Theoretical Study of Corundum as an Ideal Gate Dielectric Material for Graphene Transistors

Using physical insights and advanced first-principles calculations, we suggest that corundum is an ideal gate dielectric material for graphene transistors. Clean interface exists between graphene and Al-terminated (or hydroxylated) Al2O3 and the valence band offsets for these systems are large enough to create injection barrier. Remarkably, a band gap of {\guillemotright} 180 meV can be induced in graphene layer adsorbed on Al-terminated surface, which could realize large ON/OFF ratio and high carrier mobility in graphene transistors without additional band gap engineering and significant reduction of transport properties. Moreover, the band gaps of graphene/Al2O3 system could be tuned by an external electric field for practical applications

The effects of overtaking strategy in the Nagel-Schreckenberg model

Based on the Nagel-Schreckenberg (NS) model with periodic boundary conditions, we proposed the NSOS model by adding the overtaking strategy (OS). In our model, overtaking vehicles are randomly selected with probability $q$ at each time step, and the successful overtaking is determined by their velocities. We observed that (i) traffic jams still occur in the NSOS model; (ii) OS increases the traffic flow in the regime where the densities exceed the maximum flow density. We also studied the phase transition (from free flow phase to jammed phase) of the NSOS model by analyzing the overtaking success rate, order parameter, relaxation time and correlation function, respectively. It was shown that the NSOS model differs from the NS model mainly in the jammed regime, and the influence of OS on the transition density is dominated by the braking probability $p$Comment: 9 pages, 20 figures, to be published in The European Physical Journal B (EPJB

A multiwavelength study of massive star-forming region IRAS 22506+5944

We present a multi-line study of the massive star-forming region IRAS 22506+5944. A new 6.7 GHz methanol maser was detected. 12CO, 13CO, C18O and HCO+ J = 1-0 transition observations reveal a star formation complex consisting mainly of two cores. The dominant core has a mass of more than 200 solar mass, while another one only about 35 solar mass. Both cores are obviously at different evolutionary stages. A 12CO energetic bipolar outflow was detected with an outflow mass of about 15 solar mass.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Multifractal and Network Analysis of Phase Transition

Many models and real complex systems possess critical thresholds at which the systems shift from one sate to another. The discovery of the early warnings of the systems in the vicinity of critical point are of great importance to estimate how far a system is from a critical threshold. Multifractal Detrended Fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) and visibility graph method have been employed to investigate the fluctuation and geometrical structures of magnetization time series of two-dimensional Ising model around critical point. The Hurst exponent has been confirmed to be a good indicator of phase transition. Increase of the multifractality of the time series have been observed from generalized Hurst exponents and singularity spectrum. Both Long-term correlation and broad probability density function are identified to be the sources of multifractality of time series near critical regime. Heterogeneous nature of the networks constructed from magnetization time series have validated the fractal properties of magnetization time series from complex network perspective. Evolution of the topology quantities such as clustering coefficient, average degree, average shortest path length, density, assortativity and heterogeneity serve as early warnings of phase transition. Those methods and results can provide new insights about analysis of phase transition problems and can be used as early warnings for various complex systems.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figure

Beyond Keywords and Relevance: A Personalized Ad Retrieval Framework in E-Commerce Sponsored Search

On most sponsored search platforms, advertisers bid on some keywords for their advertisements (ads). Given a search request, ad retrieval module rewrites the query into bidding keywords, and uses these keywords as keys to select Top N ads through inverted indexes. In this way, an ad will not be retrieved even if queries are related when the advertiser does not bid on corresponding keywords. Moreover, most ad retrieval approaches regard rewriting and ad-selecting as two separated tasks, and focus on boosting relevance between search queries and ads. Recently, in e-commerce sponsored search more and more personalized information has been introduced, such as user profiles, long-time and real-time clicks. Personalized information makes ad retrieval able to employ more elements (e.g. real-time clicks) as search signals and retrieval keys, however it makes ad retrieval more difficult to measure ads retrieved through different signals. To address these problems, we propose a novel ad retrieval framework beyond keywords and relevance in e-commerce sponsored search. Firstly, we employ historical ad click data to initialize a hierarchical network representing signals, keys and ads, in which personalized information is introduced. Then we train a model on top of the hierarchical network by learning the weights of edges. Finally we select the best edges according to the model, boosting RPM/CTR. Experimental results on our e-commerce platform demonstrate that our ad retrieval framework achieves good performance

Performance assessment of natural frequencies in characterizing cracks in beams in noisy conditions

Numerical cases of the use of natural frequencies to identify crack location and crack depth in beams under noise-free conditions have been widely reported. However, the capability of natural frequencies to identify cracks in noisy conditions has not yet been systematically addressed. Unlike previous work stressing the merits of natural frequencies in depicting cracks, this study reports the performance assessment of natural frequencies in characterizing cracks in noisy conditions. In the performance assessment, a cracked cantilever Timoshenko beam, with the crack flexibility modeled by fracture mechanics principles, is considered. The results demonstrate quantitatively and exhaustively that natural frequencies, as global dynamic properties of a structure, are somewhat insensitive to local slight damage. The outcome of this study provides a guideline for rational use of natural frequencies to identify cracks in actual beam-type structures