Electronic fine structure in the electron-hole plasma in SrB6

Electron-hole mixing-induced fine structure in alkaline earth hexaborides leads to lower energy (temperature) scales, and thus a stronger tendency toward an excitonic instability than in their doped counterparts (viz. Ca1-xLaxB6, x approximately 0.005), which are high-Curie-temperature, small-moment ferromagnets. Comparison of Fermi surfaces and spectral distributions with de Haas-van Alphen, optical, transport, and tunneling data indicates that SrB6 remains a fermionic semimetal down to (at least) 5 K, rather than forming an excitonic condensate. For the doped system the Curie temperature is higher than the degeneracy temperature.     

Detrending fluctuation analysis based on high-pass filtering

Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) is a scaling method commonly used for detecting long-range correlations in non-stationary time series. The DFA method uses a trend based on polynomial fitting to extract and quantify fluctuations at different time scales. Basically, such procedure acts as a (non-dynamical) high-pass filter that removes time series components below a given time scale. As an alternative to the polynomial fitting approach, this paper proposes a DFA method based on well-known high-pass filters (e.g., Butterworth, elliptic, etc.). Numerical results show that the proposed DFA approach yields results similar to traditional DFA method. Maybe, the main advantage of the proposed DFA method is that efficient implementations of high-pass filters are available commercially.     

Magnetic and structural properties of mechanically alloyed Tb0.257−x Nd x Fe0.743 alloys, with x = 0 and 0.257

The alloys between a transition metal and a rare earth present magnetic and magneto optical properties of exceptional interest for the production of magnetic devices for information storage. In this work we report the magnetic and structural properties, obtained by Mössbauer spectrometry (MS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), of Tb_0.257?x Nd _x Fe_0.743 alloys with x?=?0 and 0.257 prepared by mechanical alloying during 12, 24 and 48 h, to study the influence of the milling time in their magnetic and structural properties. The X-rays results show for all the samples that the α-Fe and an amorphous phase are always present. The first decreases and the second increases with the increase of the milling time. Mössbauer results show that the amorphous phase in samples with Nd is ferromagnetic and appears as a hyperfine field distribution and a broad doublet, and that as the milling time increases the paramagnetic contribution increases. For samples with Tb the amorphous phase is paramagnetic and appears as a broad doublet which increases with the milling time and for 48 h milling it appears an additional broad singlet.     

A pattern recognition system for JPEG steganography detection

This paper builds up a pattern recognition system to detect anomalies in JPEG images, especially steganographic content. The system consists of feature generation, feature ranking and selection, feature extraction, and pattern classification. These processes tend to capture image characteristics, reduce the problem dimensionality, eliminate the noise inferences between features, and further improve classification accuracies on clean and steganography JPEG images. Based on the discussion and analysis of six popular JPEG steganography methods, the entire recognition system results in higher classification accuracies between clean and steganography classes compared to merely using individual feature subset for JPEG steganography detection. The strength of feature combination and preprocessing has been integrated even when a small amount of information is embedded. The work demonstrated in this paper is extensible and can be improved by integrating various new and current techniques.     

Silica nano-particles produced by worms through a bio-digestion process of rice husk

It is reported the production and characterization of silica nano-particles by Californian-red worms through a bio-digestion process of rice husk; the rice husk contains, naturally, high concentrations of silica (22%). The worms were fed gradually with rice husk and water during 5 months to clean the worm’s digestive system from other types of food. The humus was collected, dried at room temperature, pH neutralized and calcined at different temperatures (500, 600 and 700 °C) to remove the organic matter. The calcined humus was digested to remove traces of inorganic compounds. The size of the silica particles was in the range from 55 to 250 nm depending on calcination temperatures. The efficiency in the production of the particles was 88%. These results were compared with those obtained using other agro-industrial wastes that contain silica: coffee (12%) and cane (8%) husk. The samples were characterized by XRD, FTIR, EDS, DLS, SEM and TEM.     

Determination of spin,magnetic moment and isotopic shift of neutron rich205Hg by optical pumping

Neutron rich²⁰⁵Hg (T _1/2=5.2 min) was produced and on-line mass separated at the ISOLDE facility at CERN. The polarization achieved by optical pumping via the atomic line (6s ²¹ S ₀?6s6p ³ P ₁,λ=2 537Å) was monitored by theβ decay asymmetry. Hyperfine structure and isotopic shift of the²⁰⁵Hg absorption line was determined by Zeeman scanning. In addition a magnetic resonance was performed on the polarized²⁰⁵Hg nuclei in the atomic ground state. The results are: \(I(^{205} Hg) = \tfrac{1}{2}\) (confirmed);μ _I (²⁰⁵Hg)=0.5915 (1)μ _N (uncorrected for diamagnetism); isotopic shiftδv^204/205=v(²⁰⁵Hg)-v(204Hg)=?1.8 (1) GHz.μ _I and IS are discussed briefly in the frame of current literature.     

Phase Transition and Level-Set Percolation for the Gaussian Free Field

We consider level-set percolation for the Gaussian free field on ${\mathbb{Z}^{d}}$ , d ≥ 3, and prove that, as h varies, there is a non-trivial percolation phase transition of the excursion set above level h for all dimensions d ≥ 3. So far, it was known that the corresponding critical level h _*(d) satisfies h _*(d) ≥ 0 for all d ≥ 3 and that h _*(3) is finite, see Bricmont et al. (J Stat Phys 48(5/6):1249–1268, 1987). We prove here that h _*(d) is finite for all d ≥ 3. In fact, we introduce a second critical parameter h _** ≥ h _*, show that h _**(d) is finite for all d ≥ 3, and that the connectivity function of the excursion set above level h has stretched exponential decay for all h > h _**. Finally, we prove that h _* is strictly positive in high dimension. It remains open whether h _* and h _** actually coincide and whether h _* > 0 for all d ≥ 3.     

N-heterocyclic carbene-catalyzed Michael additions of 1,3-dicarbonyl compounds

A study of the organocatalytic activity of N‐heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) in the Michael addition of 1,3‐dicarbonyl compounds has allowed us to identify 1,3‐bis(2,6‐diisopropylphenyl)imidazol‐2‐ylidene (IPr) as an excellent catalyst for this transformation (up to 99 % yield with a 2.5 mol % catalyst loading), and the reaction was found to be of broad scope. Two early applications of this unprecedented catalytic activity of NHCs are described, that is, the domino carbocyclization reactions of simple cyclic 1,3‐dicarbonyl and malonic acid derivatives, which allow stereoselective access to bridged bicyclic compounds, and the stereoselective synthesis of cyclohexanols (or cyclohexene). Early mechanistic investigations are also reported.