Effect of reinforcing submicron SiC particles on the wear of electrolytic NiP coatings Part 2: Bi-directional sliding

As-plated and heat-treated electrodeposited NiP and composite NiP-SiC coatings were investigated in bi-directional ball-on-disc sliding tests. All tests were performed under gross slip conditions. Heat treatment decreases the wear volume loss during fretting in ambient air for all coatings investigated. Heat-treated NiP coating has a lower wear volume loss compared to composite NiP-SiC coatings for all sliding tests. The wear rate at the bi-directional sliding test was found to be lower relative to the wear rate at uni-directional sliding test

Yukawa enhancement of ZZ-mediated New Physics in ΔS=2\Delta S = 2 and ΔB=2\Delta B = 2 Processes

We discuss Yukawa-enhanced contributions from $Z$-mediated new physics to down-type quark $\Delta F=2$ processes in the framework of the standard model gauge-invariant effective theory (SMEFT). Besides the renormalization group (RG) mixing of the $Z$-mediating $\psi^2 H^2 D$ operators into $\Delta F = 2$ operators, we include at the electroweak scale one-loop (NLO) matching corrections consistently, necessary for the removal of the matching scale dependence. We point out that the right-handed $Z$-mediated interactions generate through Yukawa RG mixing $\Delta F=2$ left-right operators, which are further enhanced through QCD RG effects and chirally enhanced hadronic matrix elements. We investigate the impact of these new effects on the known correlations between $\Delta F=2$ and $\Delta F=1$ transitions in the SMEFT framework and point out qualitative differences to previous parameterizations of $Z$-mediated new physics that arise for the left-handed case. We illustrate how specific models fit into our model-independent framework by using four models with vector-like quarks. We carry out model-independent analyses of scenarios with purely left-handed and purely right-handed new-physics $Z$ couplings for each of the three sectors $s\to d$, $b\to s$ and $b\to d$. Specifically we discuss the correlations between $\varepsilon'/\varepsilon$, $\varepsilon_K$, $K_L\to \mu^+\mu^-$ $K^+\to \pi^+\nu\bar\nu$ and $K_L\to\pi^0\nu\bar\nu$ in the Kaon sector, and $\phi_s$, $B_s\to\mu^+\mu^-$ and $B\to K^{(*)} (\mu^+\mu^-, \nu\bar\nu)$ in the $b\to s$ sector and $B_d\to\mu^+\mu^-$ in the $b\to d$ sector.Comment: 40 pages, 11 figures; v2: 2nd plot in figure 2 and references added, comparison with v2 of 1612.08839, conclusion unchanged; v3: improvements on text and presentation, matches published versio

Fairness-Aware Ranking in Search & Recommendation Systems with Application to LinkedIn Talent Search

We present a framework for quantifying and mitigating algorithmic bias in mechanisms designed for ranking individuals, typically used as part of web-scale search and recommendation systems. We first propose complementary measures to quantify bias with respect to protected attributes such as gender and age. We then present algorithms for computing fairness-aware re-ranking of results. For a given search or recommendation task, our algorithms seek to achieve a desired distribution of top ranked results with respect to one or more protected attributes. We show that such a framework can be tailored to achieve fairness criteria such as equality of opportunity and demographic parity depending on the choice of the desired distribution. We evaluate the proposed algorithms via extensive simulations over different parameter choices, and study the effect of fairness-aware ranking on both bias and utility measures. We finally present the online A/B testing results from applying our framework towards representative ranking in LinkedIn Talent Search, and discuss the lessons learned in practice. Our approach resulted in tremendous improvement in the fairness metrics (nearly three fold increase in the number of search queries with representative results) without affecting the business metrics, which paved the way for deployment to 100% of LinkedIn Recruiter users worldwide. Ours is the first large-scale deployed framework for ensuring fairness in the hiring domain, with the potential positive impact for more than 630M LinkedIn members.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication at ACM KDD 201

Effect of reinforcing submicron SiC particles on the wear of electrolytic NiP coatings Part 1. Uni-directional sliding

As-plated and annealed NiP coatings and composite NiP-SiC coatings were investigated in uni-directional ball-on-disc sliding tests. Abrasive wear was noticed in the case of composite NiP coatings containing submicron SiC particles, whereas in NiP coatings oxidational wear was active. The addition of submicron SiC particles not only increases the hardness of these electrolytic coatings but also hinders the formation of an oxide film in the sliding wear track. As a consequence, the wear loss on as-plated NiP coatings is not markedly reduced by the addition of SiC particles. On the contrary, a heat treatment at 420 °C for 1 h decreases the wear loss on both pure NiP and composite NiP-SiC coatings. During that heat treatment, Ni3P precipitates are formed in the NiP matrix and owing to this fact, the hardness of both pure NiP and composite NiP-SiC coatings increases. However, the heat treatment of composite NiP-SiC coatings induces the sensitivity for crack formation in the NiP matrix around these SiC particles. As a result, the pull out of SiC particles in the wear track occurs easily during sliding, and the wear loss of composite NiP-SiC coatings remains above the wear loss on NiP coatings

Evaluation of an organo-layered double hydroxide and two organic residues as amendments to immobilize metalaxyl enantiomers in soils: A comparative study

Many pollutants released into the environment as a result of human activities are chiral. Pollution control strategies generally consider chiral compounds as if they were achiral and rarely consider enantiomers separately. We compared the performance of three different materials, an organically-modified anionic clay (HT-ELA) and two organic agro-food residues (ALP and ALPc), as amendments to immobilize the chiral fungicide metalaxyl in two soils with different textures, addressing the effects of the amendments on the sorption, persistence, and leaching of each of the two enantiomers of metalaxyl (R-metalaxyl and S-metalaxyl) separately. The effects of the amendments were both soil- and amendment-dependent, as well as enantiomer-selective. The organo-clay (HT-ELA) was much more efficient in increasing the sorption capacity of the soils for the two enantiomers of metalaxyl than the agro-food residues (ALP and ALPc), even when applied at a reduced application rate. The enhanced sorption in HT-ELA-amended soils reduced the bioavailability of metalaxyl enantiomers and their leaching in the soils, mitigating the particularly high leaching potential of the more persistent S enantiomer. The immobilizing capacity of the agro-food residues was more variable, mainly because their addition did not greatly ameliorate the sorption capacity of the soils and had variable effects on the enantiomers degradation rates. HT-ELA showed potential to reduce the bioavailability and mobility of metalaxyl enantiomers in soil and to mitigate the contamination problems particularly associated with the higher leaching potential of the more persistent enantiomer. 11 páginas.-- 5 figuras.-- 2 tablas.-- referencias.-- Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.06.019This work has been financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO Projects AGL2011-23779 and AGL2014-51897-R) and Junta de Andalucía (JA Research Group AGR-264), co-financed with FEDER-FSE funds. The authors thank B. Gamiz for her help in the design of the experiments and L. Cox for kindly supplying the organic residues. R. Lopez-Cabeza also thanks MINECO for a pre-doctoral fellowship linked to the Project AGL2011-23779 (Grant BES-2012-059945)Peer Reviewe

Image effects in transport at metal-molecule interfaces

We present a method for incorporating image-charge effects into the description of charge transport through molecular devices. A simple model allows us to calculate the adjustment of the transport levels, due to the polarization of the electrodes as charge is added to and removed from the molecule. For this, we use the charge distributions of the molecule between two metal electrodes in several charge states, rather than in gas phase, as obtained from a density-functional theory-based transport code. This enables us to efficiently model level shifts and gap renormalization caused by image-charge effects, which are essential for understanding molecular transport experiments. We apply the method to benzene di-amine molecules and compare our results with the standard approach based on gas phase charges. Finally, we give a detailed account of the application of our approach to porphyrin-derivative devices recently studied experimentally by Perrin et al. [Nat. Nanotechnol. 8, 282 (2013)], which demonstrates the importance of accounting for image-charge effects when modeling transport through molecular junctions