Surface Polar Phonon Dominated Electron Transport in Graphene

The effects of surface polar phonons on electronic transport properties of monolayer graphene are studied by using a Monte Carlo simulation. Specifically, the low-field electron mobility and saturation velocity are examined for different substrates (SiC, SiO2, and HfO2) in comparison to the intrinsic case. While the results show that the low-field mobility can be substantially reduced by the introduction of surface polar phonon scattering, corresponding degradation of the saturation velocity is not observed for all three substrates at room temperature. It is also found that surface polar phonons can influence graphene electrical resistivity even at low temperature, leading potentially to inaccurate estimation of the acoustic phonon deformation potential constant

Unexpected Structures for Intercalation of Sodium in Epitaxial Graphene-SiC Interfaces

We show using scanning tunneling microscopy, spectroscopy, and ab initio calculations that several intercalation structures exist for Na in epitaxial graphene on SiC(0001). Intercalation takes place at room temperature and Na electron-dopes the graphene. It intercalates in-between single-layer graphene and the carbon-rich interfacial layer. It also penetrates beneath the interfacial layer and decouples it to form a second graphene layer. This decoupling is accelerated by annealing and is verified by direct Na deposition onto the interface layer. Our observations show that intercalation in graphene is fundamentally different than in graphite and is a versatile means of electronic control.Comment: 10 pages text, 2 pages, references, and 4 figure page

Effective Edge-Fault-Tolerant Single-Source Spanners via Best (or Good) Swap Edges

Computing \emph{all best swap edges} (ABSE) of a spanning tree $T$ of a given $n$-vertex and $m$-edge undirected and weighted graph $G$ means to select, for each edge $e$ of $T$, a corresponding non-tree edge $f$, in such a way that the tree obtained by replacing $e$ with $f$ enjoys some optimality criterion (which is naturally defined according to some objective function originally addressed by $T$). Solving efficiently an ABSE problem is by now a classic algorithmic issue, since it conveys a very successful way of coping with a (transient) \emph{edge failure} in tree-based communication networks: just replace the failing edge with its respective swap edge, so as that the connectivity is promptly reestablished by minimizing the rerouting and set-up costs. In this paper, we solve the ABSE problem for the case in which $T$ is a \emph{single-source shortest-path tree} of $G$, and our two selected swap criteria aim to minimize either the \emph{maximum} or the \emph{average stretch} in the swap tree of all the paths emanating from the source. Having these criteria in mind, the obtained structures can then be reviewed as \emph{edge-fault-tolerant single-source spanners}. For them, we propose two efficient algorithms running in $O(m n +n^2 \log n)$ and $O(m n \log \alpha(m,n))$ time, respectively, and we show that the guaranteed (either maximum or average, respectively) stretch factor is equal to 3, and this is tight. Moreover, for the maximum stretch, we also propose an almost linear $O(m \log \alpha(m,n))$ time algorithm computing a set of \emph{good} swap edges, each of which will guarantee a relative approximation factor on the maximum stretch of $3/2$ (tight) as opposed to that provided by the corresponding BSE. Surprisingly, no previous results were known for these two very natural swap problems.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, SIROCCO 201

First principle theory of correlated transport through nano-junctions

We report the inclusion of electron-electron correlation in the calculation of transport properties within an ab initio scheme. A key step is the reformulation of Landauer's approach in terms of an effective transmittance for the interacting electron system. We apply this framework to analyze the effect of short range interactions on Pt atomic wires and discuss the coherent and incoherent correction to the mean-field approach.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Reliable Peer-to-Peer Access for Italian Citizens to Digital Government Services on the Internet

In the delivery of e-government services to citizens it should be clear that the viewpoint cannot simply be the standard one of client-supplier commonly used to provide services on the Internet. In a modern society it has rather to be the peer-to-peer approach which is typical of democracies, where institutions are equal to citizens in front of the law. But this is not yet a widely accepted standpoint in digital government efforts going on in many advanced countries in the world. Italian government, in its ever increasing effort to provide citizens with easier access to online government services, has instead adopted and is pursuing this symmetric approach, which is going to represent a fundamental tool in the ongoing march towards e-democracy. In this paper we describe the organizations involved in the process and the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure enabling the effective management of the whole process while ensuring the mandatory security functions in a democratic manner. Organizational complexity lies in the distribution of responsibilities for the management of people’s personal data among the more than 8000 Italian Municipalities and the need of keeping a centralized control on all processes dealing with identity of people. Technical complexity stems from the need of efficiently supporting this distribution of responsibilities while ensuring, at the same time, interoperability of IT-based systems independent of technical choices of the organizations involved, and fulfillment of privacy constraints. The IT architecture defined for this purpose features a clear separation between security services, provided at an infrastructure level, and application services, exposed on the Internet as Web Services

Autocrine signals increase Ovine Mesenchymal Stem Cells migration throughAquaporin-1 and CXCR4 overexpression

Sheep is a relevant large animal model that is frequently used to test innovative tissue engineering (TE) approaches especially for bone reconstruction. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are used in TE applications because they represent key component of adult tissue repair. Importantly, MSCs from different species show similar characteristics, which facilitated their application in translational studies using animal models. Nowadays, many researches are focusing on the use of ovine mesenchymal stem cells (oMSCs) in orthopedic preclinical settings for regenerative medicine purposes. Therefore, there is a need to amplify our knowledge on the mechanisms underlying the behaviour of these cells. Recently, several studies have shown that MSC function is largely dependent on factors that MSCs release in the environment as well as in conditioned medium (CM). It has been demonstrated that MSCs through autocrine and paracrine signals are able to stimulate proliferation, migration and differentiation of different type of cells including themselves. In this study, we investigated the effects of the CM produced by oMSCs on oMSCs themselves and we explored the signal pathways involved. We observed that CM caused an enhancement of oMSC migration. Furthermore, we found that CM increased levels of two membrane proteins involved in cell migration, Aquaporin 1 (AQP1) and C-X-C chemokine receptor type 4 (CXCR4), and activated Akt and Erk intracellular signal pathways

Macroscopic polarization and band offsets at nitride heterojunctions

Ab initio electronic structure studies of prototypical polar interfaces of wurtzite III-V nitrides show that large uniform electric fields exist in epitaxial nitride overlayers, due to the discontinuity across the interface of the macroscopic polarization of the constituent materials. Polarization fields forbid a standard evaluation of band offsets and formation energies: using new techniques, we find a large forward-backward asymmetry of the offset (0.2 eV for AlN/GaN (0001), 0.85 eV for GaN/AlN (0001)), and tiny interface formation energies.Comment: RevTeX 4 pages, 2 figure

Assessing the quality of heart rate variability estimated from wrist and finger PPG: A novel approach based on cross-mapping method

The non-invasiveness of photoplethysmographic (PPG) acquisition systems, together with their cost-effectiveness and easiness of connection with IoT technologies, is opening up to the possibility of their widespread use. For this reason, the study of the reliability of PPG and pulse rate variability (PRV) signal quality has become of great scientific, technological, and commercial interest. In this field, sensor location has been demonstrated to play a crucial role. The goal of this study was to investigate PPG and PRV signal quality acquired from two body locations: finger and wrist. We simultaneously acquired the PPG and electrocardiographic (ECG) signals from sixteen healthy subjects (aged 28.5 ± 3.5, seven females) who followed an experimental protocol of affective stimulation through visual stimuli. Statistical tests demonstrated that PPG signals acquired from the wrist and the finger presented different signal quality indexes (kurtosis and Shannon entropy), with higher values for the wrist-PPG. Then we propose to apply the cross-mapping (CM) approach as a new method to quantify the PRV signal quality. We found that the performance achieved using the two sites was significantly different in all the experimental sessions (p < 0.01), and the PRV dynamics acquired from the finger were the most similar to heart rate variability (HRV) dynamics