First-order transitions in glasses and melts induced by solid superclusters nucleated and melted by homogeneous nucleation instead of surface melting

Supercooled liquids give rise, by homogeneous nucleation, to solid superclusters acting as building blocks of glass, ultrastable glass, and glacial glass phases before being crystallized. Liquid-to-liquid phase transitions begin to be observed above the melting temperature Tm as well as critical undercooling depending on critical overheating (Tm-T)/Tm. Solid nuclei exist above Tm and melt by homogeneous nucleation of liquid instead of surface melting. The Gibbs free energy change predicted by the classical nucleation equation is completed by an additional enthalpy which stabilize these solid entities during undercooling. A two-liquid model, using this renewed equation, predicts the new homogeneous nucleation temperatures inducing first-order transitions, and the enthalpy and entropy of new liquid and glass phases. These calculations are successfully applied to ethylbenzene, triphenyl phosphite, d-mannitol, n-butanol, Zr41.2Ti13.8Cu12.5Ni10Be22.5, Ti34Zr11Cu47Ni8, and Co81.5B18.5. A critical supercooling and overheating rate (Tm-T)/Tm = 0.198 of liquid elements is predicted in agreement with experiments on Sn droplets.Comment: 41 pages, 21 figures, submitted to "chemical physics

Inter-comparison on multi-feature bar calibration for determining machine-tool geometric errors

International audienceTo improve the accuracy of manufactured mechanical parts, the geometric errors of a machine-tool should be evaluated and compensated in order to better master the deviations between the actual and nominal tool positioning (volumetric accuracy). Thus, a novel Multi-Feature Bar (MFB) for machine-tool geometric errors' identification was designed and manufactured. The MFB standard is made of Invar material. The proposed design of the MFB allows extracting three intrinsic parameters: one linear positioning and two straightness errors. The calibration of the MFB was performed on an accurate coordinate measuring machine (CMM) when applying the reversal technique, in order to separate the MFB's error forms from the motion errors of the CMM's mechanical guiding systems. Furthermore, an intercomparison was conducted between four National Metrology Institutes (LNE, PTB, CMI, UM) to evaluate the reliability of the proposed calibration methodology. Findings resulting from this intercomparison reveal dimensional stability of the MFB standard for geometric errors identification on CMM and machine-tool. Therefore, the use on machine-tool of the calibrated MFB, regardless of the harsh environment, guarantees its metrology traceability to the SI metre definition of few micrometres (<5 µm)

Corticobulbar tract changes as predictors of dysarthria in childhood brain injury.

To identify corticobulbar tract changes that may predict chronic dysarthria in young people who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in childhood using diffusion MRI tractography

Arthroscopic treatment of an intra-articular hemangioma in the posterior compartment of the knee

AbstractWe report the case of a 37-year-old patient presenting with knee pain and recurrent effusion without instability due to an intra-articular hemangioma in the posterior compartment of the knee. MRI showed features suggesting a diagnosis of hemangioma. Arthroscopic excision of the tumor was performed and the diagnosis was confirmed histologically. There was no recurrence after 5 years of follow-up

The momentum and photon energy dependence of the circular dichroic photoemission in the bulk Rashba semiconductors BiTeX (X = I, Br, Cl)

Bulk Rashba systems BiTeX (X = I, Br, Cl) are emerging as important candidates for developing spintronics devices, because of the coexistence of spin-split bulk and surface states, along with the ambipolar character of the surface charge carriers. The need of studying the spin texture of strongly spin-orbit coupled materials has recently promoted circular dichroic Angular Resolved Photoelectron Spectroscopy (cd-ARPES) as an indirect tool to measure the spin and the angular degrees of freedom. Here we report a detailed photon energy dependent study of the cd-ARPES spectra in BiTeX (X = I, Br and Cl). Our work reveals a large variation of the magnitude and sign of the dichroism. Interestingly, we find that the dichroic signal modulates differently for the three compounds and for the different spin-split states. These findings show a momentum and photon energy dependence for the cd-ARPES signals in the bulk Rashba semiconductor BiTeX (X = I, Br, Cl). Finally, the outcome of our experiment indicates the important relation between the modulation of the dichroism and the phase differences between the wave-functions involved in the photoemission process. This phase difference can be due to initial or final state effects. In the former case the phase difference results in possible interference effects among the photo-electrons emitted from different atomic layers and characterized by entangled spin-orbital polarized bands. In the latter case the phase difference results from the relative phases of the expansion of the final state in different outgoing partial waves.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Contralateral cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathways reconstruction in humans in vivo: implications for reciprocal cerebro-cerebellar structural connectivity in motor and non-motor areas

Altmetric: 2More detail Article | OPEN Contralateral cortico-ponto-cerebellar pathways reconstruction in humans in vivo: implications for reciprocal cerebro-cerebellar structural connectivity in motor and non-motor areas Fulvia Palesi, Andrea De Rinaldis, Gloria Castellazzi, Fernando Calamante, Nils Muhlert, Declan Chard, J. Donald Tournier, Giovanni Magenes, Egidio D’Angelo & Claudia A. M. Gandini Wheeler-Kingshott Scientific Reports 7, Article number: 12841 (2017) doi:10.1038/s41598-017-13079-8 Download Citation BrainNeuroscience Received: 11 May 2017 Accepted: 18 September 2017 Published online: 09 October 2017 Abstract Cerebellar involvement in cognition, as well as in sensorimotor control, is increasingly recognized and is thought to depend on connections with the cerebral cortex. Anatomical investigations in animals and post-mortem humans have established that cerebro-cerebellar connections are contralateral to each other and include the cerebello-thalamo-cortical (CTC) and cortico-ponto-cerebellar (CPC) pathways. CTC and CPC characterization in humans in vivo is still challenging. Here advanced tractography was combined with quantitative indices to compare CPC to CTC pathways in healthy subjects. Differently to previous studies, our findings reveal that cerebellar cognitive areas are reached by the largest proportion of the reconstructed CPC, supporting the hypothesis that a CTC-CPC loop provides a substrate for cerebro-cerebellar communication during cognitive processing. Amongst the cerebral areas identified using in vivo tractography, in addition to the cerebral motor cortex, major portions of CPC streamlines leave the prefrontal and temporal cortices. These findings are useful since provide MRI-based indications of possible subtending connectivity and, if confirmed, they are going to be a milestone for instructing computational models of brain function. These results, together with further multi-modal investigations, are warranted to provide important cues on how the cerebro-cerebellar loops operate and on how pathologies involving cerebro-cerebellar connectivity are generated

Characterization of a 4H-SiC High Power Density Controlled Current Limiter

International audienceCritical steps for the fabrication of SiC devices are thermal annealing and metal ohmic contact formation. Metal annealing effect on the electrical characteristics of the current limiter underlines the necessity to control this device fabrication step. Measurements of contact resistivity as a function of temperature demonstrate the stability of the N type Ni/SiC contact in the range of 175 K-450 K as its value remains constant around 40 µΩ.cm 2. Post implantation annealing effect on the sheet resistance (Rsh) shows that a 1700°C/30 min annealing gives better trade off in terms of dopant activation and surface roughness. High power density has been measured up to 600 V. Current thermal stability has been measured for an applied drain to source voltage of 100 V and exhibits high power density capabilities of SiC VJFET as a controlled current limiter. Introduction

Characterization of a 4H-SiC High Power Density Controlled Current Limiter

International audienceMost of silicon devices such as Schottky diode, MOSFET, MESFET have been realized in SiC and show good electrical and thermal characteristics [1]. Considering fault current limiters for serial protection, a lot of structures exists [2, 3], from conventional fuses to other complex systems such as circuit breakers, mechanical switches. Up to now, few specific SiC-current limiter were described [4, 5]. This paper presents experimental characterization of a bi-directional current limiter structure based on a vertical SiC VJFET

Shielding efficiency and E(J) characteristics measured on large melt cast Bi-2212 hollow cylinders in axial magnetic fields

We show that tubes of melt cast Bi-2212 used as current leads for LTS magnets can also act as efficient magnetic shields. The magnetic screening properties under an axial DC magnetic field are characterized at several temperatures below the liquid nitrogen temperature (77 K). Two main shielding properties are studied and compared with those of Bi-2223, a material that has been considered in the past for bulk magnetic shields. The first property is related to the maximum magnetic flux density that can be screened, Blim; it is defined as the applied magnetic flux density below which the field attenuation measured at the centre of the shield exceeds 1000. For a cylinder of Bi-2212 with a wall thickness of 5 mm and a large ratio of length over radius, Blim is evaluated to 1 T at T = 10 K. This value largely exceeds the Blim value measured at the same temperature on similar tubes of Bi-2223. The second shielding property that is characterized is the dependence of Blim with respect to variations of the sweep rate of the applied field, dBapp/dt. This dependence is interpreted in terms of the power law E = Ec(J/Jc)^n and allows us to determine the exponent n of this E(J) characteristics for Bi-2212. The characterization of the magnetic field relaxation involves very small values of the electric field. This gives us the opportunity to experimentally determine the E(J) law in an unexplored region of small electric fields. Combining these results with transport and AC shielding measurements, we construct a piecewise E(J) law that spans over 8 orders of magnitude of the electric field.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure