Impurity Substitution in Bismuth and Thallium Cuprates: Suppression of T_c and Estimation of Pseudogap

Suppression of T_c in bilayer bismuth and thallium cuprates, by substitution of Co impurities at Cu sites, are taken for examination. T_c suppression data on differently doped Bi2212 and Tl2212 are analysed within the unitary pair-breaking formalism due to Abrikosov and Gorkov, by fitting data points to a phenomenological relation valid for weak coupling d-wave superconductors. Values of the pseudogap magnitude at each doping are thereby estimated within a "fermi-level density of states suppression" picture. Pseudogap magnitude from our estimation is observed to have a correspondence with a related characteristic temperature T^\star obtained by thermoelectric power measurements. Effects of pseudogap, on the density of states, is studied by calculating the susceptibility which shows a broad peak at high temperature. This peak feature in susceptibility is indicative of an unusual metallic state which could further be explored by systematic other measurements.Comment: Latex file, 14 pages, 3 figures (ps files included). To appear in Physica

GraphSE2^2: An Encrypted Graph Database for Privacy-Preserving Social Search

In this paper, we propose GraphSE$^2$, an encrypted graph database for online social network services to address massive data breaches. GraphSE$^2$ preserves the functionality of social search, a key enabler for quality social network services, where social search queries are conducted on a large-scale social graph and meanwhile perform set and computational operations on user-generated contents. To enable efficient privacy-preserving social search, GraphSE$^2$ provides an encrypted structural data model to facilitate parallel and encrypted graph data access. It is also designed to decompose complex social search queries into atomic operations and realise them via interchangeable protocols in a fast and scalable manner. We build GraphSE$^2$ with various queries supported in the Facebook graph search engine and implement a full-fledged prototype. Extensive evaluations on Azure Cloud demonstrate that GraphSE$^2$ is practical for querying a social graph with a million of users.Comment: This is the full version of our AsiaCCS paper "GraphSE$^2$: An Encrypted Graph Database for Privacy-Preserving Social Search". It includes the security proof of the proposed scheme. If you want to cite our work, please cite the conference version of i

Polarization Sensitive Optical Coherence Tomography for Blood Glucose Monitoring in Human Subjects

A device based on Polarization sensitive optical coherence tomography is developed to monitor blood glucose levels in human subjects. The device was initially tested with tissue phantom. The measurements with human subjects for various glucose concentration levels are found to be linearly dependent on the degree of circular polarization obtainable from the PS-OCT.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Scaling of NonOhmic Conduction in Strongly Correlated Systems

A new scaling formalism is used to analyze nonlinear I-V data in the vicinity of metal-insulator transitions (MIT) in five manganite systems. An exponent, called the nonlinearity exponent, and an onset field for nonlinearity, both characteristic of the system under study, are obtained from the analysis. The onset field is found to have an anomalously low value corroborating the theoretically predicted electronically soft phases. The scaling functions above and below the MIT of a polycrystalline sample are found to be the same but with different exponents which are attributed to the distribution of the MIT temperatures. The applicability of the scaling in manganites underlines the universal response of the disordered systems to electric field

The interplay between the charged Higgs and squark-gluino events at the LHC

In some extensions of the standard model with extended Higgs sectors, events from new particle production may pass the selection criteria for Higgs search in different channels at the LHC - 14 TeV and mimic Higgs signals. This intriguing possibility is illustrated by PYTHIA based simulations using several representative points in the parameter space of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) including a point in the minimal supergravity model consistent with the Dark matter (DM) relic density data. Our simulations explore the interplay between the charged Higgs signal and typical squark-gluino events. We argue that the standard selections like the one based on the polarization properties of the $\tau$'s from charged Higgs decay, though adequate for handling the SM background, may not be very efficient in the presence of SUSY backgrounds. We then propose an alternative search strategy based on pure kinematics which sufficiently controls both the SM and the MSSM backgrounds. For charged Higgs masses ($H^{\pm}$) in the deep decoupling regime (600 GeV \lsim m_{H^{\pm}} \lsim 800 GeV) this method works well and extends the LHC reach close to 800 GeV for an integrated luminosity of 30 $fb^{-1}$ with or without the SUSY background. For a lighter charged Higgs a judicious combination of the old selections and some of the cuts proposed by us may disentangle the Higgs signal from the squark-gluino backgrounds quite effectively

Combined Toxicity and Bioconcentration of Fluoride and Arsenic in African Catfish Clarias gariepinus (Burchell, 1822)

Laboratory experiments were performed to examine the combined toxic effects of two important aquatic contaminants viz., arsenic and fluoride on African catfish, Clarias gariepinus. Additionally, the bio concentration factors (BCFs) of the two contaminants in tissues and blood of catfish were also determined. The LC50 for sodium fluoride and arsenic trioxide were determined to be 619.3 mg L-1, 30.3 mg L-1, respectively. Erratic swimming movements with hyperactivity, loss of equilibrium, augmented air gulping and decreased food consumption were observed in the experimental groups. In co-exposure groups of arsenic and fluoride, the concentration of fluoride in fish tissues increased with increasing water fluoride concentration in the test aquaria with significant differences (

Transport and Magnetic Properties of FexVse2 (x = 0 - 0.33)

We present our results of the effect of Fe intercalation on the structural, transport and magnetic properties of 1T-VSe2. Intercalation of iron, suppresses the 110K charge density wave (CDW) transition of the 1T-VSe2. For the higher concentration of iron, formation of a new kind of first order transition at 160K takes place, which go on stronger for the 33% Fe intercalation. Thermopower of the FexVSe2 compounds (x = 0 - 0.33), however do not show any anomaly around the transition. The intercalation of Fe does not trigger any magnetism in the weak paramagnetic 1T-VSe2, and Fe is the low spin state of Fe3+.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Transverse susceptibility study of the effect of varying dipolar interactions on anisotropy peaks in a three-dimensional assembly of soft ferrite nanoparticles

Collective magnetization dynamics in nanoparticle assemblies is of current interest as it forms the basis of high density storage media. It is important to understand how interparticle interactions in a three-dimensional (3D) arrangement of superparamagnetic nanoparticles would affect the overall effective magnetic anisotropy of the system. We have studied the influence of varying strengths of dipolar interaction on the static and dynamic magnetic properties of surfactant-coated monodispersed manganese zinc ferrite nanoparticles using reversible transverse susceptibility. We track the evolution of the anisotropy peaks with varying magnetic field, temperature, and interaction strength. The blocking temperature shows an increase from 28 to 32 K and the coercive field (at 10 K) shows an increase from 144 to 192 Oe as the system changes from the case of weakly interacting to strongly interacting 3D assembly of the particles