Detection of a magnetic bead by hybrid nanodevices using scanning gate microscopy

open8sìHybrid ferromagnetic(Py)/non-magnetic metal(Au) junctions with a width of 400 nm are studied by magnetotransport measurements, magnetic scanning gate microscopy (SGM) with a magnetic bead (MB) attached to the probe, and micromagnetic simulations. In the transverse geometry, the devices demonstrate a characteristic magnetoresistive behavior that depends on the direction of the in plane magnetic field, with minimum/maximum variation when the field is applied parallel/perpendicular to the Py wire. The SGM is performed with a NdFeB bead of 1.6 μm diameter attached to the scanning probe. Our results demonstrate that the hybrid junction can be used to detect this type of MB. A rough approximation of the sensing volume of the junction has the shape of elliptical cylinder with the volume of ∼1.51 μm3. Micromagnetic simulations coupled to a magnetotransport model including anisotropic magnetoresistance and planar Hall effects are in good agreement with the experimental findings, enabling the interpretation of the SGM images.openCorte-León, H.; Krzysteczko, P.; Marchi, F.; Motte, J.-F.; Manzin, A.; Schumacher, H. W.; Antonov, V.; Kazakova, O.Corte León, H.; Krzysteczko, P.; Marchi, F.; Motte, J. F.; Manzin, Alessandra; Schumacher, H. W.; Antonov, V.; Kazakova, O

The <i>Castalia</i> mission to Main Belt Comet 133P/Elst-Pizarro

We describe Castalia, a proposed mission to rendezvous with a Main Belt Comet (MBC), 133P/Elst-Pizarro. MBCs are a recently discovered population of apparently icy bodies within the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which may represent the remnants of the population which supplied the early Earth with water. Castalia will perform the first exploration of this population by characterising 133P in detail, solving the puzzle of the MBC’s activity, and making the first in situ measurements of water in the asteroid belt. In many ways a successor to ESA’s highly successful Rosetta mission, Castalia will allow direct comparison between very different classes of comet, including measuring critical isotope ratios, plasma and dust properties. It will also feature the first radar system to visit a minor body, mapping the ice in the interior. Castalia was proposed, in slightly different versions, to the ESA M4 and M5 calls within the Cosmic Vision programme. We describe the science motivation for the mission, the measurements required to achieve the scientific goals, and the proposed instrument payload and spacecraft to achieve these

Use of lignocellulosic liquid waste from wood hardboard manufacture as bitumen emulsion extender for cold asphalt mixtures for low traffic roads

[Abstract:] During the wet process of manufacturing wood hardboards, a large amount of water contaminated with lignocellulosic waste is generated. With the aim of promoting the circular economy, it is interesting to find new uses for this liquid waste, rich in biopolymer lignin. The present research is a preliminary laboratory analysis of the feasibility of using this industrial waste as bitumen emulsion modifier or extender. To this purpose the lignocellulosic industrial waste was tested as partial substitute of bitumen emulsion for cold asphalt mixtures type grave emulsion. Particularly, GE-2 grave emulsions for low traffic roads have been manufactured. Substitution percentages of 0% (control), 5%, 10%, and 15% were analysed. The envelope water was visually determined. Also the optimum fluid content was obtained by means of the Modified Proctor Test. In addition, the optimum bitumen emulsion content, the compressive strength, and the water resistance of the cold asphalt mixtures were analysed conducting immersion-compression tests. All the tested percentages of lignocellulosic waste led to grave emulsions that could be used for low traffic roads, according to the Spanish specifications. Nevertheless, the results indicate decreased compressive strength with increasing liquid waste percentages. For this reason, only percentages of substitution up to 10% of liquid waste rich in lignin are considered adequate as bitumen emulsion extender

Full stomachs at empty tides: tidal cycle affects feeding activity and diet of the sandy beach gastropod Olivella minuta

Olivella minuta is an abundant neogastropod on sandy beaches from Texas (USA) to southern Brazil. This study aimed to characterize and compare the feeding activity and diet of a Brazilian population of O. minuta in different tidal zones (intertidal and subtidall, and different tidal levels (high and low tides), with three combinations of tidal zone and level being studied (intertidal during low tide, intertidal during high tide and subtidal). The results showed that diet composition was generally similar among tidal conditions, with O. minuta being a generalist, feeding on 45 different food items. Feeding activity, however, was higher in the intertidal during low tide, whereas the richness and diversity of food items were higher in the intertidal during high tide. The higher feeding activity of O. minuta during low tide may be linked to a lower risk of predation; at low tide organisms may be able to feed for a longer time, arid this may be particularly true on beaches with fine sand, where water retention is higher than that on beaches with coarse sand. The higher diversity of food items consumed in the intertidal during high tide is likely related to the increased prevalence of planktonic food during high tide. Our results indicate that tidal zone and level may strongly influence the feeding activity of coastal soft-bottom species and that species may show higher feeding activity during low tide. Given the current loss of intertidal habitats due to anthropogenic activity and climate-change associated factors, our study has important implications, highlighting the importance of intertidal areas for the ecology and conservation of sandy beach species.UIDB/04326/2020info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Combination Forecasts of Bond and Stock Returns: An Asset Allocation Perspective

We investigate the out-of-sample forecasting ability of the HML, SMB, momentum, short-term and long-term reversal factors along with their size and value decompositions on U.S. bond and stock returns for a variety of horizons ranging from the short run (1 month) to the long run (2 years). Our findings suggest that these factors contain significantly more information for future bond and stock market returns than the typically employed financial variables. Combination of forecasts of the empirical factors turns out to be particularly successful, especially from an an asset allocation perspective. Similar findings pertain to the European and Japanese markets

THE USE OF SIMILARITY IMAGES ON MULTI-SENSOR AUTOMATIC IMAGE REGISTRATION

Automatic image registration (AIR) is still a present challenge regarding remote sensing applications. Although several methods have been proposed in the last few years, geometric correction is often a time and effort consuming manual task. The only AIR method which is commonly used is the correlation-based template matching method. It usually consists on considering a window from one image and passing it throughout the other, looking for a maximum of correlation, which may be associated to the displacement between the two images. This approach leads sometimes (for example with multi-sensor image registration) to low correlation coefficient values, which do not give sufficient confidence to associate the peak of correlation to the correct displacement between the images. Furthermore, the peak of correlation is several times too flat or ambiguous, since more than one local peak may occur. Recently, we have tested a new approach, which shortly consists on the identification of a brighter diagonal on a "similarity image". The displacement of this brighter diagonal to the main diagonal corresponds to the displacement in each axis. In this work, we explored the potential of using the "similarity images" instead of the classical "similarity surface", considering both correlation coefficient and mutual information measures. Our experiments were performed on some multi-sensor pairs of images with medium (Landsat and ASTER) and high (IKONOS, ALOS-PRISM and orthophotos) spatial resolution, where a subpixel accuracy was mostly obtained. It was also shown that the application of a low-pass filtering prior to the similarity measures computation, allows for a significant increase of the similarity measures, reinforcing the strength of this methodology in multi-spectral, multi-sensor and multi-temporal situations

Acoustic Emission from crumpling paper

From magnetic systems to the crust of the earth, many physical systems that exibit a multiplicty of metastable states emit pulses with a broad power law distribution in energy. Digital audio recordings reveal that paper being crumpled, a system that can be easily held in hand, is such a system. Crumpling paper both using the traditional hand method and a novel cylindrical geometry uncovered a power law distribution of pulse energies spanning at least two decades: (exponent 1.3 - 1.6) Crumpling initally flat sheets into a compact ball (strong crumpling), we found little or no evidence that the energy distribution varied systematically over time or the size of the sheet. When we applied repetitive small deformations (weak crumpling) to sheets which had been previously folded along a regular grid, we found no systematic dependence on the grid spacing. Our results suggest that the pulse energy depends only weakly on the size of the paper regions responsible for sound production.Comment: 12 pages of text, 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. E, additional information availible at http://www.msc.cornell.edu/~houle/crumpling

The impact of air pollution on hospital admissions: Evidence from Italy

In this paper we study the impact of air pollution on hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for 103 Italian provinces, over the period from 2004 to 2009. We use information on annual mean concentrations of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, and ozone measured at monitoring station level to build province-level indicators of pollution. Hence, we estimate a regression model for hospital admissions, where we allow our aggregate measures of pollution to be subject to measurement error and correlated with the error term. We also adopt standard errors for estimates that are robust to serial and spatial correlation in the error term, to allow for temporal persistence and geographical concentration of unobservable risk factors.We find that higher levels of particulate matter are associated with higher levels of hospitalisation for children, while ozone plays an important role in explaining hospital admissions of the elderly. Other factors that appear to have an effect on hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are precipitation and provincial unemployment rate