Effect of Mechanical Strain on the Optical Properties of Nodal-Line Semimetal ZrSiS

Optical properties of nodal-line semimetal ZrSiS are studied using first-principles calculations. Frequency-independent optical conductivity is a fingerprint of the infrared optical response in ZrSiS. It is found that this characteristic feature is robust with respect to uniaxial compressive strain of up to 10 GPa, yet with the flat region being narrowed with increasing strain. Upon uniaxial tensile stress of 2 GPa, the Fermi surface undergoes a Lifshitz transition accompanied by a weakening of the interband screening, which reduces the spectral weight of infrared excitations. It is also shown that the high-energy region is characterized by low-loss plasma excitations at ≈20 eV with essentially anisotropic dispersion. Strongly anisotropic dielectric properties suggest the existence of a hyperbolic regime for plasmons in the deep ultraviolet range. Although the frequencies of high-energy plasmons are virtually unaffected by external uniaxial deformation, their dispersion can be effectively tuned by strain. © 2019 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, WeinheimNational Natural Science Foundation of China, NSFC: 117742692018FYA0305800S.Y. acknowledges financial support from the National Key R & D Program of China (Grant No. 2018FYA0305800) and National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11774269). A.N.R. acknowledges travel support from FLAG-ERA JTC2017 Project GRANSPORT. Numerical calculations presented in this paper were performed on a supercomputing system in the Supercomputing Center of Wuhan University

Raw and extruded pea (Pisum sativum) and lupin (Lupinus albus var. Multitalia) seeds as protein sources in weaned piglets' diets: effect on growth rate and blood parameters

The 42 days trial was carried out using 140 piglets weaned at 28 days of age. The piglets were allocated according to weight and sex to the 5 dietary treatments with 7 replicates for each treatments (4 pens x 4 castrated males and 3 pens x 4 females). The piglets were fed according to the following experimental design: 1) control diet (CTR) with soybean meal (SBM) 44% c.p. as protein source; 2) CRT diets with 200 g/kg of raw pea (Pisum sativum) (RP); 3) CTR diet with 200 g/kg extruded pea (EP); 4) CRT diet with 170 g/kg raw lupin (Lupinus albusvar. Multitalia) (RL); 5) CTR diet with 170 g/kg of extruded lupin (EL). During the trial, animals were weighed at 0 - 21 and 42 days from the start of the trial. Feed intake was monitored and feed conversion ratio was calculated for the periods 0-21 d and 22-42 d. At the end of the trial, blood samples were taken for 14 animals for each dietary treatment (2 animals per replicate) and analysed for total protein, urea and liver activity (ALT, AST and ALP parameters). Average daily weight gain and feed intake did not differ according to dietary treatments whereas during the total experimental period (0-42 d), feed conversion ratio was higher for EP vsCTR diet (2.35 vs2.09, respectively; P <0.05). The growth rate for diets with extruded protein sources compared with diets containing the raw ingredients did not differ. Feed conversion ratio for the RP was numerically high- er than for the EP (2.35 vs2.16 and 2.76 vs2.32, respectively during 22-42 d and 0-42 d periods). Blood parameters did not show significant difference among dietary treatments except for higher total protein for CTR diet vsRL diet, EL and RP (67.3 vs62.2, 62.8 and 63.6 g/l, respectively; P<0.05) and urea that resulted the highest with CTR diet vsRL and RL (4.7 vs3.7 and 3.8 mmol/l respectively; P<0.05)

Raw and extruded pea (Pisum sativum), faba bean (Vicia faba var. minor) and lupin (Lupinus albus var. multitalia) as alternative protein sources in broiler diets

AbstractResearch on vegetable-based protein sources has grown as a result of the European Union ban on the inclusion of meat and bone meal in diets of agricultural livestock. This together with recent concern over genetically modified soybeans, the protein source of choice for monogastric diets, has sparked research into the identification of some alternative protein sources. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of raw or extruded pea (RP and EP), faba beans (RFb and EFb) or lupin (RL and EL) in partial substitution of soybean meal and other starch sources in broiler diets. A total of 462-d-old male Ross chicks, Marek vaccinated, were randomly assigned to seven dietary treatments (3 pens/treatment). Chicks were floor housed, ad libitum fed isocaloric and isonitrogenous diets and had free access to water. Artificial light was provided 10 h/d. The amount of alternative proteins used as fed basis and for 1-10 d-old and 11-42 d-old growing periods were: RP and EP: 350 g/kg for all diets; RFb..

Constraining blazar distances with combined Fermi and TeV data: an empirical approach

We discuss a method to constrain the distance of blazars with unknown redshift using combined observations in the GeV and TeV regimes. We assume that the VHE spectrum corrected for the absorption through the interaction with the Extragalactic Background Light can not be harder than the spectrum in the Fermi/LAT band. Starting from the observed VHE spectral data we derive the EBL-corrected spectra as a function of the redshift z and fit them with power laws to be compared with power law fits to the LAT data. We apply the method to all TeV blazars detected by LAT with known distance and derive an empirical law describing the relation between the upper limits and the true redshifts that can be used to estimate the distance of unknown redshift blazars. Using different EBL models leads to systematic changes in the derived upper limits. Finally, we use this relation to infer the distance of the unknown redshift blazar PKS 1424+240.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, minor revisio

Predicting particle quality attributes of organic crystalline materials using Particle Informatics

In this work, a novel quercetin solvate of dimethylformamide (QDMF) was studied. The crystal structure was solved using single crystal X-ray diffraction and analysed using synthon analysis and other particle informatics tools (e.g., solvate analyser). The thermal behaviour and thermodynamic stability of QDMF were studied experimentally using Raman spectroscopy, ATR-FTIR spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and thermogravimetric analysis. A clear relationship between the two-step desolvation behaviour of QDMF and the type, strength, and directionality of the main bulk synthons characterizing the QDMF structure was observed. Additionally, the attachment energy model was used to predict the QDMF morphology, together with facet-specific topology and chemical nature of each of the dominant {001}, {110}, and {200} facets. The {200} facet was found to be significantly rougher than the other two; whereas, the {110} was characterized by a higher percentage of exposed DMF molecules compared to the other two facets. Specific scanning electron microscopy and contact angle measurements were used to experimentally detect differences among the three facets and validate the modelling results

Towards the Creation of Interdisciplinary Consumer-Oriented Security Metrics

Information systems are evolving: IoT devices and Cyber-physical systems (CPS) impact on the security of assets and people in the real world. Old cybersecurity approaches, which focused on seeing humans 'as a problem', could be substitute by new paradigms of seeing humans 'as a solution'. Therefore, consumers awareness will be one of the building blocks, as well as initiative that aim to create a set of standardized security metrics that can evaluate the security of systems. In order to do that, researchers need to study which are the essential factors that our future metrics should focus on. In this paper we analyzed this problem over CPS while assuming the consumer perspective. We summarize the state of the art in security metrics and advocate the need for a research effort aimed at taking the field to a new level of formal soundness and practical usability by considering interdisciplinary implications on cybersecurity

In vitro evaluation of live attenuated vaccines against Salmonella enteritidis: humoral immune response

Salmonella enteritidis (SE) vaccination is one of the major tool to reduce the infection in commercial poultry. In this work, techniques, evaluating the presence of Ig-G and Ig-A in serum, tears and intestinal secretions, were studied to improve the knowledge of the humoral immune response following SE live attenuated vaccination. The Ig-G and Ig-A ELISA are important and easy tests to plan and optimize SE vaccination programs

MAGIC eyes to the extreme: testing the blazar emission models on EHBLs

Extreme high-energy peaked BL Lac objects (EHBLs) are blazars whose synchrotron emission peaks at exceptionally high energies, above few keV, in the hard X-ray regime. So far, only a handful of those objects has been detected at very high energy (VHE, E > 100 GeV) gamma rays by Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. Very remarkably, VHE observations of some of these blazars (like 1ES 0229+200) have provided evidence of a VHE gamma-ray emission extending to several TeV, which is difficult to explain with standard, one-zone synchrotron self-Compton models usually applied to BL Lac objects. The MAGIC collaboration coordinated a multi-year, multi-wavelength observational campaign on ten targets. The MAGIC telescopes detected VHE gamma rays from four EHBLs. In this paper we focus on the source 1ES 1426+426 and its X-ray and VHE gamma-ray properties. The results of different models (synchrotron self-Compton, spine-layer, hadronic) reproducing the broadband spectral energy distribution are also presented.Comment: Proceedings of the 36th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC2019), July 24th-August 1st, 2019. Madison, WI, U.S.