Dynamic manipulation of droplets using mechanically tunable microtextured chemical gradients

Materials and strategies applicable to the dynamic transport of microdroplets are relevant to surface fluidics, self-cleaning materials, thermal management systems, and analytical devices. Techniques based on electrowetting, topographic micropatterns, and thermal/chemical gradients have advanced considerably, but dynamic microdroplet transport remains a challenge. This manuscript reports the fabrication of mechano-tunable, microtextured chemical gradients on elastomer films and their use in controlled microdroplet transport. Specifically, discreet mechanical deformations of these films enabled dynamic tuning of the microtextures and thus transport along surface-chemical gradients. The interplay between the driving force of the chemical gradient and the microtopography was characterized, facilitating accurate prediction of the conditions (droplet radius and roughness) which supported transport. In this work, the use of microtextured surface chemical gradients in mechano-adaptive materials with microdroplet manipulation functionality was highlighted. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23383-7 OPEN

Liquid-like behaviour of gold nanowire bridges

A combination of Focused Ion Beam (FIB) and Reactive Ion Etch (RIE) was used to fabricate free standing gold nanowire bridges with radii of 30 nm and below. These were subjected to point loading to failure at their mid-points using an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), providing strength and deformation data. The results demonstrate a dimensionally dependent transition from conventional solid metallic properties to liquid-like behaviour including the unexpected reformation of a fractured bridge. The work reveals mechanical and materials properties of nanowires which could have significant impact on nanofabrication processes and nanotechnology devices such as Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (NEMS)

The Willingness of Military Members to Seek Help: The Role of Social Involvement and Social Responsibility

Anchored in the social organization theory of action and change, we use data from a large sample of active-duty Air Force members to examine the direct and indirect influence of social involvement and social responsibility on willingness to seek help in times of need via trust in formal systems and informal supports. Group comparisons are conducted between junior male, junior female, senior male, and senior female service members. The key mediational path in the model for all groups is the connection between social involvement and willingness to seek help via trust in formal systems. These results can inform both unit- and community-level interventions intended to increase the likelihood that active-duty AF members will seek help in times of need

The Willingness of Military Members to Seek Help: The Role of Social Involvement and Social Responsibility

Anchored in the social organization theory of action and change, we use data from a large sample of active-duty Air Force members to examine the direct and indirect influence of social involvement and social responsibility on willingness to seek help in times of need via trust in formal systems and informal supports. Group comparisons are conducted between junior male, junior female, senior male, and senior female service members. The key mediational path in the model for all groups is the connection between social involvement and willingness to seek help via trust in formal systems. These results can inform both unit- and community-level interventions intended to increase the likelihood that active-duty AF members will seek help in times of need

The Willingness of Military Members to Seek Help: The Role of Social Involvement and Social Responsibility

Anchored in the social organization theory of action and change, we use data from a large sample of active-duty Air Force members to examine the direct and indirect influence of social involvement and social responsibility on willingness to seek help in times of need via trust in formal systems and informal supports. Group comparisons are conducted between junior male, junior female, senior male, and senior female service members. The key mediational path in the model for all groups is the connection between social involvement and willingness to seek help via trust in formal systems. These results can inform both unit- and community-level interventions intended to increase the likelihood that active-duty AF members will seek help in times of need

Mechanisms driving the time-dependent salt flux in a partially stratified estuary

Author Posting. © American Meteorological Society, 2006. This article is posted here by permission of American Meteorological Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Physical Oceanography 36 (2006): 2296-2311, doi:10.1175/JPO2959.1.The subtidal salt balance and the mechanisms driving the downgradient salt flux in the Hudson River estuary are investigated using measurements from a cross-channel mooring array of current meters, temperature and conductivity sensors, and cross-channel and along-estuary shipboard surveys obtained during the spring of 2002. Steady (subtidal) vertical shear dispersion, resulting from the estuarine exchange flow, was the dominant mechanism driving the downgradient salt flux, and varied by over an order of magnitude over the spring–neap cycle, with maximum values during neap tides and minimum values during spring tides. Corresponding longitudinal dispersion rates were as big as 2500 m2 s−1 during neap tides. The salinity intrusion was not in a steady balance during the study period. During spring tides, the oceanward advective salt flux resulting from the net outflow balanced the time rate of change of salt content landward of the study site, and salt was flushed out of the estuary. During neap tides, the landward steady shear dispersion salt flux exceeded the oceanward advective salt flux, and salt entered the estuary. Factor-of-4 variations in the salt content occurred at the spring–neap time scale and at the time scale of variations in the net outflow. On average, the salt flux resulting from tidal correlations between currents and salinity (tidal oscillatory salt flux) was an order of magnitude smaller than that resulting from steady shear dispersion. During neap tides, this flux was minimal (or slightly countergradient) and was due to correlations between tidal currents and vertical excursions of the halocline. During spring tides, the tidal oscillatory salt flux was driven primarily by oscillatory shear dispersion, with an associated longitudinal dispersion rate of about 130 m2 s−1.This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant OCE00-95972 and Hudson River Foundation Grant 005/03A. Author Lerczak received partial support from the Penzance Endowed Fund in Support of Assistant Scientists

Voicebox: Text-Guided Multilingual Universal Speech Generation at Scale

Large-scale generative models such as GPT and DALL-E have revolutionized natural language processing and computer vision research. These models not only generate high fidelity text or image outputs, but are also generalists which can solve tasks not explicitly taught. In contrast, speech generative models are still primitive in terms of scale and task generalization. In this paper, we present Voicebox, the most versatile text-guided generative model for speech at scale. Voicebox is a non-autoregressive flow-matching model trained to infill speech, given audio context and text, trained on over 50K hours of speech that are neither filtered nor enhanced. Similar to GPT, Voicebox can perform many different tasks through in-context learning, but is more flexible as it can also condition on future context. Voicebox can be used for mono or cross-lingual zero-shot text-to-speech synthesis, noise removal, content editing, style conversion, and diverse sample generation. In particular, Voicebox outperforms the state-of-the-art zero-shot TTS model VALL-E on both intelligibility (5.9% vs 1.9% word error rates) and audio similarity (0.580 vs 0.681) while being up to 20 times faster. See voicebox.metademolab.com for a demo of the model

Concert recording 2013-11-19

[Track 01]. Western fanfare / Eric Ewazen -- [Track 02]. Little sketches / Ivan Elozovic -- [Track 03]. Preludium / Krysztof Penderecki -- [Track 04]. Abime des oiseaux from Quatour pour la fin du temps / Olivier Messiaen -- [Track 05]. Scherzino / Walter Hartley -- [Track 06]. Quintet for winds, no. 2. II ; [Track 07]. III / David Maslanka -- [Track 08]. String quartet, no. 3. III / Dmitri Shostakovich