Sintered silicon carbide molded body and method for its production

Sintered silicon carbide shapes are described. They are produced by using a composition containing an oxide of at least one element chosen from the group: Li, Be, Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Zn, Nb, Mo, Ba, Tc, Ta, W and Th as a supplement to known sintering aids

Oblique Ion Two-Stream Instability in the Foot Region of a Collisionless Shock

Electrostatic behavior of a collisionless plasma in the foot region of high Mach number perpendicular shocks is investigated through the two-dimensional linear analysis and electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. The simulations are double periodic and taken as a proxy for the situation in the foot. The linear analysis for relatively cold unmagnetized plasmas with a reflected proton beam shows that obliquely propagating Buneman instability is strongly excited. We also found that when the electron temperature is much higher than the proton temperature, the most unstable mode is the highly obliquely propagating ion two-stream instability excited through the resonance between ion plasma oscillations of the background protons and of the beam protons, rather than the ion acoustic instability that is dominant for parallel propagation. To investigate nonlinear behavior of the ion two-stream instability, we have made PIC simulations for the shock foot region in which the initial state satisfies the Buneman instability condition. In the first phase, electrostatic waves grow two-dimensionally by the Buneman instability to heat electrons. In the second phase, highly oblique ion two-stream instability grows to heat mainly ions. This result is in contrast to previous studies based on one-dimensional simulations, for which ion acoustic instability further heats electrons. The present result implies that overheating problem of electrons for shocks in supernova remnants is resolved by considering ion two-stream instability propagating highly obliquely to the shock normal and that multi-dimensional analysis is crucial to understand the particle heating and acceleration processes in shocks.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

Absence of Electron Surfing Acceleration in a Two-Dimensional Simulation

Electron acceleration in high Mach number perpendicular shocks is investigated through two-dimensional electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. We simulate the shock foot region by modeling particles that consist of three components such as incident protons and electrons and reflected protons in the initial state which satisfies the Buneman instability condition. In contrast to previous one-dimensional simulations in which strong surfing acceleration is realized, we find that surfing acceleration does not occur in two-dimensional simulation. This is because excited electrostatic potentials have a two-dimensional structure that makes electron trapping impossible. Thus, the surfing acceleration does not work either in itself or as an injection mechanism for the diffusive shock acceleration. We briefly discuss implications of the present results on the electron heating and acceleration by shocks in supernova remnants.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ

Resonance between Noise and Delay

We propose here a stochastic binary element whose transition rate depends on its state at a fixed interval in the past. With this delayed stochastic transition this is one of the simplest dynamical models under the influence of ``noise'' and ``delay''. We demonstrate numerically and analytically that we can observe resonant phenomena between the oscillatory behavior due to noise and that due to delay.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Phys.Rev.Lett Expanded and Added Reference

A New Aspect of the TrkB Signaling Pathway in Neural Plasticity

In the central nervous system (CNS), the expression of molecules is strictly regulated during development. Control of the spatiotemporal expression of molecules is a mechanism not only to construct the functional neuronal network but also to adjust the network in response to new information from outside of the individual, i.e., through learning and memory. Among the functional molecules in the CNS, one of the best-studied groups is the neurotrophins, which are nerve growth factor (NGF)-related gene family molecules. Neurotrophins include NGF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), neurotrophin 3 (NT-3), and NT-4/5 in the mammal. Among neurotrophins and their receptors, BDNF and tropomyosin-related kinases B (TrkB) are enriched in the CNS. In the CNS, the BDNF-TrkB signaling pathway fulfills a wide variety of functions throughout life, such as cell survival, migration, outgrowth of axons and dendrites, synaptogenesis, synaptic transmission, and remodeling of synapses. Although the same ligand and receptor, BDNF and TrkB, act in these various developmental events, we do not yet understand what kind of mechanism provokes the functional multiplicity of the BDNF-TrkB signaling pathway. In this review, we discuss the mechanism that elicits the variety of functions performed by the BDNF-TrkB signaling pathway in the CNS as a tool of pharmacological therapy

Opening Access: Increasing Scholarly Impact with DigitalCommons@UNO

DigitalCommons@UNO (https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/) is an Institutional Repository (IR) and an initiative implemented by the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Libraries to support our UNO scholars through providing a Green Open Access solution. DigitalCommons@UNO disseminates a wide variety of scholarship including faculty papers, electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), conferences and journals. Since its launch in 2014, the UNO Libraries have been implementing and managing DigitalCommons@UNO through outreach to the UNO community in an effort to collect scholarly works into the IR