1,195 research outputs found
Sintering behaviour of Al-Cu-Mg-Si blends
The increasing demand for automotive industries to reduce the weight of the vehicles has led to a growing usage of Al alloy powder metallurgy (P/M) parts such as camshaft bearing caps, shock absorber pistons and brake calipers [1,2]. In order to control the sintered microstructure and mechanical properties of the aluminium alloy powder metallurgical (P/M) parts, it is essential to establish a fundamental understanding of the microstructural development during the sintering process. Current research at Birmingham University is focussed on the investigation of the sintering behaviour of Al-Cu-Mg-Si powder blends using a combination of Scanning Electron Microscopy, Energy Dispersive Microanaylsis (SEM) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC). This paper presents a detailed study of the effect of temperature and initial starting materials on the evolution of microstructure during the sintering of Al-Cu-Mg-Si blends for PM
Critical points in edge tunneling between generic FQH states
A general description of weak and strong tunneling fixed points is developed
in the chiral-Luttinger-liquid model of quantum Hall edge states. Tunneling
fixed points are a subset of `termination' fixed points, which describe
boundary conditions on a multicomponent edge. The requirement of unitary time
evolution at the boundary gives a nontrivial consistency condition for possible
low-energy boundary conditions. The effect of interactions and random hopping
on fixed points is studied through a perturbative RG approach which generalizes
the Giamarchi-Schulz RG for disordered Luttinger liquids to broken left-right
symmetry and multiple modes. The allowed termination points of a multicomponent
edge are classified by a B-matrix with rational matrix elements. We apply our
approach to a number of examples, such as tunneling between a quantum Hall edge
and a superconductor and tunneling between two quantum Hall edges in the
presence of interactions. Interactions are shown to induce a continuous
renormalization of effective tunneling charge for the integrable case of
tunneling between two Laughlin states. The correlation functions of
electronlike operators across a junction are found from the B matrix using a
simple image-charge description, along with the induced lattice of boundary
operators. Many of the results obtained are also relevant to ordinary Luttinger
liquids.Comment: 23 pages, 6 figures. Xiao-Gang Wen: http://dao.mit.edu/~we
A study of debinding behaviour and microstructural development of sintered Al-Cu-Sn alloy
A new approach is explored to achieve sintered aluminium alloy from metallic powder mixtures without compression or adding Mg. In this approach, mixtures of micron-sized aluminium powder (average size of 2.5 μm) and nano-sized alloying elemental powder of Cu and Sn (less than of 70nm), at appropriate proportions to compositions of Al-6wt%Cu, Al-6wt%Cu-3wt%Sn with and without adhesive binder were prepared by magnetic stirring. Then, the powder mixture was poured into a crucible and heat treated at a temperature of 600°C for 11 hours in inert atmosphere of N2 or Ar. In this paper, we investigate the debinding behavior of loosely packed Al-based powder mixture and the microstructural development and mechanical property sintered parts using a combination of thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffractrometry (XRD) and hardness test
Making alumina microcomponents from Al powder
Alumina microcomponents have distinguishing advantages over Si counterparts. However, the shrinkage of alumina, as high as 20%, makes it difficult to produce precision components that require a high tolerance. A new fabrication process is presented to greatly reduce the shrinkage. The process consists of forming an Al powdered component through sintering and transforming the Al powdered component into an alumina part. In this way, the shrinkage occurring in sintering the Al powder component will be compensated by the expansion occurred when Al transforms into alumina. The process involves producing micro-moulds, preparing metallic paste, filling the micro-moulds with the metallic paste, demoulding, sintering the green Al patterns and finally oxidising the sintered Al-based components to achieve alumina components. The process was proven successful. Characterization of the sintered alumina microcomponents has been undertaken, including SEM image analysis, density and scale measurements
Can we detect Hot or Cold spots in the CMB with Minkowski Functionals?
In this paper, we investigate the utility of Minkowski Functionals as a probe
of cold/hot disk-like structures in the CMB. In order to construct an accurate
estimator, we resolve a long-standing issue with the use of Minkowski
Functionals as probes of the CMB sky -- namely that of systematic differences
("residuals") when numerical and analytical MF are compared. We show that such
residuals are in fact by-products of binning, and not caused by pixelation or
masking as originally thought. We then derive a map-independent estimator that
encodes the effects of binning, applicable to beyond our present work. Using
this residual-free estimator, we show that small disk-like effects (as claimed
by Vielva et al.) can be detected only when a large sample of such maps are
averaged over. In other words, our estimator is noise-dominated for small disk
sizes at WMAP resolution. To confirm our suspicion, we apply our estimator to
the WMAP7 data to obtain a null result.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figure
New Polynomial Cases of the Weighted Efficient Domination Problem
Let G be a finite undirected graph. A vertex dominates itself and all its
neighbors in G. A vertex set D is an efficient dominating set (e.d. for short)
of G if every vertex of G is dominated by exactly one vertex of D. The
Efficient Domination (ED) problem, which asks for the existence of an e.d. in
G, is known to be NP-complete even for very restricted graph classes.
In particular, the ED problem remains NP-complete for 2P3-free graphs and
thus for P7-free graphs. We show that the weighted version of the problem
(abbreviated WED) is solvable in polynomial time on various subclasses of
2P3-free and P7-free graphs, including (P2+P4)-free graphs, P5-free graphs and
other classes.
Furthermore, we show that a minimum weight e.d. consisting only of vertices
of degree at most 2 (if one exists) can be found in polynomial time. This
contrasts with our NP-completeness result for the ED problem on planar
bipartite graphs with maximum degree 3
Edge Dynamics in Quantum Hall Bilayers II: Exact Results with Disorder and Parallel Fields
We study edge dynamics in the presence of interlayer tunneling, parallel
magnetic field, and various types of disorder for two infinite sequences of
quantum Hall states in symmetric bilayers. These sequences begin with the 110
and 331 Halperin states and include their fractional descendants at lower
filling factors; the former is easily realized experimentally while the latter
is a candidate for the experimentally observed quantum Hall state at a total
filling factor of 1/2 in bilayers. We discuss the experimentally interesting
observables that involve just one chiral edge of the sample and the correlation
functions needed for computing them. We present several methods for obtaining
exact results in the presence of interactions and disorder which rely on the
chiral character of the system. Of particular interest are our results on the
331 state which suggest that a time-resolved measurement at the edge can be
used to discriminate between the 331 and Pfaffian scenarios for the observed
quantum Hall state at filling factor 1/2 in realistic double-layer systems.Comment: revtex+epsf; two-up postscript at
http://www.sns.ias.edu/~leonid/ntwoup.p
Hadron yields and spectra in Au+Au collisions at the AGS
Inclusive double differential multiplicities and rapidity density
distributions of hadrons are presented for 10.8 A GeV/c Au+Au collisions as
measured at the AGS by the E877 collaboration. The results indicate that large
amounts of stopping and collective transverse flow effects are present. The
data are also compared to the results from the lighter Si+Al system.Comment: 12 pages, latex, 10 figures, submitted to Nuclear Physics A (Quark
Matter 1996 Proceedings
Aberrant behaviours of reaction diffusion self-organisation models on growing domains in the presence of gene expression time delays
Turing’s pattern formation mechanism exhibits sensitivity to the details of the initial conditions suggesting that, in isolation, it cannot robustly generate pattern within noisy biological environments. Nonetheless, secondary aspects of developmental self-organisation, such as a growing domain, have been shown to ameliorate this aberrant model behaviour. Furthermore, while in-situ hybridisation reveals the presence of gene expression in developmental processes, the influence of such dynamics on Turing’s model has received limited attention. Here, we novelly focus on the Gierer–Meinhardt reaction diffusion system considering delays due the time taken for gene expression, while incorporating a number of different domain growth profiles to further explore the influence and interplay of domain growth and gene expression on Turing’s mechanism. We find extensive pathological model behaviour, exhibiting one or more of the following: temporal oscillations with no spatial structure, a failure of the Turing instability and an extreme sensitivity to the initial conditions, the growth profile and the duration of gene expression. This deviant behaviour is even more severe than observed in previous studies of Schnakenberg kinetics on exponentially growing domains in the presence of gene expression (Gaffney and Monk in Bull. Math. Biol. 68:99–130, 2006). Our results emphasise that gene expression dynamics induce unrealistic behaviour in Turing’s model for multiple choices of kinetics and thus such aberrant modelling predictions are likely to be generic. They also highlight that domain growth can no longer ameliorate the excessive sensitivity of Turing’s mechanism in the presence of gene expression time delays. The above, extensive, pathologies suggest that, in the presence of gene expression, Turing’s mechanism would generally require a novel and extensive secondary mechanism to control reaction diffusion patterning
The Tug1 locus is essential for male fertility
Background: Several long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been shown to function as central components of molecular machines that play fundamental roles in biology. While the number of annotated lncRNAs in mammalian genomes has greatly expanded, their functions remain largely uncharacterized. This is compounded by the fact that identifying lncRNA loci that have robust and reproducible phenotypes when mutated has been a challenge. Results: We previously generated a cohort of 20 lncRNA loci knockout mice. Here, we extend our initial study and provide a more detailed analysis of the highly conserved lncRNA locus, Taurine Upregulated Gene 1 (Tug1). We report that Tug1 knockout male mice are sterile with complete penetrance due to a low sperm count and abnormal sperm morphology. Having identified a lncRNA loci with a robust phenotype, we wanted to determine which, if any, potential elements contained in the Tug1 genomic region (DNA, RNA, protein, or the act of transcription) have activity. Using engineered mouse models and cell-based assays, we provide evidence that the Tug1 locus harbors three distinct regulatory activities - two noncoding and one coding: (i) a cis DNA repressor that regulates many neighboring genes, (ii) a lncRNA that can regulate genes by a trans-based function, and finally (iii) Tug1 encodes an evolutionary conserved peptide that when overexpressed impacts mitochondrial membrane potential. Conclusions: Our results reveal an essential role for the Tug1 locus in male fertility and uncover three distinct regulatory activities in the Tug1 locus, thus highlighting the complexity present at lncRNA loci
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