8,620 research outputs found
Generating functionals, consistency, and uniqueness in the integral equation theory of liquids
We discuss and illustrate through numerical examples the relations between
generating functionals, thermodynamic consistency (in particular the
virial-free energy one), and uniqueness of the solution, in the integral
equation theory of liquids. We propose a new approach for deriving closures
automatically satisfying such characteristics. Results from a first exploration
of this program are presented and discussed.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figure
Advanced radar absorbing ceramic-based materials for multifunctional applications in space environment
In this review, some results of the experimental activity carried out by the authors on advanced composite materials for space applications are reported. Composites are widely employed in the aerospace industry thanks to their lightweight and advanced thermo-mechanical and electrical properties. A critical issue to tackle using engineered materials for space activities is providing two or more specific functionalities by means of single items/components. In this scenario, carbon-based composites are believed to be ideal candidates for the forthcoming development of aerospace research and space missions, since a widespread variety of multi-functional structures are allowed by employing these materials. The research results described here suggest that hybrid ceramic/polymeric structures could be employed as spacecraft-specific subsystems in order to ensure extreme temperature withstanding and electromagnetic shielding behavior simultaneously. The morphological and thermo-mechanical analysis of carbon/carbon (C/C) three-dimensional (3D) shell prototypes is reported; then, the microwave characterization of multilayered carbon-filled micro-/nano-composite panels is described. Finally, the possibility of combining the C/C bulk with a carbon-reinforced skin in a synergic arrangement is discussed, with the aid of numerical and experimental analyses
Near-infrared spectroscopy study of tourniquet-induced forearm ischaemia in patients with coronary artery disease
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR) can be employed to monitor local changes in haemodynamics and oxygenation of human tissues. A preliminary study has been performed in order to evaluate the NIRS transmittance response to induced forearm ischaemia in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD). The population consists in 40 patients with cardiovascular risk factors and angiographically documented CAD, compared to a group of 13 normal subjects. By inflating and subsequently deflating a cuff placed around the patient arm, an ischaemia has been induced and released, and the patients have been observed until recovery of the basal conditions. A custom LAIRS spectrometer (IRIS) has been used to collect the backscattered light intensities from the patient forearm throughout the ischaemic and the recovery phase. The time dependence of the near-infrared transmittance on the control group is consistent with the available literature. On the contrary, the magnitude and dynamics of the NIRS signal on the CAD patients show deviations from the documented normal behavior, which can be tentatively attributed to abnormal vessel stiffness. These preliminary results, while validating the performance of the IRIS spectrometer, are strongly conducive towards the applicability of the NIRS technique to ischaemia analysis and to endothelial dysfunction characterization in CAD patients with cardiovascular risk factors.Publisher PD
Tools for incorporating a D-wave contribution in Skyrme energy density functionals
The possibility of adding a D-wave term to the standard Skyrme effective interaction has been widely considered in the past. Such a term has been shown to appear in the next-to-next-to-leading order of the Skyrme pseudo-potential. The aim of the present article is to provide the necessary tools to incorporate this term in a fitting procedure: first, a mean-field equation written in spherical symmetry in order to describe spherical nuclei and second, the response function to detect unphysical instabilities. With these tools it will be possible to build a new fitting procedure to determine the coupling constants of the new functional
E-ABR in patients with cochlear implant: A comparison between patients with malformed cochlea and normal cochlea
OBJECTIVES: This study aims to compare the electrical auditory brainstem response (EABR) following cochlear implant (CI) surgery in pediatric subjects with cochlear malformation and a normal cochlea, in order to assess the sensitivity of EABR and to evaluate the surgery outcome. MATERIALS and METHODS: A total of 26 pediatric subjects who were deaf and scheduled for CI surgery were enrolled into this case control study. Group A (n=20) included subjects with a normo-conformed cochlea. Group B (n=6) included subjects with cochlear malformation. Subjects were evaluated with EABR immediately (T0) and 6 months (T1) post-CI surgery. The EABR Waves III and V average amplitude and latency were compared across time, separately for each group, and across groups, separately for each time. RESULTS: Auditory brainstem response (ABR) could only be recorded in Group A. We were able to record EABR from all subjects at T0 and T1, and waves III and V were present in all the recorded signals. There were no statistically significant differences between T0 and T1 in EABR Waves III and V in terms of average amplitude and latency in neither group. When comparing Groups A and B, the only statistically significant difference was the average amplitude of wave V, both at T0 and T1. CONCLUSION: EABR is a valid tool to measure the auditory nerve integrity after CI surgery in patients with a normal and malformed cochlea, as shown by its ability to measure waves III and V when ABR is absent. The EABR testing should be performed before and after CI surgery, and EABR should be used as a measure of outcome, especially in patients with a malformed cochlea
Optimized random phase approximations for arbitrary reference systems: extremum conditions and thermodynamic consistence
The optimized random phase approximation (ORPA) for classical liquids is
re-examined in the framework of the generating functional approach to the
integral equations. We show that the two main variants of the approximation
correspond to the addition of the same correction to two different first order
approximations of the homogeneous liquid free energy. Furthermore, we show that
it is possible to consistently use the ORPA with arbitrary reference systems
described by continuous potentials and that the same approximation is
equivalent to a particular extremum condition for the corresponding generating
functional. Finally, it is possible to enforce the thermodynamic consistence
between the thermal and the virial route to the equation of state by requiring
the global extremum condition on the generating functional.Comment: 8 pages, RevTe
Giant Monopole Resonances and nuclear incompressibilities studied for the zero-range and separable pairing interactions
Background: Following the 2007 precise measurements of monopole strengths in
tin isotopes, there has been a continuous theoretical effort to obtain a
precise description of the experimental results. Up to now, there is no
satisfactory explanation of why the tin nuclei appear to be significantly
softer than 208Pb.
Purpose: We determine the influence of finite-range and separable pairing
interactions on monopole strength functions in semi-magic nuclei.
Methods: We employ self-consistently the Quasiparticle Random Phase
Approximation on top of spherical Hartree-Fock-Bogolyubov solutions. We use the
Arnoldi method to solve the linear-response problem with pairing.
Results: We found that the difference between centroids of Giant Monopole
Resonances measured in lead and tin (about 1 MeV) always turns out to be
overestimated by about 100%. We also found that the volume incompressibility,
obtained by adjusting the liquid-drop expression to microscopic results, is
significantly larger than the infinite-matter incompressibility.
Conclusions: The zero-range and separable pairing forces cannot induce
modifications of monopole strength functions in tin to match experimental data.Comment: 11 RevTeX pages, 16 figures, 1 table, extended versio
A general aspect-term-extraction model for multi-criteria recommendations
In recent years, increasingly large quantities of user reviews have been made available by several e-commerce platforms. This content is very useful for recommender systems (RSs), since it reflects the users' opinion of the items regarding several aspects. In fact, they are especially valuable for RSs that are able to exploit multi-faceted user ratings. However, extracting aspect-based ratings from unstructured text is not a trivial task. Deep Learning models for aspect extraction have proven to be effective, but they need to be trained on large quantities of domain-specific data, which are not always available. In this paper, we explore the possibility of transferring knowledge across domains for automatically extracting aspects from user reviews, and its implications in terms of recommendation accuracy. We performed different experiments with several Deep Learning-based Aspect Term Extraction (ATE) techniques and Multi-Criteria recommendation algorithms. Results show that our framework is able to improve recommendation accuracy compared to several baselines based on single-criteria recommendation, despite the fact that no labeled data in the target domain was used when training the ATE model
Model nuclear energy density functionals derived from ab initio calculations
We present the first application of a new approach, proposed in (2016J.Phys.G:Nucl.Part.Phys.4304LT01) to derive coupling constants of the Skyrme energy density functional (EDF) fromab initioHamiltonian. By perturbing theab initioHamiltonian with several functional generators defining the Skyrme EDF, we create a set of metadata that is then used to constrain the coupling constants of the functional. We use statistical analysis to obtain such anab initio-equivalent Skyrme EDF. We find that the resulting functional describes properties of atomic nuclei and infinite nuclear matter quite poorly. This may point to the necessity of building up theab initio-equivalent functionals from more sophisticated generators. However, we also indicate that the current precision of theab initiocalculations may be insufficient for deriving meaningful nuclear EDFs.Peer reviewe
Collective vibrational states with fast iterative QRPA method
An iterative method we previously proposed to compute nuclear strength
functions is developed to allow it to accurately calculate properties of
individual nuclear states. The approach is based on the
quasi-particle-random-phase approximation (QRPA) and uses an iterative
non-hermitian Arnoldi diagonalization method where the QRPA matrix does not
have to be explicitly calculated and stored. The method gives substantial
advantages over conventional QRPA calculations with regards to the
computational cost. The method is used to calculate excitation energies and
decay rates of the lowest lying 2+ and 3- states in Pb, Sn, Ni and Ca isotopes
using three different Skyrme interactions and a separable gaussian pairing
force.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure
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