Electronic transport properties of bismuth nanobridges through silicon-nitride membranes

The electronic transport through nanostructured bismuth nanobridges has been investigated at low temperatures (T<2 K) and in magnetic fields B up to 8.5 T. The samples show reproducible resistance fluctuations as a function of B, superimposed on a large magnetoresistance of up to 50%. In addition, time-dependent resistance fluctuations in zero magnetic field demonstrate the presence of bistable scatterers in the constriction region of our samples, which are described by two-level systems. Their dynamics are shown to be sensitive to subtle modifications of the static scatterer configuration in their vicinity, which cannot be detected in the sample magnetofingerprint.     

When should you sack a football manager? Results from a simple model applied to the English Premiership

What strategy should a football (soccer, in American parlance) club adopt when deciding whether to sack its manager? This paper introduces a simple model assuming that a club's objective is to maximize the number of league points that it scores per season. The club's strategy consists of three choices: the length of the honeymoon period during which it will not consider sacking a new manager, the level of the performance trapdoor below which the manager get the sack, and the weight that it will give to more recent games compared to earlier ones. Some data from the last six seasons of the English Premiership are used to calibrate the model. At this early stage of the research, the best strategy appears to have only a short honeymoon period of eight games (much less than the actual shortest period of 12 games), to set the trapdoor at 0.74 points per game, and to put 47% of the weight on the last five games. A club adopting this strategy would obtain on average 56.8 points per season, compared to a Premiership average of 51.8 points.     

Sorption Behaviour of Molybdenum on Different Antimonates Ion Exchangers

Various antimonate compounds are well known as important inorganic ion exchangers, since they resist radiation and chemical degradation and also exhibit selectivities towards different cations. Ceric, silicon, titanium and ferric antimonates were prepared as inorganic ion exchangers. Characterization of these materials has been described using different techniques, including thermal analysis, surface area measurements, X-ray diffraction and IR-spectroscopy. In batch distribution experiments the influence of HNO₃ molarity and Mo concentration for Mo sorption on different matrices is described in terms of their retention capacities and distribution coefficients.The selectivities of these exchangers towards molybdenum are in the order: CeSb > SiSb > FeSb > TiSb.     

Local Feasible QP-Free Algorithms for the Constrained Minimization of SC1 Functions

We consider the problem of minimizing an SC¹ function subject to inequality constraints. We propose a local algorithm whose distinguishing features are that: (a) a fast convergence rate is achieved under reasonable assumptions that do not include strict complementarity at the solution; (b) the solution of only linear systems is required at each iteration; (c) all the points generated are feasible. After analyzing a basic Newton algorithm, we propose some variants aimed at reducing the computational costs and, in particular, we consider a quasi-Newton version of the algorithm.     

Die Bestimmung des Schwefelgehalts in organischen Stoffen

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Farbmessungen

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Analytische Verwendung von Sulfin- und Selenins?uren

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