Remifentanil ameliorates intestinal ischemia-reperfusion injury

published_or_final_versio

Ordinary Percolation with Discontinuous Transitions

Percolation on a one-dimensional lattice and fractals such as the Sierpinski gasket is typically considered to be trivial because they percolate only at full bond density. By dressing up such lattices with small-world bonds, a novel percolation transition with explosive cluster growth can emerge at a nontrivial critical point. There, the usual order parameter, describing the probability of any node to be part of the largest cluster, jumps instantly to a finite value. Here, we provide a simple example of this transition in form of a small-world network consisting of a one-dimensional lattice combined with a hierarchy of long-range bonds that reveals many features of the transition in a mathematically rigorous manner.Comment: RevTex, 5 pages, 4 eps-figs, and Mathematica Notebook as Supplement included. Final version, with several corrections and improvements. For related work, see http://www.physics.emory.edu/faculty/boettcher

Sensory Measurements: Coordination and Standardization

Do sensory measurements deserve the label of “measurement”? We argue that they do. They fit with an epistemological view of measurement held in current philosophy of science, and they face the same kinds of epistemological challenges as physical measurements do: the problem of coordination and the problem of standardization. These problems are addressed through the process of “epistemic iteration,” for all measurements. We also argue for distinguishing the problem of standardization from the problem of coordination. To exemplify our claims, we draw on olfactory performance tests, especially studies linking olfactory decline to neurodegenerative disorders

Bulk properties of the van der Waals hard ferromagnet VI3

We present comprehensive measurements of the structural, magnetic, and electronic properties of layered van der Waals ferromagnet VI3 down to low temperatures. Despite belonging to a well-studied family of transition-metal trihalides, this material has received very little attention. We outline, from high-resolution powder x-ray diffraction measurements, a corrected room-temperature crystal structure to that previously proposed and uncover a structural transition at 79 K, also seen in the heat capacity. Magnetization measurements confirm VI3 to be a hard ferromagnet (9.1 kOe coercive field at 2 K) with a high degree of anisotropy, and the pressure dependence of the magnetic properties provide evidence for the two-dimensional nature of the magnetic order. Optical and electrical transport measurements show this material to be an insulator with an optical band gap of 0.67 eV - the previous theoretical predictions of d-band metallicity then lead us to believe VI3 to be a correlated Mott insulator. Our latest band-structure calculations support this picture and show good agreement with the experimental data. We suggest VI3 to host great potential in the thriving field of low-dimensional magnetism and functional materials, together with opportunities to study and make use of low-dimensional Mott physics