Determination of the Molecular Arrangement in Liquid Crystals by Polarization of Fluorescence

Polarized luminescence intensity reading and the polarized absorbance spectra of 4-diethyl-amino-4′-nitrostilbene “impurity” in the n-butyl-p/p-hexyloxyphenyloxycarbonyl/-phenyl-carbonate liquid crystal were measured. Degrees of orientational order, S₁ and S₂, of the nematic liquid were calculated from relative values of the absorbance and luminescence intensity components. A function, which describes the angular molecular distribution with respect to a preferred direction in the liquid crystal, is plotted.     

Internal Flow Patterns on Heat Transfer Performance of a Closed-Loop Oscillating Heat Pipe with Check Valves

This article presents the experimental results of an evaluation of the influence of internal flow patterns on the heat transfer performance of a closed-loop oscillating heat pipe with check valves. It was found that the internal flow patterns could be classified according to four flow patterns: dispersed bubble flow, bubble flow, slug flow, and annular flow, respectively. The main regime of each flow pattern can be determined from a flow pattern map. The map can be used to predict the trend of the heat transfer rate in the closed-loop oscillating heat pipe with check valves.     

The development of children's understanding of mathematical patterns through mathematical activities

In this paper we report how children (aged 8) developed their mathematical understanding through number tasks based on the Fibonacci sequence (Bamboo numbers) used in the context of a Substantial Learning Environment (SLE), which is designed to be mathematically rich, have a clear purpose and give opportunities to utilise mathematical thinking. The flexible nature of the SLEs makes it possible for teachers and children to explore various mathematical patterns. To capture children's activities when working within SLEs, we make particular reference to Pegg and Tall's work in 2005, and consider a theoretical framework based on the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982) and the developmental process of understanding mathematical concepts. It was found that the key progression to be made through learning using our Bamboo number-based SLEs is from Multi-structural to Relational levels. It was also suggested that it is difficult for many children to understand the structural aspects of number patterns.     

Nonlinear waves in complex oscillator network with delay

We investigate the spatio-temporal patterns of Hopf bifurcating periodic solutions in a delay complex oscillator network. Firstly, we calculate the critical values of Hopf bifurcation. Secondly, the bifurcating periodic solutions can take on two cases: one is synchronization or anti-synchronization, and another is the coexistence of two phase-locked, N mirror-reflecting and N standing waves, because the system has group symmetry. Finally, the stability of these nonlinear oscillations is determined using the center manifold theorem and normal form method with the imaginary eigenvalues being simple and double.     

Applying the cluster method to count occurrences of generalized permutation patterns

We apply ideas from the cluster method to q-count the permutations of a multiset according to the number of occurrences of certain generalized patterns, as defined by Babson and Steingrímsson. In particular, we consider those patterns with three letters and one internal dash, as well as permutation statistics composed of counting the number of occurrences of multisets of such patterns. Counting is done via recurrences which simplify in the case of permutations. A collection of Maple procedures implementing these recurrences accompanies the article.     

Piezoelectric activities and domain patterns of orthorhombic Ba(Zr,Ti)O3 ceramics

Ba(Zr_xTi_1?x)O₃ (0.025 ≤ x ≤ 0.065) ceramics were prepared by conventional solid-state reaction method. Crystalline structures were analyzed by X-ray diffraction. It was shown that all the Ba(Zr_xTi_1?x)O₃ (0.025 ≤ x ≤ 0.065) ceramics were of orthorhombic phase at room temperature. Piezoelectric activities and domain patterns were investigated and compared with those of BaTiO₃ ceramic. All the Ba(Zr_xTi_1?x)O₃ ceramics showed nearly the same d₃₃ values of about 265 pC/N and the same domain width of about 220 nm. By comparing the grain sizes and domain width of the Ba(Zr_xTi_1?x)O₃ ceramics with those of BaTiO₃ ceramic, it is speculated that the variation of domain width with grain sizes in orthorhombic Ba(Zr_xTi_1?x)O₃ ceramics may be different with that in tetragonal BaTiO₃ ceramic. Besides domain width, the effective inertia mass of domain wall is also considered to be a very important factor that impacts the piezoelectric activities of the Ba(Zr_xTi_1?x)O₃ ceramics.     

Fluxional Bonds in Planar B19−, Tubular Ta@B20−, and Cage-Like B39−

Based on detailed bonding analyses on the fluxional behaviors of planar B₁₉⁻, tubular Ta@B₂₀⁻, and cage-like B₃₉⁻, we propose the concept of fluxional bonds in boron nanoclusters as an extension of the classical localized bonds and delocalized bonds in chemistry. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Empirical analysis on temporal statistics of human correspondence patterns

Recently, extensive empirical evidence shows that the timing of human behaviors obeys non-Possion statistics with heavy-tailed interevent time distribution. In this paper, we empirically study the correspondence pattern of a great Chinese scientist, named Hsue-Shen Tsien. Both the interevent time distribution and response time distributions deviate from the Poisson statistics, showing an approximate power-law decaying. The two power-law exponents are more or less the same (about 2.1), which strongly support the hypothesis in [A. Vázquez, J.G. Oliveira, Z. Dezsö, K.-I. Goh, I. Kondor, A.-L. Barabási, Phys. Rev. E 73 (2006) 036127] that the response time distribution of the tasks could in fact drive the interevent time distribution, and both the two distributions should decay with the same exponent. Our result is against the claim in [A. Vázquez, J.G. Oliveira, Z. Dezsö, K.-I. Goh, I. Kondor, A.-L. Barabási, Phys. Rev. E 73 (2006) 036127], which suggests the human correspondence pattern belongs to a universality class with exponent 1.5.     

Crossing fibers, diffractions and nonhomogeneous magnetic field: correction of artifacts by bipolar gradient pulses

In recent years, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and its variants have been used to describe fiber orientations and q-space diffusion MR was proposed as a means to obtain structural information on a micron scale. Therefore, there is an increasing need for complex phantoms with predictable microcharacteristics to challenge different indices extracted from the different diffusion MR techniques used. The present study examines the effect of diffusion pulse sequence on the signal decay and diffraction patterns observed in q-space diffusion MR performed on micron-scale phantoms of different geometries and homogeneities. We evaluated the effect of the pulse gradient stimulated-echo, the longitudinal eddy current delay (LED) and the bipolar LED (BPLED) pulse sequences. Interestingly, in the less homogeneous samples, the expected diffraction patterns were observed only when diffusion was measured with the BPLED sequence. We demonstrated the correction ability of bipolar diffusion gradients and showed that more accurate physical parameters are obtained when such a diffusion gradient scheme is used. These results suggest that bipolar gradient pulses may result in more accurate data if incorporated into conventional diffusion-weighted imaging and DTI.