Digital holographic microscopy characterization of superdirective beam by metamaterial

Digital holographic microscopy (DHM) has been successfully applied for the first time to characterize the radiative out-of-plane emission properties of a superdirective device. Complementarily to near-field microscopy, DHM allows us to reconstruct the beam in the far-field region. The angular dispersion of the light beam radiated from a grating composed of air and anti-air metamaterial has been determined, and the proposed technique has highlighted a collimation degree higher than 0.04°, as already evaluated in a previous work. Further considerations on the retrieved phase map of the beam in the acquisition plane are presented.     

On groups with all proper subgroups finite-by-abelian-by-finite

Archiv der Mathematik - We show that if all proper subgroups of a locally graded group G are finite-by-abelian-by-finite, then G contains a finite normal subgroup N such that all proper subgroups...     

Electrical strength in ramp voltage AC tests of LDPE and its nanocomposites with silica and fibrous and laminar silicates

The electrical strength of a set of LDPE micro and nanocomposites with silica, laminar silicates and fibrous silicates has been studied. A significant 60% increase of the breakdown electrical field is shown by the microsized microdispersed LDPE/montmorillonite composites while only a 20% increase is obtained with a nanosized laminar silicate. Nanosized nanodispersed composites of the spherical silica and fibrous silicate with LDPE show a lower increase of the breakdown electrical field. The data point scatter in repeated tests is very high in the case of the microcomposites, indicating strong morphological heterogeneity, while it is very low in the nanocomposites. This implies that these nanocomposites are remarkably defect‐free as regards electrically “weak” sites. An analysis of the crystalline structure, semicrystalline morphology and inorganic particle size and distribution evidences the importance of the role played not only by the inorganic particles but also by the semicrystalline morphology in the final dielectric performance of the composite. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 46: 1301–1311, 2008     

Microneedles-based electrochemical sensors: New tools for advanced biosensing

Electrochemical biosensors are used worldwide as analytical tools from laboratory applications to market products. The performance of electrochemical sensing can be boosted by adopting the microneedle (MN) geometry as an innovative configuration of standard electrodes. MNs can be miniaturized, easily functionalized, and properly designed for specific aim monitoring, but most of all, they allow a low invasive controlling tool for growth and for environment influence in plant and a painless door to human body fluids where target analytes can be detected, overcoming the natural barrier of the skin. In this review, the very recent developments in MN-based electrochemical biosensing published in the literature are summarized.     

A note on groups paralyzing a subgroup series

We consider groups Γ of automorphisms of a groupG acting by means of power automorphisms on the factors of a normal series inG with lengthm. We show that [G, Γ] is nilpotent with class at mostm and that this bound is best possible. Moreover, such a Γ is parasoluble with paraheight at most 1/2m(m+3)+1, provided Γ′ is periodic. We give best possible bound in the case where the series is a central one.