Stochastic games on a product state space

We examine so-called product-games with an aperiodic transition structure, with respect to the average reward, for which we present an approach based on communicating states. For the general n-player case, we establish the existence of 0-equilibria. In addition, for the special case of two-player zero-sum games of this type, we show that both players have stationary 0-optimal strategies

Antimicrobial efficacy of low concentration PVP-silver nanoparticles deposited on DBD plasma-treated polyamide 6,6 fabric

In this study, a low concentration (10 μg·mL−1) of poly(N-vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP)-coated silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were deposited by spray and exhaustion (30, 70 and 100 ◦C) methods onto untreated and dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma-treated polyamide 6,6 (PA66) fabric. DBD plasma-treated samples showed higher AgNP deposition than untreated ones for all methods. After five washing cycles, only DBD plasma-treated samples displayed AgNPs on the fabric surface. The best-performing method was exhaustion at 30 ◦C, which exhibited less agglomeration and the best antibacterial efficacy against S. aureus (4 log reduction). For E. coli, the antimicrobial effect showed good results in all the exhaustion samples (5 log reduction). Considering the spray method, only the DBD plasma-treated samples showed some bacteriostatic activity for both strains, but the AgNP concentration was not enough to have a bactericidal effect. Our results suggest DBD plasma may be a low cost and chemical-free method for the preparation of antibacterial textiles, allowing for the immobilization of a very low—but effective—concentration of AgNPs.This work was funded by European Regional Development funds (FEDER) through the Competitiveness and Internationalization Operational Program (POCI) – COMPETE and by National Funds through Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT)—under the project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007136 and UID/CTM/00264/2019. Isabel Ribeiro (SFRH/BD/137668/2018) acknowledges FCT, Portugal, for its doctoral grant financial support. A. Zille also acknowledges financial support of the FCT through an Investigator FCT Research contract (IF/00071/2015) and the project PTDC/CTM-TEX/28295/2017 financed by FCT, FEDER and POCI in the frame of the Portugal 2020 program

Borel games with lower-semi-continuous payoffs

We prove that every two-player non-zero-sum Borel game with lower-semi-continuous payoffs admits a subgame-perfect ε-equilibrium. This result complements Example 3 in Solan and Vieille (2003), which shows that a subgame-perfect ε-equilibrium need not exists when the payoffs are not lower-semi-continuous.