FeCuNbSiB Thin Films Deposited by Pulsed Laser Deposition: Structural and Magnetic Properties

Using the pulsed laser ablation technique, Fe73.5Cu1Nb3Si15.5B7 amorphous thin films, with smooth and uniform surfaces, have been deposited on glass and silicon substrates. Based on the information provided by the thermomagnetic analysis, the nanocrystalline state was achieved after the thermal treatment per-formed at 460 C. In nanocrystalline state, the samples present an 80 % lower coercive magnetic field and a 3.5 times higher saturation magnetization with respect to the as-deposited state. When you are citing the document, use the following link http://essuir.sumdu.edu.ua/handle/123456789/3515

Understanding affordances: history and contemporary development of Gibson’s central concept

Gibson developed the affordance concept to complement his theory of direct perception that stands in sharp contrast with the prevalent inferential theories of perception. A comparison of the two approaches shows that the distinction between them also has an ontological aspect. We trace the history and newer formalizations of the notion of affordance and discuss some competing opinions on its scope. Next, empirical work on the affordance concept is reviewed in brief and the relevance of dynamical systems theory to affordance research is demonstrated. Finally, the striking but often neglected convergence of the ideas of Gibson and those of certain Continental philosophers is discussed

Effects of footedness and stance asymmetry confirm an inter-leg metastable coordination dynamics of standing posture

We investigated the patterns of coordination between the left and right legs that support the task of maintaining an upright standing posture. We used cross-wavelet analyses to assess coordination between the centers of pressure under the left and right feet. We recruited participants with a lateralized functional preference for their right leg, and we manipulated whether these participants stood with symmetric/asymmetric stances and whether their eyes were open or closed. Our hypotheses were derived from the Haken-Kelso-Bunz (HKB) model of interlimb coordination dynamics. Consistent with HKB model predictions, we observed (1) coordination taking the form of metastable, transient epochs of stable phase relations, (2) preferences for in-phase and anti-phase coordination patterns, and (3) changes in pattern stability and phase leads associated with both stance asymmetry and right-side lateral preference. The form and stability of observed coordination patterns were mediated by the availability of visual information. Our findings confirm the existence of a metastable coordination dynamic associated with the task of maintaining upright stance. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of evaluating the utility of the HKB model for understanding the functional organization of the posture system

Zrozumieć afordancje: przegląd badań nad główną tezą Jamesa J. Gibsona

Gibson rozwinął koncepcję afordancji, uzupełniając za jej pomocą swoją teorię percepcji bezpośredniej, która stoi w wyraźnej opozycji do popularnych teorii percepcji pośredniej. Porównanie ze sobą tych dwóch podejść pokazuje, że różnice pomiędzy nimi dotyczą również ontologii percepcji. W artykule tym przedstawiamy zarówno historię pojęcia afordancji, jak i późniejsze jego formalizacje, omawiając przy tym konkurujące ze sobą sposoby rozumienia tego terminu. Następnie przechodzimy do krótkiego przeglądu badań empirycznych nad zagadnieniem afordancji, wskazując na znaczenie teorii układów dynamicznych w tychże badaniach. W niniejszym tekście nie zabrakło również odniesienia do często pomijanego wątku, czyli do powiązań myśli Gibsona z wybranymi przestawicielami filozofii kontynentalnej

Interaction of Cardiovascular Nonmodifiable Risk Factors, Comorbidities and Comedications With Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury and Cardioprotection by Pharmacological Treatments and Ischemic Conditioning

Risc cardiovascular; Isquèmia/reperfusióCardiovascular risk; Ischemia/reperfusionRiesgo cardiovascular; Isquemia/reperfusiónPreconditioning, postconditioning, and remote conditioning of the myocardium enhance the ability of the heart to withstand a prolonged ischemia/reperfusion insult and the potential to provide novel therapeutic paradigms for cardioprotection. While many signaling pathways leading to endogenous cardioprotection have been elucidated in experimental studies over the past 30 years, no cardioprotective drug is on the market yet for that indication. One likely major reason for this failure to translate cardioprotection into patient benefit is the lack of rigorous and systematic preclinical evaluation of promising cardioprotective therapies prior to their clinical evaluation, since ischemic heart disease in humans is a complex disorder caused by or associated with cardiovascular risk factors and comorbidities. These risk factors and comorbidities induce fundamental alterations in cellular signaling cascades that affect the development of ischemia/reperfusion injury and responses to cardioprotective interventions. Moreover, some of the medications used to treat these comorbidities may impact on cardioprotection by again modifying cellular signaling pathways. The aim of this article is to review the recent evidence that cardiovascular risk factors as well as comorbidities and their medications may modify the response to cardioprotective interventions. We emphasize the critical need for taking into account the presence of cardiovascular risk factors as well as comorbidities and their concomitant medications when designing preclinical studies for the identification and validation of cardioprotective drug targets and clinical studies. This will hopefully maximize the success rate of developing rational approaches to effective cardioprotective therapies for the majority of patients with multiple comorbidities. Significance Statement Ischemic heart disease is a major cause of mortality; however, there are still no cardioprotective drugs on the market. Most studies on cardioprotection have been undertaken in animal models of ischemia/reperfusion in the absence of comorbidities; however, ischemic heart disease develops with other systemic disorders (e.g., hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, atherosclerosis). Here we focus on the preclinical and clinical evidence showing how these comorbidities and their routine medications affect ischemia/reperfusion injury and interfere with cardioprotective strategies.P.F. was supported by the National Research, Development and Innovation Office of Hungary (Research Excellence Program–TKP, National Heart Program NVKP 16-1-2016-0017) and by the Higher Education Institutional Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities in Hungary, within the framework of the Therapeutic Development thematic program of Semmelweis University. D.D. is supported by grants from National Institutes of Health National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute [R01-HL136389, R01-HL131517, R01-HL089598, and R01-HL163277], the German Research Foundation [DFG, Do 769/4-1], the European Union (large-scale integrative project MAESTRIA, no. 965286). G.H. is supported by the German Research Foundation [SFB 1116 B8]. D.H. is supported by the Duke–NUS Signature Research Programme funded by the Ministry of Health, Singapore Ministry of Health’s National Medical Research Council under its Clinician Scientist–Senior Investigator scheme [NMRC/CSA-SI/0011/2017], Centre Grant [CGAug16M006], and Collaborative Centre Grant scheme [NMRC/CGAug16C006]. I.A. is supported from Boehringer-Ingelheim for the investigation of the effects of empagliflozin on the myocardium and from the European Union (ERDF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program “Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation,” under the call “RESEARCH – CREATE – INNOVATE” (project code: 5048539). S.M.D. acknowledges the support of the British Heart Foundation [PG/19/51/34493 and PG/16/85/32471]. S.L. is supported by the South African National Research Foundation and received COST Seed funding from the Department of Science and Innovation in South Africa. M.R-M. is supported by the Instituto de Salud Carlos III of the Spanish Ministry of Health [FIS-PI19-01196] and a grant from the Spanish Society of Cardiology [SEC/FEC-INV-BAS 217003]. C.J.Z. is supported by a grant from European Foundation for the Study of Diabetes (EFSD), a research grant from Boehringer-Ingelheim and an institutional grant from Amsterdam UMC Cardiovascular Research. R.S. is supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; German Research Foundation) [Project number 268555672—SFB 1213, Project B05]

Ellipsometry study of TiO2:N thin films prepared by sol-gel method

Date du colloque : 09/2011International audienc

Multi-scale coordination of distinctive movement patterns during embodied interaction between adults with high-functioning autism and neurotypicals

Funding We acknowledge financial support from DGAPA-PAPIIT projects of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: IA105017 (RF and LZ-F) and IA104717 (TF), Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACyT) projects 167441 (RF and LZ-F), the scholarship 638215 to LZ-F granted by the CONACyT, the Newton Advanced Fellowship awarded to RF by the Academy of Medical Sciences, through the UK Government’s Newton, and the Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship “SOCIAL BRAIN” awarded to BT. Acknowledgments We thank Charles Lenay and Dominique Aubert from the Université de Technologie de Compiègne for making the TACTOS hardware and software available to the University Hospital Cologne, and for providing technical support. LZ-F would like to specially thank Jesús Naveja and Lilia Fonseca for interesting discussions. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02760/full#supplementary-materialPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Optical properties of Nb-doped TiO2 thin films prepared by sol–gel method

In this work, we studied optical properties of pure and Nb-doped TiO2 synthesized using a sol gel method and deposited as thin films by spin-coating followed by annealing in air at 500 degrees C for 1 h. The surface elemental composition was derived from X-ray photoelectron spectra, while structure and surface morphology were investigated using X-ray diffraction and atomic force/scanning electron microscopy. Finally, the optical properties were investigated by means of UV-vis spectrophotometry and spectroscopic ellipsometry.  The Nb content was determined from XPS measurements to vary between 1.8 and 4.3 at%. The XRD patterns of the deposited thin films, with a maximum thickness of about 56 nm, showed no diffraction peaks. As proven both by microscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry studies doping TiO2 with Nb modified the surface morphology of the samples; the grain size is increasing while the surface roughness decreases with the increase in Nb content. This is accompanied by a decrease in the refractive index and an increase of the extinction coefficient.

Nb doped TiO2 thin films as photocatalytic materials

Amorphous undoped and Nb-doped films were obtained by the spin coating method. The films have a compact structure, as revealed by scanning electron microscopy, and are very thin, with thickness values under 100 nm. The photocatalytic activity of the films was evaluated by observing the decomposition of an oleic acid solution under UV irradiation, and by studying the change in the optical transmittance of an aqueous solution containing methylene blue, in the presence of the UV-irradiated films. More than 30 h, depending on doping, are needed to recover their initial contact angles before applying oleic acid. The increase of the optical transmittance of the methylene blue solution confirms the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue on the Nb-doped TiO2 films. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies, performed to detect the presence of the carbon on the irradiated surface of the films, drive to the conclusion that at the surface of the films, even for contact angles close to 0 ∘ , the presence of carbon still can be detected, which demonstrates that hydrophilicity is ruled by a different mechanism than photocatalysis