Combinatorial Materials Design Approach to Investigate Adhesion Layer Chemistry for Optimal Interfacial Adhesion Strength

A combinatorial material adhesion study was used to optimize the composition of an adhesion promoting layer for a nanocrystalline diamond (NCD) coating on silicon. Three different adhesion promoting metals, namely W, Cr, and Ta, were selected to fabricate arrays of co-sputtered binary alloy films, with patches of seven different, distinct alloy compositions for each combination, and single element reference films on a single Si wafer (three wafers in total; W–Cr, Cr–Ta, Ta–W). Scratch testing was used to determine the critical failure load and practical work of adhesion for the NCD coatings as a function of adhesion layer chemistry. All tested samples eventually exhibit delamination of the NCD coating, with buckles radiating perpendicularly away from the scratch track. Application of any of the presented adhesion layers yields an increase of the critical failure load for delamination as compared to NCD on Si. While the influence of adhesion layers on the maximum buckle length is less pronounced, shorter buckles are obtained with pure W and Cr–Ta alloy layers. As a general rule, the addition of an adhesion layer showed a 75% improvement in the measured adhesion energies of the NCD films compared to the NCD coating without an adhesion layer, with specific alloys and compositions showing up to 125% increase in calculated practical work of adhesion.H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action

Can minimalism about truth embrace polysemy?

Paul Horwich is aware of the fact that his theory as stated in his works is directly applicable only to a language in which a word, understood as a syntactic type, is connected with exactly one literal meaning. Yet he claims that the theory is expandable to include homonymy and indexicality and thus may be considered as applicable to natural language. My concern in this paper is with yet another kind of ambiguity - systematic polysemy - that assigns multiple meanings to one linguistic type. I want to combine the characteristics of systematic polysemy with the Kaplanian insight that meanings of expressions may be defined by semantic rules which assign content in context and to ask the question if minimalism about truth and meaning is compatible with such rule-based systematic polysemy. I will first explain why the expressions that exhibit rule-based systematic polysemy are difficult to combine with a truth theory that is based on a use theory of meaning before proceeding to argue that indexicals and proper names are such expressions

Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age

Abstract The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset – with data collected between 2020 and 2022 – to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research

Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age

The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset - with data collected between 2020 and 2022 - to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research

Associativity of recurrence multiplication

An extension of Knuth's Fibonacci multiplication to recurrences Gk+d = a1Gk+d-1 + + adGk with a1 = a2 = = ad 2>0 and "canonical" initial values Gk = a1Gk-1 + a2Gk-2 + + akG0 + 1, 0 = k <d is established. We prove associativity for this multiplication if a related parameter is chosen sufficiently large