7,051 research outputs found
Kinetics of Topological Stone-Wales Defect Formation in Single Walled Carbon
Topological Stone-Wales defect in carbon nanotubes plays a central role in
plastic deformation, chemical functionalization, and superstructure formation.
Here, we systematically investigate the formation kinetics of such defects
within density functional approach coupled with the transition state theory. We
find that both the formation and activation energies depend critically on the
nanotube chairality, diameter, and defect orientation. The microscopic origin
of the observed dependence is explained with curvature induced rehybridization
in nanotube. Surprisingly, the kinetic barrier follows an empirical
Br{\o}nsted-Evans-Polanyi type correlation with the corresponding formation
energy, and can be understood in terms of overlap between energy-coordinate
parabolas representing the structures with and without the defect. Further, we
propose a possible route to substantially decrease the kinetic activation
barrier. Such accelerated rates of defect formation are desirable in many novel
electronic, mechanical and chemical applications, and also facilitate the
formation of three-dimensional nanotube superstructures.Comment: 10 pages, Supporting information, The Journal of Physical Chemistry C
(2015
Object oriented design of a thermo-mechanical FEM code
An object oriented design is presented for a computer program that can perform\ud
thermo-mechanically coupled analyzes. The target of the design is a \ud
exible and robust\ud
computer program. It should be easy to adapt and extend, re-using existing code, without\ud
interfering with already established algorithms.\ud
The program uses publicly available toolkits that are currently emerging as C++ pack-\ud
ages. First of all the Standard C++ Library (formerly Standard Template Library) is\ud
used for packing items in container classes. Secondly the matrix and vector operations\ud
are derived from the Template Numerical Toolkit (TNT) and �nally (not essentially for\ud
the numerical part) a graphical user interface is made, based on the wxWindows package,\ud
that can generate a GUI for Motif and MS-Windows with the same code.\ud
Attention is given to the design of classes such as speci�c elements and material classes\ud
based on more general classes. A hierarchy of classes is constructed where general behavior\ud
is put high in the hierarchy and speci�c behavior low. The choice between inheritance and\ud
aggregation is made at several levels
Portfolio Return Characteristics of Different Industries
Over the last decade we have witnessed the rise and fall of theso-called new economy stocks. One central question is to what extentthese new firms differ from traditional firms. Empirical evidencesuggests that stock returns are not normally distributed. In thisarticle we investigate whether this also holds for portfolios ofstocks from a growth industry. Furthermore, we will compare this typeof portfolios with portfolios of stocks from a more traditionalindustry. Usually, only value weighted and equally weighted portfoliosare used to describe and compare portfolio return characteristics.Instead, in our analysis, we use a novel approach in which we use aninfinite number of portfolios that together represent the set of allfeasible portfolio opportunities.performance evaluation;portfolio management;investments;stock markets;sector index
Pan-European backcasting exercise, enriched with regional perspective, and including a list of short-term policy options
This deliverable reports on the results of the third and final pan-European stakeholder meeting and secondly, on the enrichment with a Pilot Area and regional perspective. The main emphasis is on backcasting as a means to arrive at long-term strategies and short-term (policy) actions
Mechanical fluidity of fully suspended biological cells
Mechanical characteristics of single biological cells are used to identify
and possibly leverage interesting differences among cells or cell populations.
Fluidity---hysteresivity normalized to the extremes of an elastic solid or a
viscous liquid---can be extracted from, and compared among, multiple
rheological measurements of cells: creep compliance vs. time, complex modulus
vs. frequency, and phase lag vs. frequency. With multiple strategies available
for acquisition of this nondimensional property, fluidity may serve as a useful
and robust parameter for distinguishing cell populations, and for understanding
the physical origins of deformability in soft matter. Here, for three disparate
eukaryotic cell types deformed in the suspended state via optical stretching,
we examine the dependence of fluidity on chemical and environmental influences
around a time scale of 1 s. We find that fluidity estimates are consistent in
the time and the frequency domains under a structural damping (power-law or
fractional derivative)model, but not under an equivalent-complexity
lumpedcomponent (spring-dashpot) model; the latter predicts spurious time
constants. Although fluidity is suppressed by chemical crosslinking, we find
that adenosine triphosphate (ATP) depletion in the cell does not measurably
alter the parameter, and thus conclude that active ATP-driven events are not a
crucial enabler of fluidity during linear viscoelastic deformation of a
suspended cell. Finally, by using the capacity of optical stretching to produce
near-instantaneous increases in cell temperature, we establish that fluidity
increases with temperature---now measured in a fully suspended, sortable cell
without the complicating factor of cell-substratum adhesion
Early retirement across Europe: Does non-standard employment increase participation of older workers?
Hervorming Sociale Regelgevin
Scaling Up Student Assessment: Issues and Solutions
Online courses permit the enrollment of large numbers of students, which forces instructors to address the problem of providing valid and reliable assessments of student performance on a large scale. This paper examines two broad approaches for scaling up student assessment and feedback in higher education: automated assessment techniques and distributed assessment methods
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