A consensus model of political decision-making

In this paper, a model of political consensus is introduced. Parties try to reach consensus in forming a government. A government is defined as a pair consisting of a winning coalition and a policy supported by this coalition, where a policy consists of policies on given issues. A party evaluates all governments the party belongs to with respect to some criteria. We allow the criteria to be of unequal importance to a party. These criteria concern winning coalitions and policy issues. Parties may be advised to adjust their preferences, i.e., to change their evaluation concerning some government(s) or/and the importance of the criteria, in order to obtain a better political consensus.     

Optimisation and on-line acoustic monitoring of laser cleaning of soiled paper

Laser cleaning is an attractive and advanced technique of cleaning cultural heritage materials. However, in the case of paper-based substrates, it may lead to surface discoloration and long-term destabilisation of the cellulosic component. The origin of discoloration during pulsed laser removal (Nd:YAG laser, 532 and 1064 nm) of carbonaceous soiling was studied using UV resonance Raman spectroscopy and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. It was concluded that macromolecular conjugated systems are the most probable cause of discoloration, formed as a consequence of thermolytic reactions. With chemiluminometry, we analysed the processes following irradiation. Using photo-ageing and thermally accelerated ageing, it was indicated that, even at fluences lower than the ablation threshold of cellulose, long-term destabilisation of the material should be taken into account. By using much lower laser shot repetition rates than usual, i.e. 1 s^-1, we can allow the substrate to cool between consecutive laser shots, thus minimising the adverse effects of laser treatment. Acoustic monitoring was shown to be an affordable possibility for on-line process control. The amplitude of shock waves was shown not to be wavelength dependent (532 or 1064 nm); however, the parameter can be used to monitor the progress of cleaning. PACS 42.62.-b; 61.80.Ba; 83.80.Mc; 78.20.Hp; 68.37.Xy     

Analyser‐based tomography images of cartilage

Analyser‐based imaging expands the performance of X‐ray imaging by utilizing not only the absorption properties of X‐rays but also the refraction and scatter rejection (extinction) properties. In this study, analyser‐based computed tomography has been implemented on imaging an articular cartilage sample, depicting substructural variations, without overlay, at a pixel resolution of 3.6 µm.     

Double and negative reflection of cold atoms in non-Abelian gauge potentials

Atom reflection is studied in the presence of a non-Abelian vector potential proportional to a spin-1/2 operator. The potential is produced by a relatively simple laser configuration for atoms with a tripod level scheme. We show that the atomic motion is described by two different dispersion branches with positive or negative chirality. As a consequence, atom reflection shows unusual features, since an incident wave may split into two reflected ones at a barrier, an ordinary specular reflection, and an additional nonspecular one. Remarkably, the latter wave can exhibit negative reflection and may become evanescent if the angle of incidence exceeds a critical value. These reflection properties are crucial for future designs in non-Abelian atom optics.     

Post-treatment of Fungal Biomass to Enhance Pigment Production

Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology - A new post-treatment method of fungal biomass after fermentation is revealed. The post-treatment strategy was utilized to produce pigments as an additional...     

In situ formation of ligand and catalyst--application in ruthenium-catalyzed enantioselective reduction of ketones

The direct in situ formation of highly efficient ruthenium-catalysts for the asymmetric reduction of ketones was obtained by combining chiral ligand building blocks with a ruthenium precursor.     

Novel simple and highly modular ligands for efficient asymmetric transfer-hydrogenation of ketones

Novel simple and highly modular dipeptide-analogue ligands combined with [RuCl2(p-cymene)]2 were demonstrated to efficiently catalyze the reduction of ketones under hydrogen transfer conditions with enantioselectivities up to 96%.     

Reentrant phase transition in granular superconductors

The conditions for the appearance of a reentrant superconducting phase in granular materials are studied in mean field approximation applied to periodic models. We assume that the relevant low-lying excitation is the transfer of a Cooper pair from a grain to one of its neighbours, and neglect pair breaking. Both on-grain (U) and nearest neighbour (V) Coulomb interactions are taken into account, and the Coulomb problem is treated in Bethe-Peierls approximation. WhenV/U is not too large, reentrance is predicted ifV/U>(4+3z)^?1/2 wherez is the coordination number. This result is different from a recent criterion suggested by ?imánek, which allows reentrance only in the immediate vicinities of certain discrete values ofV/U. For strong enoughV/U, the models treated here show a transition to an ionic-salt-like charge-ordered state. Reentrant superconductivity is shown to occur also on an ionic background. In actual systems, close-packing effects partially frustrate the ionic ordering and enhance the reentrant feature.