Modification of physical properties of freeze-dried rice

Freeze cycling process consists of alternately freezing and thawing precooked rice for two cycles, rice is then frozen and freeze-dehydrated in vacuum sufficient to remove water from rice by sublimitation. Process modifies rice grain structure and porosity, enabling complete rehydration in one minute in hot water

Potassium food supplement

Potassium gluconate is considered best supplementary source for potassium. Gluconate consistently received highest taste rating and was indistinguishable from nonsupplemented samples. No unfavorable side effects were found during use, and none are reported in literature. Gluconate is normal intermediary metabolite that is readily adsorbed and produces no evidence of gastrointestinal ulcerations

Seeing bulk topological properties of band insulators in small photonic lattices

We present a general scheme for measuring the bulk properties of non-interacting tight-binding models realized in arrays of coupled photonic cavities. Specifically, we propose to implement a single unit cell of the targeted model with tunable twisted boundary conditions in order to simulate large systems and, most importantly, to access bulk topological properties experimentally. We illustrate our method by demonstrating how to measure topological invariants in a two-dimensional quantum Hall-like model.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures; with Supplemental Material (2 pages

Preservation of flavor in freeze dried green beans

Before freeze drying, green beans are heated to point at which their cell structure is altered. Beans freeze dried with altered cell structure have improved rehydration properties and retain color, flavor, and texture

Coherent pumping of a Mott insulator: Fermi golden rule versus Rabi oscillations

Cold atoms provide a unique arena to study many-body systems far from equilibrium. Furthermore, novel phases in cold atom systems are conveniently investigated by dynamical probes pushing the system out of equilibrium. Here, we discuss the pumping of doubly-occupied sites in a fermionic Mott insulator by a periodic modulation of the hopping amplitude. We show that deep in the insulating phase the many-body system can be mapped onto an effective two-level system which performs coherent Rabi oscillations due to the driving. Coupling the two-level system to the remaining degrees of freedom renders the Rabi oscillations damped. We compare this scheme to an alternative description where the particles are incoherently pumped into a broad continuum.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

A strong electroweak phase transition in the 2HDM after LHC8

The nature of the electroweak phase transition in two-Higgs-doublet models is revisited in light of the recent LHC results. A scan over an extensive region of their parameter space is performed, showing that a strongly first-order phase transition favours a light neutral scalar with SM-like properties, together with a heavy pseudo-scalar (m_A^0 > 400 GeV) and a mass hierarchy in the scalar sector, m_H^+ gamma gamma decay channel and find that an enhancement in the branching ratio is allowed, and in some cases even preferred, when a strongly first-order phase transition is required

Spin dynamics in a superconductor / ferromagnet proximity system

The ferromagnetic resonance of thin sputtered Ni80Fe20 films grown on Nb is measured. By varying the temperature and thickness of the Nb the role of the superconductivity on the whole ferromagnetic layer in these heterostructures is explored. The change in the spin transport properties below the superconducting transition of the Nb is found to manifest itself in the Ni80Fe20 layer by a sharpening in the resonance of the ferromagnet, or a decrease in the effective Gilbert damping co-efficient. This dynamic proximity effect is in contrast to low frequency studies in these systems, where the effect of the superconductor is confined to a small region in the ferromagnet. We interpret this in terms of the spin pumping model.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to be submitted for publicatio

Interplay between nanometer-scale strain variations and externally applied strain in graphene

We present a molecular modeling study analyzing nanometer-scale strain variations in graphene as a function of externally applied tensile strain. We consider two different mechanisms that could underlie nanometer-scale strain variations: static perturbations from lattice imperfections of an underlying substrate and thermal fluctuations. For both cases we observe a decrease in the out-of-plane atomic displacements with increasing strain, which is accompanied by an increase in the in-plane displacements. Reflecting the non-linear elastic properties of graphene, both trends together yield a non-monotonic variation of the total displacements with increasing tensile strain. This variation allows to test the role of nanometer-scale strain variations in limiting the carrier mobility of high-quality graphene samples