokinetic profiles are still lacking. Moreover, these enzymes also serve largely unknown physiological functions and their inhibition may lead to unwanted side effects.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
The current promising data based on new targets, drugs, and drug repurposing are mainly a result of academic efforts. With the availability of optimized compounds and coordinated efforts from academia and industry scientists, unambiguous validation and translation into proof-of-principle studies seem achievable in the very near future, possibly leading towards a new era of redox medicine
Anisotropy of the upper critical field in MgB2: the two-gap Ginzburg-Landau theory
The upper critical field in MgB2 is investigated in the framework of the
two-gap Ginzburg-Landau theory. A variational solution of linearized
Ginzburg-Landau equations agrees well with the Landau level expansion and
demonstrates that spatial distributions of the gap functions are different in
the two bands and change with temperature. The temperature variation of the
ratio of two gaps is responsible for the upward temperature dependence of
in-plane Hc2 as well as for the deviation of its out-of-plane behavior from the
standard angular dependence. The hexagonal in-plane modulations of Hc2 can
change sign with decreasing temperature.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, accepted in the European Physical Journal
Statefinder diagnostic for cosmology with the abnormally weighting energy hypothesis
In this paper, we apply the statefinder diagnostic to the cosmology with the
Abnormally Weighting Energy hypothesis (AWE cosmology), in which dark energy in
the observational (ordinary matter) frame results from the violation of weak
equivalence principle (WEP) by pressureless matter. It is found that there
exist closed loops in the statefinder plane, which is an interesting
characteristic of the evolution trajectories of statefinder parameters and can
be used to distinguish AWE cosmology from the other cosmological models.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted by PR
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