Controlled production of patterns in iridescent solid films of cellulose nanocrystals

A method to produce predefined patterns in solid iridescent films of cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) by differential heating of aqueous CNC suspensions during film casting has been discovered. Placing materials of different temperatures beneath an evaporating CNC suspension results in watermark-like patterns of different reflection wavelength incorporated within the final film structure. The patterned areas are of different thickness and different chiral nematic pitch than the surrounding film; heating results in thicker areas of longer pitch. Thermal pattern creation in CNC films is proposed to be caused by differences in evaporation rates and thermal motion in the areas of the CNC suspension corresponding to the pattern-producing object and the surrounding, unperturbed suspension. Pattern formation was found to occur during the final stages of drying during film casting, once the chiral nematic structure is kinetically trapped in the gel state. It is thus possible to control the reflection wavelength of CNC films by an external process in the absence of additives.     

The Remodeling Conjecture and the Faber–Pandharipande Formula

In this note, we prove that the free energies F _g constructed from the Eynard–Orantin topological recursion applied to the curve mirror to ${\mathbb{C}^3}$ reproduce the Faber–Pandharipande formula for genus g Gromov–Witten invariants of ${\mathbb{C}^3}$ . This completes the proof of the remodeling conjecture for ${\mathbb{C}^3}$ .     

Stochastic invariance of closed sets with non-Lipschitz coefficients

This paper provides a new characterization of the stochastic invariance of a closed subset of ${\mathbb{R}}^d$ with respect to a diffusion. We extend the well-known inward pointing Stratonovich drift condition to the case where the diffusion matrix can fail to be differentiable: we only assume that the covariance matrix is. In particular, our result can be applied to construct affine and polynomial diffusions on any arbitrary closed set.     

Sexual affordances, perceptual-motor invariance extraction and intentional nonlinear dynamics: sexually deviant and non-deviant patterns in male subjects

Sexual arousal and gaze behavior dynamics are used to characterize deviant sexual interests in male subjects. Pedophile patients and non-deviant subjects are immersed with virtual characters depicting relevant sexual features. Gaze behavior dynamics as indexed from correlation dimensions (D2) appears to be fractal in nature and significantly different from colored noise (surrogate data tests and recurrence plot analyses were performed). This perceptual-motor fractal dynamics parallels sexual arousal and differs from pedophiles to non-deviant subjects when critical sexual information is processed. Results are interpreted in terms of sexual affordance, perceptual invariance extraction and intentional nonlinear dynamics.     

Rational design of original materials for the electrocatalytic hydrogenation reactions: concept, preparation, characterization, and theoretical analysis

Original and versatile new materials for the electrocatalytic hydrogenation of organic compounds were designed. The materials consist of reticulated glassy carbon cathode electrodes in which the modified silica particles (average diameter 40-63 microm) were dynamically circulated. The modification of the silica surface is 2-fold. First, the silica is surface-modified using organic functions such as -OSi(CH3)2(CH2)3OCH2CH-(OH)(CH)2OH (SiO2-Diol), -OSi(CH3)2(CH2)7CH3 (SiO2-C8), and -OSi(CH3)2C6H5 (SiO2-Phenyl). Second, these silica particles were further modified by vapor phase deposition of nickel nanoaggregates (used as sites for hydrogen atoms and electric contacts with the electrode material), which does not destroy or alter the organic functionalization as demonstrated by thermogravimetric analysis-mass spectrometry and Raman, diffuse reflectance IR Fourier transform, and Auger electron spectroscopies. The new concept stems from relative adsorption and desorption properties of the organic molecules and their corresponding reduced products into the organic functionalization of the surface-modified silica. In this work, the electrocatalytic hydrogenation cyclohexanone was used to test the concept. The performances (amount of cyclohexanol vs time of generated electrolysis at constant current) are measured and compared for the various bonded organic functions of the silica surface listed above, along with the unmodified silica particles (but still containing nickel nanoaggregates) and the presence or absence of methanol in solution. The measurements of the adsorption isotherms of cyclohexanone, and the calculations of the interaction energies (MM3 force field) between the chemisorbed organic functions and the substrates, corroborate perfectly the electrocatalysis results.     

Isolating quantum coherences in structural imaging using intermolecular double-quantum coherence MRI

Intermolecular multiple-quantum coherence (iMQC) MR imaging provides a fundamentally different contrast mechanism. It allows probing tissue microstructure by tuning the direction and strength of the correlation gradient. However, iMQC images of a specific quantum-coherence can easily be contaminated by leakage signals from undesired quantum coherences (zero, single, and triple quantum coherence in this work). Using a modified double-quantum CRAZED imaging sequence, we show that signals originating from various coherence orders (M=0, 1, 2, 3) can be predicted in k-space and effectively isolated by means of a four-step phase cycling scheme and judicious choice of flip angles. Finally, preliminary data suggest the method to be able to provide information on trabecular bone architecture such as regional mean trabecular plate separation.