Precipitation Behavior and Magnetic Properties of Cu-Fe-Co Alloys Containing Nanogranular Ferromagnetic-Element Particles

This work investigates the evolution of microstructures and magnetic properties during isothermal annealing of Cu-Fe-Co alloys, using electron microscopy and superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometry. Small coherent granular precipitates composed of iron and cobalt formed in the copper matrix in the early stage of precipitation. As annealing proceeded, the precipitates lost coherency to the matrix after reaching a size of 15–20 nm and twin-like structures were consecutively introduced in the particles. The SQUID measurements revealed that the magnetic properties of the specimens correlated with the microstructural evolution. The coercive force initially increased with annealing time but decreased after reaching a peak. Lorentz Microscopy suggested that the initial large increase of magnetization was invoked by a structural transition from fcc to B2 in the precipitates

Improvement in the performance of the X-ray source based on parametric X-ray radiation using a wedge-shaped target crystal

The properties of parametric X-ray radiation (PXR) emitted from a wedge-shaped Si(111) crystal plate were experimentally investigated using the PXR generator at the Laboratory for Electron Beam Research and Application (LEBRA) of Nihon University. The wedge surface was imposed on a symmetric-cut Si(111) plate and has an asymmetric cut-surface with respect to the (111) crystal planes. As a result of the experiment, it was found that the PXR intensity improved can be obtained suppressing the degradation of the X-ray performance using a wedgeshaped target. With this improvement, phase-contrast images without absorption contrast could be obtained from DEI images taken with the exposure of severalten seconds. The reduction of the exposure time made it possible to carry out a computed tomography (CT) experiment by DEI within a practical machine time, and phase-contrast tomograms of a biological sample were obtained at the PXR energy of 17.5 keV

Acoustic Cues for Sound Source Distance and Azimuth in Rabbits, a Racquetball and a Rigid Spherical Model

There are numerous studies measuring the transfer functions representing signal transformation between a source and each ear canal, i.e., the head-related transfer functions (HRTFs), for various species. However, only a handful of these address the effects of sound source distance on HRTFs. This is the first study of HRTFs in the rabbit where the emphasis is on the effects of sound source distance and azimuth on HRTFs. With the rabbit placed in an anechoic chamber, we made acoustic measurements with miniature microphones placed deep in each ear canal to a sound source at different positions (10–160 cm distance, ±150° azimuth). The sound was a logarithmically swept broadband chirp. For comparisons, we also obtained the HRTFs from a racquetball and a computational model for a rigid sphere. We found that (1) the spectral shape of the HRTF in each ear changed with sound source location; (2) interaural level difference (ILD) increased with decreasing distance and with increasing frequency. Furthermore, ILDs can be substantial even at low frequencies when distance is close; and (3) interaural time difference (ITD) decreased with decreasing distance and generally increased with decreasing frequency. The observations in the rabbit were reproduced, in general, by those in the racquetball, albeit greater in magnitude in the rabbit. In the sphere model, the results were partly similar and partly different than those in the racquetball and the rabbit. These findings refute the common notions that ILD is negligible at low frequencies and that ITD is constant across frequency. These misconceptions became evident when distance-dependent changes were examined

How management control systems can facilitate a firm's strategic renewal and creation of financial intelligence

This chapter presents how management control systems and financial intelligence can facilitate a firm’s strategic renewal. Although the strategic accounting literature has recognized the importance of financial intelligence to a firm’s strategic decision making and formulation of strategy, the question of how a management control system (MCS) can help a firm to revamp and reallocate its resources has been overlooked in the prior strategy literature. In response, this chapter presents a conceptual model, which presents how advanced management accounting systems can foster a firm’s strategic renewal in light of the available theoretical foundations (the strategy implementation view, the dynamic capability perspective, and management accounting). This chapter advances managers’ understanding of firm’s renewal practices through the use of an MCS. Practical examples have been used to illustrate how firms renew their business operations in practice.fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

A user's guide to optimal transport

This text is an expanded version of the lectures given by the first author in the 2009 CIME summer school of Cetraro. It provides a quick and reasonably account of the classical theory of optimal mass transportation and of its more recent developments, including the metric theory of gradient flows, geometric and functional inequalities related to optimal transportation, the first and second order differential calculus in the Wasserstein space and the synthetic theory of metric measure spaces with Ricci curvature bounded from below