Radioactive silicon as a marker in thin-film silicide formation

A new technique using radioactive 31Si (half-life =2.62 h), formed in a nuclear reactor, as a marker for studying silicide formation is described. A few hundred angstroms of radioactive silicon is first deposited onto the silicon substrate, followed immediately by the deposition of a few thousand angstroms of the metal. When the sample is heated, a silicide is first formed with the radioactive silicon. Upon further silicide formation, this band of radioactive silicide can move to the surface of the sample if silicide formation takes place by diffusion of the metal or by silicon substitutional and/or vacancy diffusion. However, if the band of radioactive silicide stays at the silicon substrate interface it can be concluded that silicon diffuses by interstitial and/or grain-boundary diffusion. This technique was tested by studying the formation of Ni2Si on silicon at 330 °C. From a combination of ion-beam sputtering, radioactivity measurement, and Rutherford backscattering it is found that the band of radioactive silicide moves to the surface of the sample during silicide formation. From these results, implanted noble-gas marker studies and the rate dependence of Ni2Si growth on grain size, it is concluded that nickel is the dominant diffusing species during Ni2Si formation, and that it moves by grain-boundary diffusion

New variables, the gravitational action, and boosted quasilocal stress-energy-momentum

This paper presents a complete set of quasilocal densities which describe the stress-energy-momentum content of the gravitational field and which are built with Ashtekar variables. The densities are defined on a two-surface $B$ which bounds a generic spacelike hypersurface $\Sigma$ of spacetime. The method used to derive the set of quasilocal densities is a Hamilton-Jacobi analysis of a suitable covariant action principle for the Ashtekar variables. As such, the theory presented here is an Ashtekar-variable reformulation of the metric theory of quasilocal stress-energy-momentum originally due to Brown and York. This work also investigates how the quasilocal densities behave under generalized boosts, i. e. switches of the $\Sigma$ slice spanning $B$. It is shown that under such boosts the densities behave in a manner which is similar to the simple boost law for energy-momentum four-vectors in special relativity. The developed formalism is used to obtain a collection of two-surface or boost invariants. With these invariants, one may ``build" several different mass definitions in general relativity, such as the Hawking expression. Also discussed in detail in this paper is the canonical action principle as applied to bounded spacetime regions with ``sharp corners."Comment: Revtex, 41 Pages, 4 figures added. Final version has been revised and improved quite a bit. To appear in Classical and Quantum Gravit

Evidence for Strain-Induced Local Conductance Modulations in Single-Layer Graphene on SiO_2

Graphene has emerged as an electronic material that is promising for device applications and for studying two-dimensional electron gases with relativistic dispersion near two Dirac points. Nonetheless, deviations from Dirac-like spectroscopy have been widely reported with varying interpretations. Here we show evidence for strain-induced spatial modulations in the local conductance of single-layer graphene on SiO_2 substrates from scanning tunneling microscopic (STM) studies. We find that strained graphene exhibits parabolic, U-shaped conductance vs bias voltage spectra rather than the V-shaped spectra expected for Dirac fermions, whereas V-shaped spectra are recovered in regions of relaxed graphene. Strain maps derived from the STM studies further reveal direct correlation with the local tunneling conductance. These results are attributed to a strain-induced frequency increase in the out-of-plane phonon mode that mediates the low-energy inelastic charge tunneling into graphene

Entanglement and the nonlinear elastic behavior of forests of coiled carbon nanotubes

Helical or coiled nanostructures have been object of intense experimental and theoretical studies due to their special electronic and mechanical properties. Recently, it was experimentally reported that the dynamical response of foamlike forest of coiled carbon nanotubes under mechanical impact exhibits a nonlinear, non-Hertzian behavior, with no trace of plastic deformation. The physical origin of this unusual behavior is not yet fully understood. In this work, based on analytical models, we show that the entanglement among neighboring coils in the superior part of the forest surface must be taken into account for a full description of the strongly nonlinear behavior of the impact response of a drop-ball onto a forest of coiled carbon nanotubes.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Hamiltonians for a general dilaton gravity theory on a spacetime with a non-orthogonal, timelike or spacelike outer boundary

A generalization of two recently proposed general relativity Hamiltonians, to the case of a general (d+1)-dimensional dilaton gravity theory in a manifold with a timelike or spacelike outer boundary, is presented.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figures. Typos correcte

Exponential suppression of thermal conductance using coherent transport and heterostructures

We consider coherent thermal conductance through multilayer photonic crystal heterostructures, consisting of a series of cascaded non-identical photonic crystals. We show that thermal conductance can be suppressed exponentially with the number of cascaded crystals, due to the mismatch between photonic bands of all crystals in the heterostructure.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

The \u3cem\u3elet-7\u3c/em\u3e MicroRNA Family Members \u3cem\u3emir\u3c/em\u3e-48, \u3cem\u3emir\u3c/em\u3e-84, and mir-241 Function Together to Regulate Developmental Timing in \u3cem\u3eCaenorhabditis elegans\u3c/em\u3e

The microRNA let-7 is a critical regulator of developmental timing events at the larval-to-adult transition in C. elegans. Recently, microRNAs with sequence similarity to let-7 have been identified. We find that doubly mutant animals lacking the let-7 family microRNA genes mir-48 and mir-84 exhibit retarded molting behavior and retarded adult gene expression in the hypodermis. Triply mutant animals lacking mir-48, mir-84, and mir-241 exhibit repetition of L2-stage events in addition to retarded adult-stage events. mir-48, mir-84, and mir-241 function together to control the L2-to-L3 transition, likely by base pairing to complementary sites in the hbl-1 3′ UTR and downregulating hbl-1 activity. Genetic analysis indicates that mir-48, mir-84, and mir-241 specify the timing of the L2-to-L3 transition in parallel to the heterochronic genes lin-28 and lin-46. These results indicate that let-7 family microRNAs function in combination to affect both early and late developmental timing decisions

Merging fragments of classical logic

We investigate the possibility of extending the non-functionally complete logic of a collection of Boolean connectives by the addition of further Boolean connectives that make the resulting set of connectives functionally complete. More precisely, we will be interested in checking whether an axiomatization for Classical Propositional Logic may be produced by merging Hilbert-style calculi for two disjoint incomplete fragments of it. We will prove that the answer to that problem is a negative one, unless one of the components includes only top-like connectives.Comment: submitted to FroCoS 201

Microrheology, stress fluctuations and active behavior of living cells

We report the first measurements of the intrinsic strain fluctuations of living cells using a recently-developed tracer correlation technique along with a theoretical framework for interpreting such data in heterogeneous media with non-thermal driving. The fluctuations' spatial and temporal correlations indicate that the cytoskeleton can be treated as a course-grained continuum with power-law rheology, driven by a spatially random stress tensor field. Combined with recent cell rheology results, our data imply that intracellular stress fluctuations have a nearly $1/\omega^2$ power spectrum, as expected for a continuum with a slowly evolving internal prestress.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let