Advances on biological rhythmic pattern generation: experiments, algorithms and applications

Editoria

Persuasive tech in keeping chronic patients’ willingness in health self-management

Chronic disease is a long and very harmful illness to patient. With the improvement of e-health technology, many users can monitor and manage their health condition at home. At the same time, recording health data is a time-consuming and boring work. Without the supervision of health care professionals, many patients feel very difficult to persist on it by themselves. This platform with persvasive tech is designed to test the effectiveness of peer pressure in the health self-management in the e-health.</p

Theory of the oscillatory photoconductivity of a 2D electron gas

We develop a theory of magnetooscillations in the photoconductivity of a two-dimensional electron gas observed in recent experiments. The effect is governed by a change of the electron distribution function induced by the microwave radiation. We analyze a nonlinearity with respect to both the dc field and the microwave power, as well as the temperature dependence determined by the inelastic relaxation rate.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Epitaxial growth and structural characterization of Pb(Fe1/2Nb1/2)O3 thin films

We have grown lead iron niobate thin films with composition Pb(Fe1/2Nb1/2)O3 (PFN) on (0 0 1) SrTiO3 substrates by pulsed laser deposition. The influence of the deposition conditions on the phase purity was studied. Due to similar thermodynamic stability spaces, a pyrochlore phase often coexists with the PFN perovskite phase. By optimizing the kinetic parameters, we succeeded in identifying a deposition window which resulted in epitaxial perovskite-phase PFN thin films with no identifiable trace of impurity phases appearing in the X-ray diffractograms. PFN films having thicknesses between 20 and 200 nm were smooth and epitaxially oriented with the substrate and as demonstrated by RHEED streaks which were aligned with the substrate axes. X-ray diffraction showed that the films were completely c-axis oriented and of excellent crystalline quality with low mosaicity (X-ray rocking curve FWHM<0.09). The surface roughness of thin films was also investigated by atomic force microscopy. The root-mean-square roughness varies between 0.9 nm for 50-nm-thick films to 16 nm for 100-nm-thick films. We also observe a correlation between grain size, surface roughness and film thickness.Comment: 13 Pages, 6 figures. To be published in J. Mag. Mag Mater. proceedings of EMRS200

High-resolution tungsten spectroscopy relevant to the diagnostic of high-temperature tokamak plasmas

The x-ray transitions in Cu- and Ni-like tungsten ions in the 5.19–5.26 A wavelength range that are relevant ˚ as a high-temperature tokamak diagnostic, in particular for JET in the ITER-like wall configuration, have been studied. Tungsten spectra were measured at the upgraded Shanghai- Electron Beam Ion Trap operated with electron-beam energies from 3.16 to 4.55 keV. High-resolution measurements were performed by means of a flat Si 111 crystal spectrometer equipped by a CCD camera. The experimental wavelengths were determined with an accuracy of 0.3–0.4 mA. The wavelength of the ground-state transition in Cu-like tungsten from the ˚ 3p53d104s4d [(3/2,(1/2,5/2)2]1/2 level was measured. All measured wavelengths were compared with those measured from JET ITER-like wall plasmas and with other experiments and various theoretical predictions including COWAN, RELAC, multiconfigurational Dirac-Fock (MCDF), and FAC calculations. To obtain a higher accuracy from theoretical predictions, the MCDF calculations were extended by taking into account correlation effects (configuration-interaction approach). It was found that such an extension brings the calculations closer to the experimental values in comparison with other calculations.National Magnetic Confinement Fusion Program of China 2015GB117000National Natural Science Foundation of China 11374061EURATOM 63305

Long-term trends in tropical cyclone tracks around Korea and Japan in late summer and early fall

This study investigates long-term trends in tropical cyclones (TCs) over the extratropical western North Pacific (WNP) over a period of 35 years (1982-2016). The area analyzed extended across 30-45 degrees N and 120-150 degrees E, including the regions of Korea and Japan that were seriously affected by TCs. The northward migration of TCs over the WNP to the mid-latitudes showed a sharp increase in early fall. In addition, the duration of TCs over the WNP that migrated northwards showed an increase, specifically in early to mid-September. Therefore, more recently, TC tracks have been observed to significantly extend into the mid-latitudes. The recent northward extension of TC tracks over the WNP in early fall was observed to be associated with changes in environmental conditions that were favorable for TC activities, including an increase in sea surface temperature (SST), decrease in vertical wind shear, expansion of subtropical highs, strong easterly steering winds, and an increase in relative vorticity. In contrast, northward migrations of TCs to Korea and Japan showed a decline in late August, because of the presence of unfavorable environmental conditions for TC activities. These changes in environmental conditions, such as SST and vertical wind shear, can be partially associated with the Pacific decadal oscillation

Onset of entanglement

We have developed a theory of polymer entanglement using an extended Cahn-Hilliard functional, with two extra terms. One is a nonlocal attractive term, operating over mesoscales, which is interpreted as giving rise to entanglement, and the other a local repulsive term indicative of excluded volume interactions. We show how such a functional can be derived using notions from gauge theory. We go beyond the Gaussian approximation, to the one-loop level, to show that the system exhibits a crossover to a state of entanglement as the average chain length between points of entanglement decreases. This crossover is marked by critical slowing down, as the effective diffusion constant goes to zero. We have also computed the tensile modulus of the system, and we find a corresponding crossover to a regime of high modulus.Comment: 18 pages, with 4 figure

The sol-gel method for preparation of polysiloxane xerogels containing carboxylic functionality

A procedure has been developed for synthesis of new polysiloxane xerogels with propionic and butyric acid-type groups. The procedure is based on the sol-gel method and involves the conversion of 2-cyanoethyltriethoxysilane (or 4-(triethoxysilyl)butyronitrile) to an ester with its subsequent hydrolytic polycondensation reaction.Розроблена методика синтезу нових полісилоксанових ксерогелів, що містять залишки пропіонової і масляної кислот.Разработана методика синтеза новых полисилоксановых ксерогелей, содержащих остатки пропионовой и масляной кислот