Modified Liu-Carter Compression Model for Natural Clays with Various Initial Water Contents

The initial water content has a significant effect on the compression behaviour of reconstituted clays. This effect has to be considered in the Liu-Carter model to ensure the addition voids ratio only related to soil structure. A modified Liu-Carter compression model is proposed by introducing the empirical equations for reconstituted clays at different initial water contents into the Liu-Carter model. The proposed model is verified against the experimental results from the literature. The simulations by the proposed method are also compared with that by old method where the influence of initial water content is not considered. The results show that the predicted virgin compression curves of natural clays are similar, but the values of b and Δey may be very different

Preparation and Properties of Fe3O4 Biomimetic Micro-nano Structure Coatings

Nanoparticles filling is one of the most effective methods to build the micro-nano structure. In this paper, the composite coatings containing Fe3O4 nanoparticles were prepared from fluorinated silicon polymer by in-situ polymerization. FT-IR was used to characterize the structure of the composite material. SEM and AFM were performed to observe the microstructure of the coatings. The contact angle of water and coatings was tested. The results showed that the biomimetic micro-nano structure of the coatings, which formed on the glass plate, was exactly familiar with that of the surface of lotus leaves. Keyword: micro-nano structure; Fe3O4 nanoparticles; in-situ polymerization; biomimeti

Maintaining ideological security and legitimacy in digital China: Governance of cyber historical nihilism

This article studies the governance of ‘cyber historical nihilism’ in China. By performing document analysis of the regulatory policies and actions against cyber historical nihilism, we found that cyber historical nihilism is mainly governed as harmful ‘online content’ and a threatening ‘ideological trend’, and its governance has incorporated agencies and measures of China’s ‘internet governance’ and ‘ideological and political education’. We argue that cyber historical nihilism has been securitised by the Chinese Communist Party as an urgent threat to the nation’s ideological and political securities. The governance of cyber historical nihilism aims to maintain the Chinese Communist Party’s authority in history writing and its legitimacy and longevity as the ruling party. The Chinese Communist Party’s emphasis and intensity in governing cyber historical nihilism has not only demonstrated the ideological turn to Maoism in internet governance, propaganda and politics under Xi Jinping’s leadership, but also the Chinese Communist Party’s ability and resilience to adapt to new challenges in the ideological field in the digital age

A possible interpretation for X(6900)X(6900) observed in four-muon final state by LHCb -- A light Higgs-like boson?

A peak structure of $J/\psi$ pair production around $6.9~{\rm GeV}$ was observed and analyzed by the LHCb collaboration using the Run I and II data of LHC. How to understand this peak arouses enthusiastic discussions among both theorists and experimentalists of high energy physics, because this discovery might hint something new. Overwhelming works on this topic tend to attribute the peak as a four-quark state: tetraquark or molecule. Instead, we suggest that this peak is corresponding to a fundamental Higgs-like boson with mass about $6.9~{\rm GeV}$ which is advocated by a BSM effective theory. We present a detailed analysis on both signal and SM background, including integrated cross sections and invariant mass distributions of the final-state $J/\psi$ pair. Our numerical results are well in coincidence with the experimental data, as postulating the resonance observed by LHCb to be a BSM $0^{++}$ scalar. Therefore, the peak at $M_{\text{di-}J/\psi} \sim 6.9~{\rm GeV}$ might be a hint of new physics beyond the SM whose scale is not as large as mostly expected by high energy physicists. More further works are urgently needed in both experimental and theoretical aspects to validate or negate this assumption.Comment: 5 figure

Search for Continuous Gravitational-wave Signals in Pulsar Timing Residuals: A New Scalable Approach with Diffusive Nested Sampling

Detecting continuous nanohertz gravitational waves (GWs) generated by individual close binaries of supermassive black holes (CB-SMBHs) is one of the primary objectives of pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). The detection sensitivity is slated to increase significantly as the number of well-timed millisecond pulsars will increase by more than an order of magnitude with the advent of next-generation radio telescopes. Currently, the Bayesian analysis pipeline using parallel tempering Markov Chain Monte Carlo has been applied in multiple studies for CB-SMBH searches, but it may be challenged by the high dimensionality of the parameter space for future large-scale PTAs. One solution is to reduce the dimensionality by maximizing or marginalizing over uninformative parameters semianalytically, but it is not clear whether this approach can be extended to more complex signal models without making overly simplified assumptions. Recently, the method of diffusive nested (DNest) sampling has shown capability in coping with high dimensionality and multimodality effectively in Bayesian analysis. In this paper, we apply DNest to search for continuous GWs in simulated pulsar timing residuals and find that it performs well in terms of accuracy, robustness, and efficiency for a PTA including pulsars. DNest also allows a simultaneous search of multiple sources elegantly, which demonstrates its scalability and general applicability. Our results show that it is convenient and also highly beneficial to include DNest in current toolboxes of PTA analysis

Search for Continuous Gravitational-wave Signals in Pulsar Timing Residuals: A New Scalable Approach with Diffusive Nested Sampling

Detecting continuous nanohertz gravitational waves (GWs) generated by individual close binaries of supermassive black holes (CB-SMBHs) is one of the primary objectives of pulsar timing arrays (PTAs). The detection sensitivity is slated to increase significantly as the number of well-timed millisecond pulsars will increase by more than an order of magnitude with the advent of next-generation radio telescopes. Currently, the Bayesian analysis pipeline using parallel tempering Markov Chain Monte Carlo has been applied in multiple studies for CB-SMBH searches, but it may be challenged by the high dimensionality of the parameter space for future large-scale PTAs. One solution is to reduce the dimensionality by maximizing or marginalizing over uninformative parameters semianalytically, but it is not clear whether this approach can be extended to more complex signal models without making overly simplified assumptions. Recently, the method of diffusive nested (DNest) sampling has shown capability in coping with high dimensionality and multimodality effectively in Bayesian analysis. In this paper, we apply DNest to search for continuous GWs in simulated pulsar timing residuals and find that it performs well in terms of accuracy, robustness, and efficiency for a PTA including pulsars. DNest also allows a simultaneous search of multiple sources elegantly, which demonstrates its scalability and general applicability. Our results show that it is convenient and also highly beneficial to include DNest in current toolboxes of PTA analysis