A comparison of scanning electron microscopy energy dispersive X-ray (SEM/EDX) and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES) for provenance inferences of grog-tempered Bronze Age pottery

Pottery tempered with former pottery fragments (named grogs) is very common during the Bronze Age in the Cantabrian Cornice (North Spain). Grog tempered pottery from two coeval archaeological sites Santa Maria de Estarrona and Peracho are studied in order to establishes pottery provenance. Chemical analyses of pottery are used to discriminate locally from imported pottery under the assumption that different geological regions exhibit a distinctive chemical fingerprint. However, the pottery-maker usually transforms the original clay by tempering and prepares the material suitable for firing modifying the raw material chemical fingerprint. The problem increases when grogs are used as tempering agent. In these cases the chemical input is clearly contaminated with foreign materials making impossible to assign a source area. SEM-EDX has been applied to both the matrix and the different types of grog tempers and the results have been compared to the whole potsherd analysis performed by ICP-OES. Chemometric analysis of matrices enable to discriminate different raw materials that can be attributed to locally produced pottery. This chemical characterization of the matrices by SEM-EDX is more effective than the chemical composition determined for the whole potsherd by ICP-OES. The occurrence of grogs within grog tempers and various types of grogs indicates modes of production based on intensive recycling. The presence of some pottery vessels at the Estarrona site with chemical features similar to those of Peracho is indicative of the transport of pieces during the migrations of semi-sedentary groups and/or the exchange of pieces between different groups of humans.     

Velocity-dependent KAM islands

We revisit the non-dissipative time-dependent annular billiard and we consider the chaotic dynamics in two planes of conjugate variables in order to describe the behavior of the growth, or saturation, of the mean velocity of an ensemble of particles. We observed that the changes in the 4-d phase space occur without changing any parameter. They occur depending on where the initial conditions start. The emerging KAM islands interfere in the behavior of the particle dynamics especially in the Fermi acceleration mechanism. We show that Fermi acceleration can be suppressed, without dissipation, even considering the non-dissipative energy context.     

Shape change of nanocontainers via a reversible ionic buckling

We demonstrate that small charged nanocages can undergo reversible changes of shapes by modifying the ionic conditions including salt concentration, pH, and dielectric permittivity of the medium. Using numerical simulations, we analyze structures with various charge stoichiometric ratios. At zero or low charge densities, the shape of the cage is determined by its elastic properties, and the surface charge pattern is dictated by the globally fixed geometry. As the charge density per molecule increases, the shape is strongly affected by the electrostatic forces. In this regime, the shape of the nanocage is controlled by the charge distribution.     

Carrier fringes in the two-aperture common-path interferometer

We present a method to introduce a linear phase into an interference pattern. This phase is introduced when a grating is placed outside of the Fourier plane of a two-aperture common-path interferometer, which is built using a 4f optical imaging system. Based on an analysis of near-field diffraction, the introduction of the carrier fringes is mathematically justified. It is important to note that no tilt between the two beams is requested to produce this effect, and it turns out to be simpler, easier, and more versatile than other existing methods. The main attributes and advantages of the setup will be discussed and illustrated in detail with experimental fringe patterns.     

AFM as an alternative for Young’s modulus determination in ceramic materials in elastic deformation regime

A novel alternative to the conventional nanoindentation technique for hard materials is presented. An atomic force microscopy probe is used as an indenter, applying loads in the nN range and producing elastic deformations of a few nanometres. This new technique allows a reduction of the different inherent nanoindenter problems. This result in an increase in the quality of the overall results, and thus provide better understanding of the contact mechanism between the indenter and the sample, yielding Young’s modulus values consistent with the literature. This is confirmed by a series of experiments performed on different YBa₂Cu₃O_7?x textured and single crystal samples textured using different techniques.     

Synthesis and photoinduced energy- and electron-transfer processes of C60-oligothienylenevinylene-C70 dumbbell compounds

Unsymmetric dumbbell molecules based on N-methylpyrrolidine[60]fullerene, oligothienylenevinylenes (nTV; n=2, 4), and N-methylpyrrolidine[70]fullerene, namely, C(60) -nTV-C(70) were synthesized and their photophysical properties were studied. In nonpolar solvents, photoinduced energy-transfer process predominantly takes place from the singlet excited state of nTV to C(60) and C(70) , as was confirmed by time-resolved emission and transient absorption spectroscopy. In polar solvent, charge-separation processes take place instead of energy transfer. The generated charge-separated radical-ion pairs decay to the neutral molecules by a fast charge-recombination process; for n=4, a rate constant of 2×10(7) s(-1) and lifetime of 50 ns were evaluated.     

A Strongly Convergent Direct Method for Monotone Variational Inequalities in Hilbert Spaces

We introduce a two-step direct method, like Korpelevich's, for solving monotone variational inequalities. The advantage of our method over that one is that ours converges strongly in Hilbert spaces, whereas only weak convergence has been proved for Korpelevich's algorithm. Our method also has the following desirable property: the sequence converges to the solution of the problem that lies closest to the initial iterate.     

Semidefinite resolution and exactness of semidefinite relaxations for satisfiability

This paper explores new connections between the satisfiability problem and semidefinite programming. We show how the process of resolution in satisfiability is equivalent to a linear transformation between the feasible sets of the relevant semidefinite programming problems. We call this transformation semidefinite programming resolution, and we demonstrate the potential of this novel concept by using it to obtain a direct proof of the exactness of the semidefinite formulation of satisfiability without applying Lasserre’s general theory for semidefinite relaxations of 0/1 problems. In particular, our proof explicitly shows how the exactness of the semidefinite formulation for any satisfiability formula can be interpreted as the implicit application of a finite sequence of resolution steps to verify whether the empty clause can be derived from the given formula.     

Análise elastoplástica de estruturas aporticadas com superfícies de interação obtidas por regressão linear múltipla

The ultimate limit state criteria (yielding surfaces) applied to structural designs are easier in stress resultants. There are many difficulties to generating interaction surfaces with six sectional efforts obtained through to numerical or experimental models of a space-frame analysis. The approach, in the literature, to nonlinear analysis of structures with 3D beams is use of interaction surfaces with only three combined efforts in the cross-section. Therefore, a better understanding of load types, of interactions between the six efforts and of local and global stability of structure are necessary. The interaction surfaces with three efforts are presented in planes, quadrics, more complex, or a mixture of them shapes, so that techniques which use analytical formulations with combined efforts and several section shapes are more or less complex. Multiple linear regression allows to treat the resultant efforts of several analyses for obtaining a yielding surface with the combined efforts. In this paper, the formulation to obtaining of the surfaces and their applications in the analysis of elasto-plastic frame structures are presented.