Structural Preablation Dynamics of Graphite Observed by Ultrafast Electron Crystallography

By means of time-resolved electron crystallography, we report direct observation of the structural dynamics of graphite, providing new insights into the processes involving coherent lattice motions and ultrafast graphene ablation. When graphite is excited by an ultrashort laser pulse, the excited carriers reach their equilibrium in less then one picosecond by transferring heat to a subset of strongly coupled optical phonons. The time-resolved diffraction data show that on such a time scale the crystal undergoes a contraction whose velocity depends on the excitation fluence. The contraction is followed by a large expansion which, at sufficiently high fluence, leads to the ablation of entire graphene layers, as recently predicted theoretically

Redox Mediation at 11-Mercaptoundecanoic Acid Self-Assembled Monolayers on Gold

Cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and digital simulation techniques were used to investigate quantitatively the mechanism of electron transfer (ET) through densely packed and well-ordered self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid on gold, either pristine or modified by physically adsorbed glucose oxidase (GOx). In the presence of ferrocenylmethanol (FcMeOH) as a redox mediator, ET kinetics involving either solution-phase hydrophilic redox probes such as [Fe(CN)6]3-/4- or surface-immobilized GOx is greatly accelerated: [Fe(CN)6]3-/4- undergoes diffusion-controlled ET, while the enzymatic electrochemical conversion of glucose to gluconolactone is efficiently sustained by FcMeOH. Analysis of the results, also including the digital simulation of CV and EIS data, showed the prevalence of an ET mechanism according to the so-called membrane model that comprises the permeation of the redox mediator within the SAM and the intermolecular ET to the redox probe located outside the monolayer. The analysis of the catalytic current generated at the GOx/SAM electrode in the presence of glucose and FcMeOH allowed the high surface protein coverage suggested by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements to be confirmed.

Reversible phase transformation and doubly-charged anions at the surface of simple cubic RbC60

The simple cubic phase of a RbC60 thin film has been studied using photoelectron spectroscopy. The simple cubic-to-dimer transition is found to be reversible at the film surface. A sharp Fermi edge is observed and a lower limit of 0.5 eV is found for the surface Hubbard U, pointing to a strongly-correlated metallic character of thin-film simple cubic RbC60. A molecular charge state is identified in the valence band and core level photoemission spectra which arises from C602- anions and contributes to the spectral intensity at the Fermi level.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figure

Improving Evaluation of English-Czech MT through Paraphrasing

In this paper, we present a method of improving the accuracy of machine translation evaluation of Czech sentences. Given a reference sentence, our algorithm transforms it by targeted paraphrasing into a new synthetic reference sentence that is closer in wording to the machine translation output, but at the same time preserves the meaning of the original reference sentence. Grammatical correctness of~the new reference sentence is provided by applying Depfix on newly created paraphrases. Depfix is a system for post-editing English-to-Czech machine translation outputs. We adjusted it to fix the errors in paraphrased sentences. Due to a noisy source of our paraphrases, we experiment with adding word alignment. However, the alignment reduces the number of paraphrases found and the best results were achieved by~a~simple greedy method with only one-word paraphrases thanks to their intensive filtering. BLEU scores computed using these new reference sentences show significantly higher correlation with human judgment than scores computed on the original reference sentences

Changes in life of older person, after the death of a partner

V magistrskem delu sem raziskovala spremembe v življenju starega človeka po smrti partnerja/partnerke. Zanimalo me je, kako se so se ovdoveli spopadali s smrtjo partnerjev, kdo jim je stal ob strani, kaj najbolj pogrešajo, kaj jim v vsakdanu predstavlja največji izziv po smrti partnerjev in kako se jim je spremenilo življenje nasploh. Pri raziskovanju sem uporabila kvalitativno analizo, tako da sem s pomočjo intervjujev ugotavljala, kakšno je življenje starih ljudi po smrti partnerja/partnerke, kdo jim je stal ob strani, kaj se je spremenilo v njihovem vsakdanu in kaj bi si želeli, da bi si lažje ponovno uredili svoje življenje ter kakšna je bila vloga pomoči socialnih delavcev po smrti partnerjev. Rezultati so pokazali, da so stari ljudje novico o smrti partnerja zelo težko sprejeli in so doživljaji močna čustva žalosti in samote. Starim ljudem, ki so izgubili svojega partnerja je v veliki večini pomagala bližina in pomoč svojih otrok in družine. Veliko je tudi vernih in so se zatekli k molitvi in veri, ki jim je pomagala v času žalovanja in jim pomaga še danes po več letih. Življenje se jim je zelo spremenilo, saj so morali narediti velike spremembe pri delu, hobijih in pri načinu življenja. Vsak se spominja svojega umrlega partnerja z rednim obiskovanjem groba, molitvijo in s pogovorom o partnerju. Za stare ljudi, ki so izgubili svojega partnerja je to zelo težek trenutek in težko obdobje, ki sledi po tem, saj po veliko letih skupnega življenja, ostanejo brez partnerja, ki jim je predstavljal glavno oporo in glavni socialni stik. Vdove in vdovci bi se morali čim več družiti z drugimi ljudmi in se udeleževati raznih druženj. Marsikateri so preveč prepuščeni samim sebi, posebej tisti, ki živijo sami doma. Veliko starih ljudi, ki so izgubili partnerja ne upa prositi za pomoč in tolažbo, ker ne želijo biti drugim v breme. Izpostavili so tudi, da bi bilo dobro, če bi se pogovorili še s kom, ki doživlja enako, saj jim pogovor o izgubi predstavlja nek terapevtski učinek.In Master\u27s thesis I was researching the changes in life of old people after the death of their partner. I was interested to see how the widowed coped with the death of their partner, who stood by their side, what they miss the most, what represents the biggest challenge for them after the death of their partner and how their lives had changed overall. My research is based on qualitative analysis. I used Interviews to find out what life is like for older people after the death of their partner, who stood by them, what has changed in their daily lives, what would make the rearranging of their lives easier and what role the help of social workers has played after their partners have died. The research has shown that older people took the news of their partner’s death harshly and have experienced strong emotions of sadness and loneliness. Older people who have lost their partners took great comfort in the proximity and help of their children and their families. Many of them are also religious and have resorted to prayer and faith, which has helped them in their time of mourning and is still helping them today, after many years have passed. Their lives have changed a lot, as they have had to make big changes in their arrangements, hobbies and their lifestyle. Each of them remembers their deceased partner by regularly visiting their grave, praying, and talking about them. The loss of a partner, after living together for many years is a very difficult moment for older people and is followed by a difficult period in their life, as they are left without a partner, who has always been there for them and was a major part of their social life. Widows and widowers should socialize with other people as much as possible and also participate in various social gatherings. Many of them are left to fend for themselves, especially those who live alone. Many of the older people who have lost a partner do not want to ask for help and comfort as they do not wish to be a burden to others. They also emphasized that it would be good for them if they were to talk to someone who is going through the same experience as themselves, as talking about their loss has some therapeutic effect

Preoperative CYFRA 21-1 and CEA as Prognostic Factors in Patients with Stage I Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Objective: To validate the prognostic value of preoperative levels of CYFRA 21-1, CEA and the corresponding tumor marker index (TMI) in patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods: Two hundred forty stage I NSCLC patients (80 in pT1 and 160 in pT2; 100 squamous cell carcinomas, 91 adenocarcinomas, 32 large-cell carcinomas, 17 with other histologies; 171 males and 69 females) who had complete resection (R0) between 1986 and 2004 were included in the analysis. CYFRA 21-1 and CEA were measured using the Elecsys system (Roche) and AxSym-System (Abbott), respectively. Univariate analysis was performed using the Kaplan-Meier method to identify potential associations between survival and age, gender, CYFRA 21-1, CEA and TMI. Results: Overall 3- and 5-year survival rates were 74 and 64%, respectively. Male gender (p = 0.0009) and age 1 70 years (p = 0.0041) were associated with a worse prognosis; there were no differences between pT1 and pT2 nor between histological subtypes. Three- year survival was 72% for CYFRA 21-1 levels > 3.3 ng/ml versus 75% for levels 6.7 ng/ ml versus 75% for CEA 70 years were associated with a worse outcome, but elevated levels of CEA and CYFRA 21-1, and TMI risk were not. Copyright (C) 2008 S. Karger AG, Basel

Vibrational dynamics of fullerene molecules adsorbed on metal surfaces studied with synchrotron infrared radiation

Infrared (IR) spectroscopy of chemisorbed C60 on Ag (111), Au (110) and Cu (100) reveals that a non-IR-active mode becomes active upon adsorption, and that its frequency shifts proportionally with the charge transferred from the metal to the molecule by about 5 cm−1 per electron. The temperature dependence of the frequency and the width of this IR feature have also been followed for C60/Cu (100) and were found to agree well with a weak anharmonic coupling (dephasing) to a low-frequency mode, which we suggest to be the frustrated translational mode of the adsorbed molecules. Additionally, the adsorption is accompanied by a broad-band reflectance change, which is interpreted as due to the scattering of conduction electrons of the metal surface by the adsorbate. The reflectance change allows determination of the friction coefficient of the C60 molecules, which results in rather small values (∼2×10^9 s−1 for Ag and Au, and ∼1.6×10^9 s−1 for Cu), consistent with a marked metallic character of the adsorbed molecules. Pre-dosing of alkali atoms onto the metal substrates drastically changes the IR spectra recorded during subsequent C60 deposition: anti-absorption bands, as well as an increase of the broadband reflectance, occur and are interpreted as due to strong electron–phonon coupling with induced surface states.