Identifying the viscoelastic properties of soft matter from the indentation response of a hard film-soft substrate system

The indentation technique is widely used in measuring the mechanical properties of soft matter at the microscale or nanoscale,but still faces challenges by these unique properties as well as the consequent strong surface adhesion, including the strong nonlinear effect, unclear judgment of the contact point, difficulties in estimating the contact area, and the risk of the indenter piercing the sample. Here we propose a two-step method to solve these problems: lay a hard film on a soft matter, and obtain the viscoelastic properties of this soft matter through the indentation response of this composite structure. We first establish a theoretical indentation model of the hard film-soft substrate system based on the theory of plates, elastic-viscoelastic correspondence principle and Boltzmann superposition principle. To verify the correctness of this method, we measure the mechanical properties of the methyl vinyl silicone rubber(MVSR) covered by a Cu nanofilm. Finally, we test the effectiveness and error sensitivity of this method with the finite element method(FEM). The results show that our method can accurately measure the mechanical properties of soft matter, while effectively circumventing the problems of the traditional indentation technique.     

Computing upward topological book embeddings of upward planar digraphs

We describe a unified approach for studying book, point-set, and simultaneous embeddability problems of upward planar digraphs. The approach is based on a linear time strategy to compute an upward planar drawing of an upward planar digraph such that all vertices are collinear. Besides having impact in relevant application domains of graph drawing and computational geometry, the presented results open new research directions in the area of upward planarity with constraints of the positions of the vertices.     

Time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau equations for multi-gap superconductors

We numerically solve the time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau equations for two-gap superconductors using the finite-element technique. The real-time simulation shows that at low magnetic field, the vortices in small-size samples tend to form clusters or other disorder structures. When the sample size is large, stripes appear in the pattern. These results are in good agreement with the previous experimental observations of the intriguing anomalous vortex pattern, providing a reliable theoretical basis for the future applications of multi-gap superconductors.     

Current air quality analytics and monitoring: A review

This review summarizes the different tools and concepts that are commonly applied in air quality monitoring. The monitoring of atmosphere is extremely important as the air quality is an important problem for large communities. Main requirements for analytical devices used for monitoring include a long period of autonomic operation and portability. These instruments, however, are often characterized by poor analytical performance. Monitoring networks are the most common tools used for monitoring, so large-scale monitoring programmes are summarized here. Biomonitoring, as a cheap and convenient alternative to traditional sample collection, is becoming more and more popular, although its main drawback is the lack of standard procedures. Telemonitoring is another approach to air monitoring, which offers some interesting opportunities, such as ease of coverage of large or remote areas, constituting a complementary approach to traditional strategies; however, it requires huge costs.     

可变抽样区间的非参数控制图

最近几年一些学者研究了可变抽样区间的质量控制图。Amin等提出了可变抽样区间(VSI)的非参数控制图———符号 (Sign)统计量图〔1〕。本文在此基础上研究位置VSI符号控制图的制定方法 ,并设计离散VSI符号控制图。符号控制图的优点是对非正态总体亦可应用 ,并且不需要过程方差的信息。本文将所设计的VSI符号控制图同固定抽样区间 (FSI)的常规图作比较 ,并举实例说明符号控制图的应用     

Cr4+∶YAG固体激光器效率的理论分析

对Cr4+∶YAG固体激光器的吸收效率、量子效率、储存效率和提取效率等本征效率进行了分析.Cr4+∶YAG晶体的吸收截面、发射截面、上能级寿命和激活离子浓度等对激光器的本征效率有很大的影响.提高Cr4+∶YAG晶体的光学品质和激活离子的掺杂浓度，优化泵浦源的运转波长和激光腔的设计都能显著改善Cr4+∶YAG固体激光器的本征效率.     

Extremes of deterministic sub‐sampled moving averages with heavy‐tailed innovations

Let {X_k}_k?1 be a strictly stationary time series. For a strictly increasing sampling function g:?→? define Y_k=X_g(k) as the deterministic sub‐sampled time series. In this paper, the extreme value theory of {Y_k} is studied when X_k has representation as a moving average driven by heavy‐tailed innovations. Under mild conditions, convergence results for a sequence of point processes based on {Y_k} are proved and extremal properties of the deterministic sub‐sampled time series are derived. In particular, we obtain the limiting distribution of the maximum and the corresponding extremal index. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.