European air quality maps 2005 including uncertainty analysis

The objective of this report is (a) the updating and refinement of European air quality maps based on annual statistics of the 2005 observational data reported by EEA Member countries in 2006, and (b) the further improvement of the interpolation methodologies. The paper presents the results achieved and an uncertainty analysis of the interpolated maps and builds upon earlier reports from Horalék et al. (2005; 2007)

Ultrafast lithium diffusion in bilayer graphene

Solids that simultaneously conduct electrons and ions are key elements for the mass transfer and storage required in battery electrodes. Single-phase materials with a high electronic and high ionic conductivity at room temperature are hard to come by, and therefore multiphase systems with separate ion and electron channels have been put forward instead. Here we report on bilayer graphene as a single-phase mixed conductor that demonstrates Li diffusion faster than in graphite and even surpassing the diffusion of sodium chloride in liquid water. To measure Li diffusion, we have developed an on-chip electrochemical cell architecture in which the redox reaction that forces Li intercalation is localized only at a protrusion of the device so that the graphene bilayer remains unperturbed from the electrolyte during operation. We performed time-dependent Hall measurements across spatially displaced Hall probes to monitor the in-plane Li diffusion kinetics within the graphene bilayer and measured a diffusion coefficient as high as 7 × 10 -5 â €...cm 2 s -1

Analytical Tachyonic Lump Solutions in Open Superstring Field Theory

We construct a classical solution in the GSO(-) sector in the framework of a Wess-Zumino-Witten-like open superstring field theory on a non-BPS D-brane. We use an su(2) supercurrent, which is obtained by compactifying a direction to a circle with the critical radius, in order to get analytical tachyonic lump solutions to the equation of motion. By investigating the action expanded around a solution we find that it represents a deformation from a non-BPS D-brane to a D-brane-anti-D-brane system at the critical value of a parameter which is contained in classical solutions. Although such a process was discussed in terms of boundary conformal field theory before, our study is based on open superstring field theory including interaction terms.Comment: 17 pages, references adde

Probing Exfoliated Graphene Layers and Their Lithiation with Microfocused X-rays

X-ray diffraction is measured on individual bilayer and multilayer graphene single-crystals and combined with electrochemically induced lithium intercalation. In-plane Bragg peaks are observed by grazing incidence diffraction. Focusing the incident beam down to an area of about 10 μm × 10 μm, individual flakes are probed by specular X-ray reflectivity. By deploying a recursive Parratt algorithm to model the experimental data, we gain access to characteristic crystallographic parameters of the samples. Notably, it is possible to directly extract the bi/multilayer graphene c-axis lattice parameter. The latter is found to increase upon lithiation, which we control using an on-chip peripheral electrochemical cell layout. These experiments demonstrate the feasibility of in situ X-ray diffraction on individual, micron-sized single crystallites of few- and bilayer two-dimensional materials

Experimental Demonstration of Fermi Surface Effects at Filling Factor 5/2

Using small wavelength surface acoustic waves (SAW) on ultra-high mobility heterostructures, Fermi surface properties are detected at 5/2 filling factor at temperatures higher than those at which the quantum Hall state forms. An enhanced conductivity is observed at 5/2 by employing sub 0.5 micron wavelength SAW, indicating a quasiparticle mean-free-path substantially smaller than that in the lowest Landau level. These findings are consistent with the presence of a filled Fermi sea of composite fermions, which may pair at lower temperatures to form the 5/2 ground state.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Anisotropy of Magnetoresistance Hysteresis around the ν=2/3\nu=2/3 Quantum Hall State in Tilted Magnetic Field

We present an anisotropy of the hysteretic transport around the spin transition point at Landau level filling factor $\nu=2/3$ in tilted magnetic field. When the direction of the in-plane component of the magnetic field $B_{\parallel}$ is normal to the probe current $I$, a strong hysteretic transport due to the current-induced nuclear spin polarization occurs. When $B_{\parallel}$ is parallel to $I$, on the other hand, the hysteresis almost disappears. We also demonstrate that the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation rate $T_{1}^{-1}$ at the transition point increases with decreasing angle between the directions of $B_{\parallel}$ and $I$. These results suggest that the morphology of electron spin domains around $\nu =2/3$ is affected by the current direction.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

A machine learning pipeline for discriminant pathways identification

Motivation: Identifying the molecular pathways more prone to disruption during a pathological process is a key task in network medicine and, more in general, in systems biology. Results: In this work we propose a pipeline that couples a machine learning solution for molecular profiling with a recent network comparison method. The pipeline can identify changes occurring between specific sub-modules of networks built in a case-control biomarker study, discriminating key groups of genes whose interactions are modified by an underlying condition. The proposal is independent from the classification algorithm used. Three applications on genomewide data are presented regarding children susceptibility to air pollution and two neurodegenerative diseases: Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Availability: Details about the software used for the experiments discussed in this paper are provided in the Appendix