Pressure screening in the interior of primary shells in double-wall carbon nanotubes

The pressure response of double-wall carbon nanotubes has been investigated by means of Raman spectroscopy up to 10 GPa. The intensity of the radial breathing modes of the outer tubes decreases rapidly but remain observable up to 9 GPa, exhibiting a behavior similar (but less pronounced) to that of single-wall carbon nanotubes, which undergo a shape distortion at higher pressures. In addition, the tangential band of the external tubes broadens and decreases in amplitude. The corresponding Raman features of the internal tubes appear to be considerably less sensitive to pressure. All findings lead to the conclusion that the outer tubes act as a protection shield for the inner tubes whereas the latter increase the structural stability of the outer tubes upon pressure application.Comment: PDF with 15 pages, 3 figures, 1 table; submitted to Physical Review

Raman spectra of MgB2 at high pressure and topological electronic transition

Raman spectra of the MgB2 ceramic samples were measured as a function of pressure up to 32 GPa at room temperature. The spectrum at normal conditions contains a very broad peak at ~590 cm-1 related to the E2g phonon mode. The frequency of this mode exhibits a strong linear dependence in the pressure region from 5 to 18 GPa, whereas beyond this region the slope of the pressure-induced frequency shift is reduced by about a factor of two. The pressure dependence of the phonon mode up to ~ 5GPa exhibits a change in the slope as well as a "hysteresis" effect in the frequency vs. pressure behavior. These singularities in the E2g mode behavior under pressure support the suggestion that MgB2 may undergo a pressure-induced topological electronic transition.Comment: 2 figure

ENVIRONMENTS and EOL : identification of Environment Ontology terms in text and the annotation of the Encyclopedia of Life

© The Author(s), 2015. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Bioinformatics 31 (2015): 1872-1874, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btv045.The association of organisms to their environments is a key issue in exploring biodiversity patterns. This knowledge has traditionally been scattered, but textual descriptions of taxa and their habitats are now being consolidated in centralized resources. However, structured annotations are needed to facilitate large-scale analyses. Therefore, we developed ENVIRONMENTS, a fast dictionary-based tagger capable of identifying Environment Ontology (ENVO) terms in text. We evaluate the accuracy of the tagger on a new manually curated corpus of 600 Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) species pages. We use the tagger to associate taxa with environments by tagging EOL text content monthly, and integrate the results into the EOL to disseminate them to a broad audience of users.The Encyclopedia Of Life Rubenstein Fellows Program [CRDF EOL-33066-13/E33066], the LifeWatchGreece Research Infrastructure [384676-94/GSRT/ NSRF(C&E)] and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research [NNF14CC0001]

11^{11}B NMR study of pure and lightly carbon doped MgB2_2 superconductors

We report a $^{11}$B NMR line shape and spin-lattice relaxation rate ($1/(T_1T)$) study of pure and lightly carbon doped MgB$_{2-x}$C$_{x}$ for $x=0$, 0.02, and 0.04, in the vortex state and in magnetic field of 23.5 kOe. We show that while pure MgB$_2$ exhibits the magnetic field distribution from superposition of the normal and the Abrikosov state, slight replacement of boron with carbon unveils the magnetic field distribution of the pure Abrikosov state. This indicates a considerable increase of $H_{c2}^c$ with carbon doping with respect to pure MgB$_2$. The spin-lattice relaxation rate $1/(T_1T)$ demonstrates clearly the presence of a coherence peak right below $T_c$ in pure MgB$_2$, followed by a typical BCS decrease on cooling. However, at temperatures lower than $\approx 10$K strong deviation from the BCS behavior is observed, probably from residual contribution of the vortex dynamics. In the carbon doped systems both the coherence peak and the BCS temperature dependence of $1/(T_1T)$ weaken, an effect attributed to the gradual shrinking of the $\sigma$ hole cylinders of the Fermi surface with electron doping.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Synthesis of monoclinic Celsian from coal fly ash by using a one-step solid-state reaction

Monoclinic (Celsian) and hexagonal (Hexacelsian) Ba1−xSrxAl2Si2O8 solid solutions, where x = 0, 0.25, 0.375, 0.5, 0.75 or 1, were synthesized by using Coal Fly Ash (CFA) as main raw material, employing a simple one-step solid-state reaction process involving thermal treatment for 5 h at 850–1300 °C. Fully monoclinic Celsian was obtained at 1200 °C/5 h, for SrO contents of 0.25 ≤ x ≤ 0.75. However, an optimum SrO level of 0.25 ≤ x ≤ 0.375 was recommended for the stabilization of Celsian. These synthesis conditions represent a significant improvement over the higher temperatures, longer times and/or multi-step processes needed to obtain fully monoclinic Celsian, when other raw materials are used for this purpose, according to previous literature. These results were attributed to the role of the chemical and phase constitution of CFA as well as to a likely mineralizing effect of CaO and TiO2 present in it, which enhanced the Hexacelsian to Celsian conversion

Data sharing tools adopted by the European Biodiversity Observation Network Project

A fundamental constituent of a biodiversity observation network is the technological infrastructure that underpins it. The European Biodiversity Network project (EU BON) has been working with and improving upon pre-existing tools for data mobilization, sharing and description. This paper provides conceptual and practical advice for the use of these tools. We review tools for managing metadata, occurrence data, and ecological data and give detailed description of these tools, their capabilities and limitations. This is followed by recommendations on their deployment and possible future enhancements. This is done from the perspective of the needs of the biodiversity observation community with a view to the development of a unified user interface to these data the European Biodiversity Portal (EBP). We described the steps taken to develop, adapt, deploy and test these tools. This document also gives an overview of the objectives that still need to be achieved and challenges to be addressed for the remainder of the project

Superconductivity: Exotic Commonalities in Phase and Mode

Recent muon and neutron experiments on the new FeAs-based superconductors revealed phase diagrams characterized by first-order evolution from antiferromagnetic to superconducting states, and an inelastic magnetic resonance mode whose energy scales as $\sim 4 k_{B}T_{c}$. These features exhibit striking commonalities with cuprate, backyball, organic, and heavy-fermion superconductors as well as superfluid $^{4}$He.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, original version of News and Views for Nature Materials submitted on Feb. 8, 2009; revised version will appear as Nature Materials 8 (April, 2009) 253-25

Harnessing positive species interactions as a tool against climate-driven loss of coastal biodiversity

Habitat-forming species sustain biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in harsh environments through the amelioration of physical stress. Nonetheless, their role in shaping patterns of species distribution under future climate scenarios is generally overlooked. Focusing on coastal systems, we assess how habitat-forming species can influence the ability of stress-sensitive species to exhibit plastic responses, adapt to novel environmental conditions, or track suitable climates. Here, we argue that habitat-former populations could be managed as a nature-based solution against climate-driven loss of biodiversity. Drawing from different ecological and biological disciplines, we identify a series of actions to sustain the resilience of marine habitat-forming species to climate change, as well as their effectiveness and reliability in rescuing stress-sensitive species from increasingly adverse environmental conditions.EuroMarine - European Marine Research Networ