Ageing and relaxation times in disordered insulators

We focus on the slow relaxations observed in the conductance of disordered insulators at low temperature (especially granular aluminum films). They manifest themselves as a temporal logarithmic decrease of the conductance after a quench from high temperatures and the concomitant appearance of a field effect anomaly centered on the gate voltage maintained. We are first interested in ageing effects, i.e. the age dependence of the dynamical properties of the system. We stress that the formation of a second field effect anomaly at a different gate voltage is not a "history free" logarithmic (lnt) process, but departs from lnt in a way which encodes the system's age. The apparent relaxation time distribution extracted from the observed relaxations is thus not "constant" but evolves with time. We discuss what defines the age of the system and what external perturbation out of equilibrium does or does not rejuvenate it. We further discuss the problem of relaxation times and comment on the commonly used "two dip" experimental protocol aimed at extracting "characteristic times" for the glassy systems (granular aluminum, doped indium oxide...). We show that it is inoperable for systems like granular Al and probably highly doped InOx where it provides a trivial value only determined by the experimental protocol. But in cases where different values are obtained like in lightly doped InOx or some ultra thin metal films, potentially interesting information can be obtained, possibly about the "short time" dynamics of the different systems. Present ideas about the effect of doping on the glassiness of disordered insulators may also have to be reconsidered.Comment: to appear in the proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Transport and Interactions in Disordered Systems (TIDS14

Assessment techniques, database design and software facilities for thermodynamics and diffusion

The purpose of this article is to give a set of recommendations to producers of assessed thermodynamic data, who may be involved in either the critical evaluation of limited chemical systems or the creation and dissemination of larger thermodynamic databases. Also, it is hoped that reviewers and editors of scientific publications in this field will find some of the information useful. Good practice in the assessment process is essential, particularly as datasets from many different sources may be combined together into a single database. With this in mind, we highlight some problems that can arise during the assessment process and we propose a quality assurance procedure. It is worth mentioning at this point, that the provision of reliable assessed thermodynamic data relies heavily on the availability of high quality experimental information. The different software packages for thermodynamics and diffusion are described here only briefly

B cells and monocytes from patients with active multiple sclerosis exhibit increased surface expression of both HERV-H Env and HERV-W Env, accompanied by increased seroreactivity

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The etiology of the neurogenerative disease multiple sclerosis (MS) is unknown. The leading hypotheses suggest that MS is the result of exposure of genetically susceptible individuals to certain environmental factor(s). Herpesviruses and human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) represent potentially important factors in MS development. Herpesviruses can activate HERVs, and HERVs are activated in MS patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using flow cytometry, we have analyzed HERV-H Env and HERV-W Env epitope expression on the surface of PBMCs from MS patients with active and stable disease, and from control individuals. We have also analyzed serum antibody levels to the expressed HERV-H and HERV-W Env epitopes. We found a significantly higher expression of HERV-H and HERV-W Env epitopes on B cells and monocytes from patients with active MS compared with patients with stable MS or control individuals. Furthermore, patients with active disease had relatively higher numbers of B cells in the PBMC population, and higher antibody reactivities towards HERV-H Env and HERV-W Env epitopes. The higher antibody reactivities in sera from patients with active MS correlate with the higher levels of HERV-H Env and HERV-W Env expression on B cells and monocytes. We did not find such correlations for stable MS patients or for controls.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These findings indicate that both HERV-H Env and HERV-W Env are expressed in higher quantities on the surface of B cells and monocytes in patients with active MS, and that the expression of these proteins may be associated with exacerbation of the disease.</p

Plasmons in icosahedral quasicrystals: An EELS investigation

We present the results of an electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) investigation of the icosahedral quasicrystals i-Al-Cu-Fe, i-Al-Pd-Mn and i-Al-Pd-Re. The spectra of the three systems studied are very similar. Their main contribution comes from a broad plasmon like peak, which can be interpreted as an "$s{-}p$" electron plasmon damped by "d" electron interband transitions. We show that it is similar to those found in other simple crystalline aluminum-transition metal alloys, so that no specificity related to the quasicrystalline order of the alloys dominates

Densification behaviour of metal powders at high temperature

No abstract availabl

Densification behaviour of metal powders at high temperature

No abstract availabl

The COTUR project: remote sensing of offshore turbulence for wind energy application

The paper presents the measurement strategy and data set collected during the COTUR (COherence of TURbulence with lidars) campaign. This field experiment took place from February 2019 to April 2020 on the southwestern coast of Norway. The coherence quantifies the spatial correlation of eddies and is little known in the marine atmospheric boundary layer. The study was motivated by the need to better characterize the lateral coherence, which partly governs the dynamic wind load on multi-megawatt offshore wind turbines. During the COTUR campaign, the coherence was studied using land-based remote sensing technology. The instrument setup consisted of three long-range scanning Doppler wind lidars, one Doppler wind lidar profiler and one passive microwave radiometer. Both the WindScanner software and LidarPlanner software were used jointly to simultaneously orient the three scanner heads into the mean wind direction, which was provided by the lidar wind profiler. The radiometer instrument complemented these measurements by providing temperature and humidity profiles in the atmospheric boundary layer. The scanning beams were pointed slightly upwards to record turbulence characteristics both within and above the surface layer, providing further insight on the applicability of surface-layer scaling to model the turbulent wind load on offshore wind turbines. The preliminary results show limited variations of the lateral coherence with the scanning distance. A slight increase in the identified Davenport decay coefficient with the height is partly due to the limited pointing accuracy of the instruments. These results underline the importance of achieving pointing errors under 0.1∘ to study properly the lateral coherence of turbulence at scanning distances of several kilometres.publishedVersio

Impact of orthognathic surgery on the body posture

International audienc

Electronic structure and electron energy-loss spectroscopy of ZrO2 zirconia

The atomic and electronic structures of zirconia are calculated within density functional theory, and their evolution is analyzed as the crystal-field symmetry changes from tetrahedral [cubic (c-ZrO2) and tetragonal (t-ZrO2) phases] to octahedral (hypothetical rutile ZrO2), to a mixing of these symmetries (monoclinic phase, m-ZrO2). We find that the theoretical bulk modulus in c-ZrO2 is 30% larger than the experimental value, showing that the introduction of yttria in zirconia has a significant effect. Electronic structure fingerprints which characterize each phase from their electronic spectra are identified. We have carried out electron energy-loss spectroscopy experiments at low momentum transfer and compared these results to the theoretical spectra calculated within the random phase approximation. We show a dependence of the valence and 4p (N2,3 edge) plasmons on the crystal structure, the dependence of the latter being brought into the spectra by local-field effects. Last, we attribute low energy excitations observed in EELS of m-ZrO2 to defect states 2 eV above the top of the intrinsic valence band, and the EELS fundamental band gap value is reconciled with the 5.2 or 5.8 eV gaps determined by vacuum ultraviolet spectroscop