Enhanced spin-orbit torques in MnAl/Ta films with improving chemical ordering

We report the enhancement of spin-orbit torques in MnAl/Ta films with improving chemical ordering through annealing. The switching current density is increased due to enhanced saturation magnetization MS and effective anisotropy field HK after annealing. Both damplinglike effective field HD and fieldlike effective field HF have been increased in the temperature range of 50 to 300 K. HD varies inversely with MS in both of the films, while the HF becomes liner dependent on 1/MS in the annealed film. We infer that the improved chemical ordering has enhanced the interfacial spin transparency and the transmitting of the spin current in MnAl layer

Spin Transport and Magnetism in Low-Dimensional Materials

10.1155/2017/6568979Advances in Condensed Matter Physics2017656897

The cumulative effects of known susceptibility variants to predict primary biliary cirrhosis risk.

Multiple genetic variants influence the risk for development of primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC). To explore the cumulative effects of known susceptibility loci on risk, we utilized a weighted genetic risk score (wGRS) to evaluate whether genetic information can predict susceptibility. The wGRS was created using 26 known susceptibility loci and investigated in 1840 UK PBC and 5164 controls. Our data indicate that the wGRS was significantly different between PBC and controls (P=1.61E-142). Moreover, we assessed predictive performance of wGRS on disease status by calculating the area under the receiver operator characteristic curve. The area under curve for the purely genetic model was 0.72 and for gender plus genetic model was 0.82, with confidence limits substantially above random predictions. The risk of PBC using logistic regression was estimated after dividing individuals into quartiles. Individuals in the highest disclosed risk group demonstrated a substantially increased risk for PBC compared with the lowest risk group (odds ratio: 9.3, P=1.91E-084). Finally, we validated our findings in an analysis of an Italian PBC cohort. Our data suggested that the wGRS, utilizing genetic variants, was significantly associated with increased risk for PBC with consistent discriminant ability. Our study is a first step toward risk prediction for PBC

Topology-aware illumination design for volume rendering

© 2016 The Author(s). Background: Direct volume rendering is one of flexible and effective approaches to inspect large volumetric data such as medical and biological images. In conventional volume rendering, it is often time consuming to set up a meaningful illumination environment. Moreover, conventional illumination approaches usually assign same values of variables of an illumination model to different structures manually and thus neglect the important illumination variations due to structure differences. Results: We introduce a novel illumination design paradigm for volume rendering on the basis of topology to automate illumination parameter definitions meaningfully. The topological features are extracted from the contour tree of an input volumetric data. The automation of illumination design is achieved based on four aspects of attenuation, distance, saliency, and contrast perception. To better distinguish structures and maximize illuminance perception differences of structures, a two-phase topology-aware illuminance perception contrast model is proposed based on the psychological concept of Just-Noticeable-Difference. Conclusions: The proposed approach allows meaningful and efficient automatic generations of illumination in volume rendering. Our results showed that our approach is more effective in depth and shape depiction, as well as providing higher perceptual differences between structures