Thermal conductivity of an alloy in relation to the observed cooling rate and glass-forming ability

The glass-forming ability (GFA) of an alloy in this case is the largest diameter of a rod which can be cast fully glassy. The present work shows that the thermal conductivity of a liquid alloy has a strong effect on GFA by influencing the cooling rate upon mould casting. The initial cooling rates (for the first 70–100?K of temperature decrease), obtained for Cu-, Zr- and Au-based bulk glass-forming alloys in the liquid state, are found to scale linearly with the thermal conductivities of the liquid base elements. However the low cooling rate found for Ni-based alloy suggests that the heat transfer at the melt–mould interface may also influence the cooling rate. The low thermal conductivity of Ni-based alloys and the correspondingly low cooling rate obtained compared to Cu-based counterparts explains their lower GFA. In the literature, many factors influencing the GFA of alloys have been discussed. To these factors, the present study adds the thermal conductivity of the molten alloy and the melt–mould heat-transfer coefficient. Moreover, the cooling rate depends on temperature and, thus, the critical cooling rate itself is not a suitable parameter for indicating GFA. The cooling can be better described by an appropriate fitting of the cooling curve to an exponential temperature decay function.     

Thermal phase transition of RbMnFe(CN)6 observed by X-ray emission and absorption spectroscopy

The thermal phase transition of RbMnFe(CN)₆ has been observed by Mn and Fe 3p-1s X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) and 1s X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). The thermal variations of the spin states and the valences of Mn and Fe were determined to be Mn²⁺(S=5/2)-NC-Fe³⁺(S=1/2) for the high-temperature (HT) phase and Mn³⁺(S=2)-NC-Fe²⁺(S=0) for the low-temperature (LT) phase. These transitions are thus caused by charge transfer between Mn and Fe. The temperature dependences of Mn and Fe 3p-1s XES and 1s XAS were observed as the composition of the spectra of the HT and LT phases. The ratios of the HT component in each spectrum show good agreement with the thermal transition curves observed with magnetic susceptibility measurements.     

Free field realization of the level-2 elliptic algebra Ux,p ([^(\mathfraks\mathfrakl)]2 )*)U_{x,p} (\widehat{\mathfrak{s}\mathfrak{l}}_2 )*)

We give a level-2 representation of the elliptic algebra in terms of one free boson and one free fermion. We show that -modules have a natural direct sum decomposition into the irreducible (deformed) super-Virasoro modules associated with the coset . Presented at the International Colloquium “Integrable Systems and Quantum Symmetries”, Prague, 16–18 June 2005.     

Effect of temporal resolution on the estimation of left ventricular function by cardiac MR imaging

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of temporal resolution on the estimation of left ventricular (LV) function by cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) imaging using a steady-state free precession (SSFP) sequence. Left ventricular function was assessed by cine MR imaging using a segmented SSFP sequence in 10 healthy volunteers. Views per segment (VPS) were set at 8 and 20, resulting in high and low true temporal resolution, respectively. Irrespective of VPS, images were reconstructed at 40 cardiac phases, providing high apparent temporal resolution. Data were analyzed using 40, 20 and 10 phases to simulate different apparent temporal resolutions. Increasing the cardiac phases used for analysis slightly decreased mean end-systolic volume (ESV) and slightly increased mean ejection fraction (EF). No substantial difference in estimates of end-diastolic volume (EDV) was found between VPSs of 8 and 20. Imaging with a VPS of 20 yielded a larger ESV and smaller EF than imaging with a VPS of 8 when 40 phases were used. In conclusion, low true temporal resolution causes overestimation of ESV and underestimation of EF. Improvement of apparent temporal resolution mildly reduces but does not eliminate the errors caused by low true temporal resolution.     

Pulsed laser deposition of ZnO grown on glass substrates for realizing high-performance thin-film transistors

We report characterization of ZnO thin-film transistors (TFTs) on glass substrates fabricated by pulsed laser deposition (PLD). ZnO films were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), atomic force microscopy and Hall effect measurements. The XRD results showed high c-axis-oriented ZnO(0002) diffraction corresponding to the wurtzite phase. Moreover, the crystallization and the electrical properties of ZnO thin films grown at room temperature are controllable by PLD growth conditions such as oxygen gas pressure. The ZnO films are very smooth, with a root-mean-square roughness of 1 nm. From the Hall effect measurements, we have succeeded in fabricating ZnO films on glass substrates with an electron mobility of 21.7 cm²/V s. By using the ZnO thin film grown by two-step PLD and a HfO₂ high-k gate insulator, a transconductance of 24.1 mS/mm, a drain current on/off ratio of 4.4×10⁶ and a subthreshold gate swing of 0.26 V/decade were obtained for the ZnO TFT.     

The Memetic Tree-based Genetic Algorithm and its application to Portfolio Optimization

We introduce a Memetic system to solve the application problem of Financial Portfolio Optimization. This problem consists of selecting a number of assets from a market and their relative weights to form an investment strategy. These weights must be optimized against a utility function that considers the expected return of each asset, and their co-variance; which means that as the number of available assets increases, the search space increases exponentially. Our method introduces two new concepts that set it apart from previous evolutionary based approaches. The first is the Tree-based Genetic Algorithm (GA), a recursive representation for individuals which allows the genome to learn information regarding relationships between the assets, and the evaluation of intermediate nodes. The second is the hybridization with local search, which allows the system to fine-tune the weights of assets after the tree structure has been decided. These two innovations make our system superior than other representations used for multi-weight assignment of portfolios.     

Neuron phase shift adaptive to time delay in locomotor control

Based on neurophysiological evidence, theoretical studies have shown that walking can be generated by mutual entrainment of oscillations of a central pattern generator (CPG) and a body. However, it has also been shown that the time delay in the sensorimotor loop destabilizes mutual entrainment, and results in the failure to walk. Recently, it has been reported that if (a) the neuron model used to construct the CPG is replaced by physiologically faithful neuron model (Bonhoeffer–Van der Pol type) and (b) the mechanical impedance of the body (muscle viscoelasticity) is controlled depending on the angle between two legs, the phase relationship between CPG activity and body motion could be flexibly locked according to the loop delay and, therefore, mutual entrainment can be stabilized. That is, locomotor control adaptive to the loop delay can emerge from the coupling between CPG and body. Here, we call this mechanism flexible-phase locking. In this paper, we construct a system of coupled oscillators as a simplified model of a walking system to theoretically investigate the mechanism of flexible-phase locking, and to analyze the simplified model. The analysis suggests that the following are required as the essential mechanism: (i) an asymptotically stable limit cycle of the coupling system of CPG and body and (ii) a sign difference between afferent and efferent coupling coefficients.     

Crystal structure and spin state of Fe0.5Co0.5(NCS)2(bpa)2

Fe(NCS)₂(bpa)₂, Co(NCS)₂(bpa)₂, and Fe_0.5Co_0.5(NCS)₂(bpa)₂ were synthesized. X-ray structural analysis revealed that the structure was the same among the three complexes. Although the metal-ligand distance in the mixed crystals was shorter than the distance in Fe(NCS)₂(bpa)₂ and was similar to that in Co(NCS)₂(bpa)₂, the spin state remained temperature-independent Fe^II high-spin state in ⁵⁷Fe M?ssbauer spectra.