Spectroscopic Signatures of Electronic Excitations in Raman Scattering in Thin Films of Rhombohedral Graphite

Rhombohedral graphite features peculiar electronic properties, including persistence of low-energy surface bands of a topological nature. Here, we study the contribution of electron-hole excitations towards inelastic light scattering in thin films of rhombohedral graphite. We show that, in contrast to the featureless electron-hole contribution towards Raman spectrum of graphitic films with Bernal stacking, the inelastic light scattering accompanied by electron-hole excitations in crystals with rhombohedral stacking produces distinct features in the Raman signal which can be used both to identify the stacking and to determine the number of layers in the film.Comment: 15 pages in preprint format, 4 figures, accepted versio

Bioactive Scaffolds for the Controlled Formation of Complex Skeletal Tissues

Tissue Engineering may offer new treatment alternatives for organ replacement or repair deteriorated organs. Among the clinical applications of Tissue Engineering are the production of artificial skin for burn patients, tissue engineered trachea, cartilage for knee-replacement procedures, urinary bladder replacement, urethra substitutes and cellular therapies for the treatment of urinary incontinence. The Tissue Engineering approach has major advantages over traditional organ transplantation and circumvents the problem of organ shortage. Tissues reconstructed from readily available biopsy material induce only minimal or no immunogenicity when reimplanted in the patient. This book is aimed at anyone interested in the application of Tissue Engineering in different organ systems. It offers insights into a wide variety of strategies applying the principles of Tissue Engineering to tissue and organ regeneration

Strategic supplier performance in a competitive landscape: Enhancing organizational performance through lean supply chain management

In a context characterized by increasing competitive pressure, supply chain collaboration has gained greater relevance and lean principles have been integrated into supply chain management to address the challenge of achieving better organizational performance. The purpose of this study is to understand the roles of strategic supplier performance and competitive intensity in Lean Supply Chain Management (LSCM) implementation and its performance. We use a variance-based Structural Equation Model analysis with empirical data from a sample of 273 Spanish companies to analyze the relationships among strategic suppliers, competitive intensity, LSCM implementation, and performance. Our findings indicate that strategic supplier performance is positively associated with LSCM implementation and that this relationship is heightened in highly competitive industries. Our results also reveal the indirect association of LSCM implementation in the strategic supplier performance-organizational performance relationship. JEL CLASSIFICATION: M11

La construcció del Montserrat modern = The construction of the modern Montserrat

This PhD Dissertation studies the process of construction of the modern Montserrat after the Napoleonic destruction of the old shrine-monastery and its disendowment in 1836, and shows how this process was not the reconstruction or restoration of the old destroyed monastery but the construction, or the "invention", of a new one. This process was initiated in 1844 when the shrine was reopened and was developed until the first half of the 20th century in parallel to the definition of the contemporary Catalonia and Spain. Therefore, and understanding the modern Montserrat is the result of the complex interaction between all the agents who are implied in its construction process, the dissertation addresses in eighteenth chapters the main themes and the individuals and groups who intervened in it. These eighteen chapters are in turn structured into five groups according to the major alterations in the equilibrium of influences between the agents involved in the process at each moment. The first group of chapters specify the ¿architectural, political and social- problems of the first works, as well as the decisive intervention of Victor Balaguer and his attempt to define a Montserrat symbol "for all" within the wide national and federal symbolic universe he created; an interpretation based on the romantic approach to the mountain defined in good part during Humboldt's visit in 1800. Balaguer's intervention was centered in the valuation of gothic architecture and in the first attempts to define an architectural project; but it was frustrated with the end of the reign of Amadeo I, and the federal dream. It was then when was defined the first culture of the catalanism, and when the "group of Vic" take a step and alter, with their "patriotic-religious campaigns", Balaguer's symbolic construction to their own advantage, what carried out the definition and valuation of Romanesque architecture, as well as the definitive popularization of the mountain. The second group of chapters, then, studies the intense symbolic construction of the mountain that takes place during the end of the 19th century as the consequence of the tensions generated by the campaigns of the "group of Vic". The construction of the rack-and-pinion railway, the rosary monuments, the panorama in the Exposition of 1888, the architecture of Gaudi and others, or the popular reproductions of the mountain, are some of the cases analyzed. The architectural consequences that this symbolic construction had over the construction process are analyzed in the third group of chapters that culminates with the general project defined by Puig i Cadafalch. That incorporates the unique mountain as an element of project and it goes well beyond the dilemma on styles. But despite the construction of this project was initiated, it was never completed due to the Spanish Civil War. The fourth group of chapters is only one chapter that makes a brief digression on Montserrat and the Western modern cultural construction of the mountain together with its relation with the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries' architecture. The fifth and last group of chapters returns to the chronological order and studies the process of construction during the first years of Franco's dictatorship, as well as the projects that were done then. And that failed due to the changes that took place after the "Enthronement festivities" of 1947; and that provoked the definitive wreck of the architectural construction of the modern Montserrat. Finally, the epilogue raises some of the most important questions the dissertation makes evident, emphasizing the importance that tourism and modern mass mediums had during all over the process, and how Montserrat, in a wider context, is a paradigmatic example of modern heritage-making processes. The annex contains the cataloguing ¿by the author- of all the documents forming the "Architectural Archive of Montserrat" and that, together with other materials, are analyzed in the dissertation

Q-ball-like solitons on the M2-brane with worldvolume fluxes

In this paper we obtain a family of analytic solutions to the nonlinear partial differential equations that describe the dynamics of the bosonic part of the mass operator of a M2-brane compactified on $M_9\times T^2$ in the LCG with worldvolume fluxes. Those fluxes can be induced by a constant and quantized supergravity 3-form. This sector of the theory, at supersymmetric level, has the interesting property of having a discrete spectrum. We have focused on the characterization of Q-ball-like (QBL) solitons on the M2-brane with worldvolume fluxes. Two scenarios are analysed: one in which the system is isotropic and the other anisotropic. In the isotropic case, we obtain analytic families of string-like solutions to the membrane equations of motion in the presence of a non-vanishing symplectic gauge field that satisfy all constraints. We explicitly show a localised family of QBL solutions. It is demonstrated that although the solutions generally exhibit dispersion, they also allow for dispersion-free solutions. In the non-isotropic case, we obtain full-fledged membrane QBL solutions by numerical methods. We characterize some other properties of the solutions found. The dynamics of the QBL solutions are also encountered. We analyze the Lorentz boosts and Galilean transformations. Since we work in the Light Cone Gauge, the Lorentz transformed solutions are not automatically solutions, rather some extra conditions must be imposed. Only a subset of the solutions remain. We discuss some examples. The QBL solitons of the M2-brane that have been discovered contain an interaction term between the Noether charge of the Q-ball and the topological monopole charge associated with the worldvolume flux. The monopole charge increases the stability of the analytic solutions against fission...Comment: Latex, 22 pg, 9 figures. For the sake of clarity, the writing of the paper has been improved. Three new figures and new explanations have been added and the order of sections has been changed. A new subsection on localised Q-ball-like solutions and a discussion on stability have been added. The previous results remain unchange

Improved Carbohydrate Metabolism After Bariatric Surgery Raises Antioxidized LDL Antibody Levels in Morbidly Obese Patients

OBJECTIVE—Antioxidized LDL (anti-oxLDL) antibodies have recently been suggested to be protective against the development of diabetes. We measured the changes in anti-oxLDL antibody levels in the inverse situation of improvement in carbohydrate metabolism

Thermal and phase transformations analysis in a PREMOMET® steel

Thermal analysis in a PREMOMET® steel has been performed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and highresolution dilatometry. The phase transformation temperatures (Ac1, Ac3, Ms and Mf) of this steel were obtained by the two methods at different heating rates showing good agreement between both techniques. The enthalpy of α-γ transformation for this steel was measured using the thermograms acquired by DSC and microstructure was analyzed by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results showed that this steel retained a martensitic structure for all conditions

Multi-qubit time-varying quantum channels for NISQ-era superconducting quantum processors

Recent experimental studies have shown that the relaxation time ($T_1$) and the dephasing time ($T_2$) of superconducting qubits fluctuate considerably over time. To appropriately consider this time-varying nature of the $T_1$ and $T_2$ parameters, a new class of quantum channels, known as Time-Varying Quantum Channels (TVQCs), has been proposed. In previous works, realizations of multi-qubit TVQCs have been assumed to be equal for all the qubits of an error correction block, implying that the random variables that describe the fluctuations of $T_1$ and $T_2$ are block-to-block uncorrelated, but qubit-wise perfectly correlated for the same block. Physically, the fluctuations of these decoherence parameters are explained by the incoherent coupling of the qubits with unstable near-resonant two-level-systems (TLS), which indicates that such variations may be local to each of the qubits of the system. In this article, we perform a correlation analysis of the fluctuations of the relaxation times of multi-qubit quantum processors ibmq\_quito, ibmq\_belem, ibmq\_lima, ibmq\_santiago and ibmq\_bogota. Our results show that it is reasonable to assume that the fluctuations of the relaxation and dephasing times of superconducting qubits are local to each of the qubits of the system. Based on these results, we discuss the multi-qubit TVQCs when the fluctuations of the decoherence parameters for an error correction block are qubit-wise uncorrelated (as well as from block-to-block), a scenario we have named the Fast Time-Varying Quantum Channel (FTVQC). Furthermore, we lower bound the quantum capacity of general FTVQCs based on a quantity we refer to as the ergodic quantum capacity. Finally, we use numerical simulations to study the performance of quantum error correction codes (QECC) when they operate over FTVQCs.Comment: 21 page

Institucions britàniques per forjar ciutadans catalans. Víctor Balaguer, Joan Oliva i la creació de la Biblioteca Museu de Vilanova i la Geltrú

En 1884 Victor Balaguer va inaugurar una institució única en el context polític icultural català i espanyol: la seva Biblioteca Museu a Vilanova i la Geltrú, seguidade la Biblioteca Museu d’Ultramar a Madrid. La primera, es tractava de la primerainstitució pública d’aquesta mena creada a Catalunya, i va ser fruit d’una  consistent exploració encarregada per Balaguer a l’editor i bibliotecari Joan Oliva, després de viatjar per França, Suïssa, Alemanya i el Regne Unit, amb la finalitat d’aprendre de les seves biblioteques i d’explorar críticament les millors opcions per a la futura fundació vilanovina.La combinació de biblioteca i museu en una mateixa institució i un únic edifici relaciona el projecte de Balaguer amb institucions britàniques contemporànies molt similars en la seva dimensió, model de gestió, continguts i propòsits culturals i polítics: les característiques i populars The Literary and Philosophical Societies – i altres institucions britàniques semblants, incloent-hi també el Museu i Biblioteca britànics.Aquesta recerca analitza la creació de la Biblioteca Museu a Vilanova i la Geltrúexplorant les seves connexions amb les institucions britàniques que en van inspirar el model i la fundació. Alhora que també explora el tipus de ciutadà que aquests equipaments pretenien forjar i els intercanvis d’objectius ideològics entre les diferents institucions en un context europeu més ampli