Thin Solid Electrolyte Layers Enabled by Nanoscopic Polymer Binding

To achieve high-energy all-solid-state batteries (ASSBs), solid-state electrolytes (SE) must be thin, mechanically robust, and possess the ability to form low resistance interfaces with electrode materials. Embedding an inorganic SE into an organic polymer combines the merits of high conductivity and flexibility. However, the performance of such an SE-in-polymer matrix (SEPM) is highly dependent on the microstructure and interactions between the organic and inorganic components. We report on the synthesis of a free-standing, ultrathin (60 μm) SEPM from a solution of lithium polysulfide, phosphorus sulfide, and ethylene sulfide (ES), where the polysulfide triggers the in situ polymerization of ES and the formation of Li3PS4. Reactant ratios were optimized to achieve a room-temperature conductivity of 2 × 10-5 S cm-1. Cryogenic electron microscopy confirmed a uniform nanoscopic distribution of β-Li3PS4 and PES (polyethylene sulfide). This work presents a facile route to the scalable fabrication of ASSBs with promising cycling performance and low electrolyte loading

Primordial Black Hole Formation from Inflaton

Measurements of the distances to SNe Ia have produced strong evidence that the Universe is really accelarating, implying the existence of a nearly uniform component of dark energy with the simplest explanation as a cosmological constant. In this paper a small changing cosmological term is proposed, which is a function of a slow-rolling scalar field, by which the de Sitter primordial black holes' properties, for both charged and uncharged cases, are carefully examined and the relationship between the black hole formation and the energy transfer of the inflaton within this cosmological term is eluciatedComment: 6 pages, Late

Matter loops corrected modified gravity in Palatini formulation

Recently, corrections to the standard Einstein-Hilbert action are proposed to explain the current cosmic acceleration in stead of introducing dark energy. In the Palatini formulation of those modified gravity models, there is an important observation due to Arkani-Hamed: matter loops will give rise to a correction to the modified gravity action proportional to the Ricci scalar of the metric. In the presence of such term, we show that the current forms of modified gravity models in Palatini formulation, specifically, the 1/R gravity and $\ln R$ gravity, will have phantoms. Then we study the possible instabilities due to the presence of phantom fields. We show that the strong instability in the metric formulation of 1/R gravity indicated by Dolgov and Kawasaki will not appear and the decay timescales for the phantom fields may be long enough for the theories to make sense as effective field theory . On the other hand, if we change the sign of the modification terms to eliminate the phantoms, some other inconsistencies will arise for the various versions of the modified gravity models. Finally, we comment on the universal property of the Palatini formulation of the matter loops corrected modified gravity models and its implications.Comment: 11 pages, 1 figures, References adde

Ion-Beam Induced Current in High-Resistance Materials

The peculiarities of electric current in high-resistance materials, such as semiconductors or semimetals, irradiated by ion beams are considered. It is shown that after ion--beam irradiation an unusual electric current may arise directed against the applied voltage. Such a negative current is a transient effect appearing at the initial stage of the process. The possibility of using this effect for studying the characteristics of irradiated materials is discussed. A new method for defining the mean projected range of ions is suggested.Comment: 1 file, 7 pages, RevTex, no figure

Long-term trend of surface ozone at a regional background station in eastern China 1991?2006: enhanced variability

International audienceInformation about the long-term trends of surface and tropospheric ozone is important for assessing the impact of ozone on human health, vegetation, and climate. Long-term measurements from East Asia, especially China's eastern provinces, are urgently needed to evaluate potential changes of tropospheric ozone over this economically rapid developing region. In this paper, surface ozone data from the Linan Regional Background Station in eastern China are analyzed and results about the long-term trends of surface ozone at the station are presented. Surface ozone data were collected at Linan during 6 periods between August 1991 and July 2006. The seasonality and the long-term changes of surface ozone at the site are discussed, with focus on changes in the diurnal variations, the extreme values, and the ozone distribution. Some long-term trends of surface ozone, e.g., decrease in the average concentration, increase in the daily amplitude of the relative diurnal variations, increase in the monthly highest 5% of the ozone concentration, decrease in the monthly lowest 5% of the ozone concentration, increase in the frequencies at the high and low ends of the ozone distribution have been uncovered by the analysis. All the trends indicate that the variability of surface ozone has been enhanced. Possible causes for the observed trends are discussed. The most likely cause is believed to be the increase of NOx concentration

SUMO Modification Stabilizes Enterovirus 71 Polymerase 3D To Facilitate Viral Replication.

Accumulating evidence suggests that viruses hijack cellular proteins to circumvent the host immune system. Ubiquitination and SUMOylation are extensively studied posttranslational modifications (PTMs) that play critical roles in diverse biological processes. Cross talk between ubiquitination and SUMOylation of both host and viral proteins has been reported to result in distinct functional consequences. Enterovirus 71 (EV71), an RNA virus belonging to the family Picornaviridae, is a common cause of hand, foot, and mouth disease. Little is known concerning how host PTM systems interact with enteroviruses. Here, we demonstrate that the 3D protein, an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of EV71, is modified by small ubiquitin-like modifier 1 (SUMO-1) both during infection and in vitro Residues K159 and L150/D151/L152 were responsible for 3D SUMOylation as determined by bioinformatics prediction combined with site-directed mutagenesis. Also, primer-dependent polymerase assays indicated that mutation of SUMOylation sites impaired 3D polymerase activity and virus replication. Moreover, 3D is ubiquitinated in a SUMO-dependent manner, and SUMOylation is crucial for 3D stability, which may be due to the interplay between the two PTMs. Importantly, increasing the level of SUMO-1 in EV71-infected cells augmented the SUMOylation and ubiquitination levels of 3D, leading to enhanced replication of EV71. These results together suggested that SUMO and ubiquitin cooperatively regulated EV71 infection, either by SUMO-ubiquitin hybrid chains or by ubiquitin conjugating to the exposed lysine residue through SUMOylation. Our study provides new insight into how a virus utilizes cellular pathways to facilitate its replication. IMPORTANCE: Infection with enterovirus 71 (EV71) often causes neurological diseases in children, and EV71 is responsible for the majority of fatalities. Based on a better understanding of interplay between virus and host cell, antiviral drugs against enteroviruses may be developed. As a dynamic cellular process of posttranslational modification, SUMOylation regulates global cellular protein localization, interaction, stability, and enzymatic activity. However, little is known concerning how SUMOylation directly influences virus replication by targeting viral polymerase. Here, we found that EV71 polymerase 3D was SUMOylated during EV71 infection and in vitro Moreover, the SUMOylation sites were determined, and in vitro polymerase assays indicated that mutations at SUMOylation sites could impair polymerase synthesis. Importantly, 3D is ubiquitinated in a SUMOylation-dependent manner that enhances the stability of the viral polymerase. Our findings indicate that the two modifications likely cooperatively enhance virus replication. Our study may offer a new therapeutic strategy against virus replication

Constraining f(R) gravity in the Palatini formalism

Although several models of $f(R)$ theories of gravity within the Palatini approach have been studied already, the interest was concentrated on those that have an effect on the late-time evolution of the universe, by the inclusion for example of terms inversely proportional to the scalar curvature in the gravitational action. However, additional positive powers of the curvature also provide interesting early-time phenomenology, like inflation, and the presence of such terms in the action is equally, if not more, probable. In the present paper models with both additional positive and negative powers of the scalar curvature are studied. Their effect on the evolution of the universe is investigated for all cosmological eras, and various constraints are put on the extra terms in the actions. Additionally, we examine the extent to which the new terms in positive powers affect the late-time evolution of the universe and the related observables, which also determines our ability to probe their presence in the gravitational action.Comment: reference update and minor changes to match published versio

POEM: Pricing Longer for Edge Computing in the Device Cloud

Multiple access mobile edge computing has been proposed as a promising technology to bring computation services close to end users, by making good use of edge cloud servers. In mobile device clouds (MDC), idle end devices may act as edge servers to offer computation services for busy end devices. Most existing auction based incentive mechanisms in MDC focus on only one round auction without considering the time correlation. Moreover, although existing single round auctions can also be used for multiple times, users should trade with higher bids to get more resources in the cascading rounds of auctions, then their budgets will run out too early to participate in the next auction, leading to auction failures and the whole benefit may suffer. In this paper, we formulate the computation offloading problem as a social welfare optimization problem with given budgets of mobile devices, and consider pricing longer of mobile devices. This problem is a multiple-choice multi-dimensional 0-1 knapsack problem, which is a NP-hard problem. We propose an auction framework named MAFL for long-term benefits that runs a single round resource auction in each round. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed auction mechanism outperforms the single round by about 55.6% on the revenue on average and MAFL outperforms existing double auction by about 68.6% in terms of the revenue.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure, Accepted by the 18th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing (ICA3PP

Birkhoff's Theorem in f(T) Gravity up to the Perturbative Order

f(T) gravity, a generally modified teleparallel gravity, has become very popular in recent times as it is able to reproduce the unification of inflation and late-time acceleration without the need of a dark energy component or an inflation field. In this present work, we investigate specifically the range of validity of Birkhoff's theorem with the general tetrad field via perturbative approach. At zero order, Birkhoff's theorem is valid and the solution is the well known Schwarzschild-(A)dS metric. Then considering the special case of the diagonal tetrad field, we present a new spherically symmetric solution in the frame of f(T) gravity up to the perturbative order. The results with the diagonal tetrad field satisfy the physical equivalence between the Jordan and the so-called Einstein frames, which are realized via conformal transformation, at least up to the first perturbative order.Comment: 8 pages, no figure. Final version, accepted for publication in EPJ