Large Magnetoresistance over an Extended Temperature Regime in Monophosphides of Tantalum and Niobium

We report extremely large magnetoresistance (MR) in an extended temperature regime from 1.5 K to 300 K in non-magnetic binary compounds TaP and NbP. TaP exhibits linear MR around $1.8\times 10^4$ at 2 K in a magnetic field of 9 Tesla, which further follows its linearity up to $1.4\times 10^5$ in a magnetic field of 56 Tesla at 1.5 K. At room temperature the MR for TaP and NbP follows a power law of the exponent about $1.5$ with the values larger than $300\%$ in a magnetic field of 9 Tesla. Such large MR in a wide temperature regime is not likely only due to a resonance of the electron-hole balance, but indicates a complicated mechanism underneath.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures; submitted in May 20, 2015; accepted for publicatio

Enhancement of Multimodal Traffic Safety in High-Quality Transit Areas

Numerous extant studies are dedicated to enhancing the safety of active transportation modes, but very few studies are devoted to safety analysis surrounding transit stations, which serve as an important modal interface for pedestrians and bicyclists. This study bridges the gap by developing joint models based on the multivariate conditionally autoregressive (MCAR) priors with a distance-oriented neighboring weight matrix. For this purpose, transit-station-centered data in Los Angeles County were used for model development. Feature selection relying on both random forest and correlation analyses was employed, which leads to different covariate inputs to each of the two jointed models, resulting in increased model flexibility. Utilizing an Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA) algorithm and various evaluation criteria, the results demonstrate that models with a correlation effect between pedestrians and bicyclists perform much better than the models without such an effect. The joint models also aid in identifying significant covariates contributing to the safety of each of the two active transportation modes. The research results can furnish transportation professionals with additional insights to create safer access to transit and thus promote active transportation

Assessment of Prediction Capabilities of COCOSYS and CFX Code for Simplified Containment

The acceptable accuracy for simulation of severe accident scenarios in containments of nuclear power plants is required to investigate the consequences of severe accidents and effectiveness of potential counter measures. For this purpose, the actual capability of CFX tool and COCOSYS code is assessed in prototypical geometries for simplified physical process-plume (due to a heat source) under adiabatic and convection boundary condition, respectively. Results of the comparison under adiabatic boundary condition show that good agreement is obtained among the analytical solution, COCOSYS prediction, and CFX prediction for zone temperature. The general trend of the temperature distribution along the vertical direction predicted by COCOSYS agrees with the CFX prediction except in dome, and this phenomenon is predicted well by CFX and failed to be reproduced by COCOSYS. Both COCOSYS and CFX indicate that there is no temperature stratification inside dome. CFX prediction shows that temperature stratification area occurs beneath the dome and away from the heat source. Temperature stratification area under adiabatic boundary condition is bigger than that under convection boundary condition. The results indicate that the average temperature inside containment predicted with COCOSYS model is overestimated under adiabatic boundary condition, while it is underestimated under convection boundary condition compared to CFX prediction

Exotic Superconducting Properties in Topological Nodal Semimetal PbTaSe2_2

We report the electronic properties of superconductivity in the topological nodal-line semimetal PbTaSe$_2$. Angle-resolved photoemission measurements accompanied by band calculations confirmed the nodal-line band structure in the normal state of single crystalline PbTaSe$_2$. Resistivity, magnetic-susceptibility and specific heat measurements have also been performed on high-quality single crystals. We observed upward features and large anisotropy in upper critical field ($H_{c2}$) measured in-plane (H//\textbf{ab}) and out-plane (H//\textbf{c}), respectively. Especially, $H_{c2}$ measured in H//\textbf{ab} shows sudden upward features rather than a signal of saturation in ultralow temperatures. The specific heat measurements under magnetic field reveal a full superconducting gap with no gapless nodes. These behaviors in this clean noncentrosymmetric superconductor is possibly related to the underlying exotic physics, providing important clue for realization of topological superconductivity.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures,1 table;Accepted for publication on PR

Five-dimensional generalized f(R)f(R) gravity with curvature-matter coupling

The generalized $f(R)$ gravity with curvature-matter coupling in five-dimensional (5D) spacetime can be established by assuming a hypersurface-orthogonal spacelike Killing vector field of 5D spacetime, and it can be reduced to the 4D formulism of FRW universe. This theory is quite general and can give the corresponding results to the Einstein gravity, $f(R)$ gravity with both no-coupling and non-minimal coupling in 5D spacetime as special cases, that is, we would give the some new results besides previous ones given by Ref.\cite{60}. Furthermore, in order to get some insight into the effects of this theory on the 4D spacetime, by considering a specific type of models with $f_{1}(R)=f_{2}(R)=\alpha R^{m}$ and $B(L_{m})=L_{m}=-\rho$, we not only discuss the constraints on the model parameters $m$, $n$, but also illustrate the evolutionary trajectories of the scale factor $a(t)$, the deceleration parameter $q(t)$ and the scalar field $\epsilon(t)$, $\phi(t)$ in the reduced 4D spacetime. The research results show that this type of $f(R)$ gravity models given by us could explain the current accelerated expansion of our universe without introducing dark energy.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0912.4581, arXiv:gr-qc/0411066 by other author

A γ\gamma-ray Quasi-Periodic modulation in the Blazar PKS 0301−-243?

We report a nominally high-confidence $\gamma$-ray quasi-periodic modulation in the blazar PKS 0301$-$243. For this target, we analyze its \emph{Fermi}-LAT Pass 8 data covering from 2008 August to 2017 May. Two techniques, i.e., the maximum likelihood optimization and the exposure-weighted aperture photometry, are used to build the $\gamma$-ray light curves. Then both the Lomb-Scargle Periodogram and the Weighted Wavelet Z-transform are applied to the light curves to search for period signals. A quasi-periodicity with a period of $2.1\pm0.3$ yr appears at the significance level of $\sim5\sigma$, although it should be noted that this putative quasi-period variability is seen in a data set barely four times longer. We speculate that this $\gamma$-ray quasi-periodic modulation might be evidence of a binary supermassive black hole.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures; Accepted for publication in Ap