Study on the nonexistence of liquid miscibility gap in the Ce-Mn system

To ascertain whether the liquid miscibility gap exists in the Ce-Mn system, 3 key alloys are prepared by arc melting the pure elements, annealed at specified temperature for 20 minutes, quenched in ice water and then subjected to X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis for phase identification and to scanning electron microscopy (SEM) with energy dispersive X-ray analysis for microstructure observation and composition analysis. The XRD examination indicated that terminal solutions based on Ce and Mn exist in the water-quenched alloys. No compound was detected. Microstructure observation and composition analysis indicate the nonexistence of the liquid miscibility gap. The newly assessed Ce-Mn phase diagram was presented.

Stakeholder collaboration mechanism in elderly community retrofit projects : case study in china

The aged population all over the world is predicted to increase over the next couple of years. Especially in China, the ageing population is expanding significantly every year. A ‘Home-care model’ is becoming the first choice for many elders in China due to the traditional style of community and economic considerations. However, existing communities generally lack support-ing facilities for their elders. This can result in hidden safety risks in these communities. Conse-quently, retrofit projects among these communities of elders have attracted attention and generated studies in both academia and industry. Such elderly community retrofit projects (ECRPs) involve multiple stakeholders, and therefore, the establishment of an effective synergy mechanism for all stakeholders would provide significant value for the successful implementation of ECRPs. Until now, no such mechanism has been developed and published. This research aims to develop a stake-holder collaboration mechanism (SCM) for ECRPs in China. As the method of data collection, interviews with relevant ECRP stakeholders were conducted. Stakeholders involved with ECRPs were classified into three main categories—namely, core stakeholders (ageing families, government or-ganisations, and ECRP companies), dormant stakeholders (other residents, other investors community committees), and marginal stakeholders (financial institutions, property service enterprises, and public welfare organisations). Finally, the SCM was developed utilising a power–interest ma-trix. Actions for stakeholders were recommended in order to promote ECRP in China

An optimal rewiring strategy for cooperative multiagent social learning

Multiagent coordination is a key problem in cooperative multiagent systems (MASs). It has been widely studied in both fixed-agent repeated interaction setting and static social learning framework. However, two aspects of dynamics in real-world MASs are currently neglected. First, the network topologies can change during the course of interaction dynamically. Second, the interaction utilities can be different among each pair of agents and usually unknown before interaction. Both issues mentioned above increase the difficulty of coordination. In this paper, we consider the multiagent social learning in a dynamic environment in which agents can alter their connections and interact with randomly chosen neighbors with unknown utilities beforehand. We propose an optimal rewiring strategy to select most beneficial peers to maximize the accumulated payoffs in long-run interactions. We empirically demonstrate the effects of our approach in a variety of large-scale MASs

Enhancement of Quantum Sensing in a Cavity Optomechanical System around Quantum Critical Point

The precision of quantum sensing could be improved by exploiting quantum phase transitions, where the physical quantity tends to diverge when the system is approaching the quantum critical point. This critical enhancement phenomenon has been applied to the quantum Rabi model in a dynamic framework, showing a promising sensing enhancement without the complex initial state preparation. In this work, we find a quantum phase transition in the coupling cavity-mechanical oscillator system when the coupling strength crosses a critical point, determined by the effective detuning of cavity and frequency of mechanical mode. By utilizing this critical phenomenon, we obtain a prominent enhancement of quantum sensing, such as the position and momentum of the mechanical oscillator. This result provides an alternative method to enhance the quantum sensing of some physical quantities, such as mass, charge, and weak force, in a large mass system

Transformation optics for antennas: why limit the bandwidth with metamaterials?

This work is part funded by the Ministry of Defence and is published with the permission of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory on behalf of the Controller of HMSO

Effect of end-groups on sulfobetaine homopolymers with the tunable upper critical solution temperature (UCST)

One-step syntheses of well-defined Poly(3-((2-(Methacryloyloxy) ethyl) (dimethyl) ammonio)-1-propanesulfonate) (PDMAPS) with a carboxylic acid end-functional reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) agent and further end-group modification were described. The upper critical solution temperature (UCST) of homo-zwitterions can be precisely adjusted by the surrounding pH due to the presence of a carboxyl end-group. Meanwhile, after esterification of the carboxylic acid group by methyl, ethyl, hexyl, phenethyl alcohol, UCST of all resulted PDMAPS with ester terminated groups showed more significant increases. Dynamic light scattering (DLS), Zeta-potential and small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) results demonstrated that the ionization/protonation from the carboxylic end-group and hydrophobicity of ester groups contribute significantly to the tunability. This end-group modification technique provides an easy and economical way of synthesizing temperature-responsive homo-polyzwitterions with precise and controllable temperature range owing to the designability of RAFT polymerization, where the products are suitable for biomedical and environmental engineering applications

Determining 1−−1^{--} Heavy Hybrid Masses via QCD Sum Rules

The masses of $1^{--}$ charmonium and bottomonium hybrids are evaluated in terms of QCD sum rules. We find that the ground state hybrid in charm sector lies in $m_{H_c}=4.12\sim 4.79$ GeV, while in bottom sector the hybrid may situated in $m_{H_b} = 10.24\sim 11.15$ GeV. Since the numerical result on charmonium hybrid mass is not compatible with the charmonium spectra, including structures newly observed in experiment, we tempt to conclude that such a hybrid does not purely exist, but rather as an admixture with other states, like glueball and regular quarkonium, in experimental observation. However, our result on bottomonium hybrid coincide with the "exotic structure" recently observed at BELLE.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, version to appear in J.Phys.

Role of dimensional crossover on spin-orbit torque efficiency in magnetic insulator thin films

Magnetic insulators (MIs) attract tremendous interest for spintronic applications due to low Gilbert damping and absence of Ohmic loss. Magnetic order of MIs can be manipulated and even switched by spin-orbit torques (SOTs) generated through spin Hall effect and Rashba-Edelstein effect in heavy metal/MI bilayers. SOTs on MIs are more intriguing than magnetic metals since SOTs cannot be transferred to MIs through direct injection of electron spins. Understanding of SOTs on MIs remains elusive, especially how SOTs scale with the film thickness. Here, we observe the critical role of dimensionality on the SOT efficiency by systematically studying the MI layer thickness dependent SOT efficiency in tungsten/thulium iron garnet (W/TmIG) bilayers. We first show that the TmIG thin film evolves from two-dimensional to three-dimensional magnetic phase transitions as the thickness increases, due to the suppression of long-wavelength thermal fluctuation. Then, we report the significant enhancement of the measured SOT efficiency as the thickness increases. We attribute this effect to the increase of the magnetic moment density in concert with the suppression of thermal fluctuations. At last, we demonstrate the current-induced SOT switching in the W/TmIG bilayers with a TmIG thickness up to 15 nm. The switching current density is comparable with those of heavy metal/ferromagnetic metal cases. Our findings shed light on the understanding of SOTs in MIs, which is important for the future development of ultrathin MI-based low-power spintronics

Gut Microbiota-Testis Axis: FMT Mitigates High-Fat Diet-Diminished Male Fertility via Improving Systemic and Testicular Metabolome

High-fat diet (HFD)-induced obesity is known to be associated with reduced male fertility and decreased semen quality in humans. HFD-related male infertility is a growing issue worldwide, and it is crucial to overcome this problem to ameliorate the distress of infertile couples. For the first time, we discovered that fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) of alginate oligosaccharide (AOS)-improved gut microbiota (A10-FMT) ameliorated HFD-decreased semen quality (sperm concentration: 286.1 ± 14.1 versus 217.9 ± 17.4 million/mL; sperm motility: 40.1 ± 0.7% versus 29.0 ± 0.9%), and male fertility (pregnancy rate: 87.4 ± 1.1% versus 70.2 ± 6.1%) by benefiting blood and testicular metabolome. A10-FMT improved HFD-disturbed gut microbiota by increasing gut Bacteroides (colon: 24.9 ± 1.1% versus 8.3 ± 0.6%; cecum: 10.2 ± 0.7% versus 3.6 ± 0.7%) and decreasing Mucispirillum (colon: 0.3 ± 0.1% versus 2.8 ± 0.4%; cecum: 2.3 ± 0.5% versus 6.6 ± 0.7%). A10-FMT benefited gut microbiota to improve liver function by adjusting lipid metabolism to produce n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as eicosapentaenoic acid (blood: 55.5 ± 18.7 versus 20.3 ± 2.4) and docosahexaenoic acid (testis: 121.2 ± 6.2 versus 89.4 ± 6.7), thus ameliorating HFD-impaired testicular microenvironment to rescue spermatogenesis and increase semen quality and fertility. The findings indicated that AOS-improved gut microbiota may be a promising strategy to treat obesity or metabolic issues-related male infertility in the future