Atomic-Scale Study on the Ultralarge Bending Behaviors of TiO-B/Anatase Dual-Phase Nanowires.

It is challenging but important to understand the mechanical properties of one-dimensional (1D) nanomaterials for their design and integration into nanodevices. Generally, brittle ceramic nanowires (NWs) cannot withstand a large bending strain. Herein, bending deformation of titanium dioxide (TiO) NWs with a bronze/anatase dual-phase was carried out inside a transmission electron microscopy (TEM) system.

Graphene-based wearable sensors.

The human body is a "delicate machine" full of sensors such as the fingers, nose, and mouth. In addition, numerous physiological signals are being created every moment, which can reflect the condition of the body. The quality and the quantity of the physiological signals are important for diagnoses and the execution of therapies.

Electronic Structures of GeSbTe/CoFeX (X: Al, Si) Interfaces for Phase Change Spintronics.

Phase change materials (PCMs), such as GeSbTe, are highly attractive in modern electronics and photonics. However, their spintronic applications remain largely unexplored. Here, we propose a tentative modality of phase change spintronic devices based on the ferromagnet/PCM/ferromagnet structure.

Effect of combination and number of b values in IVIM analysis with post-processing methodology: simulation and clinical study.

Objective: To investigate the effect of number and combination of b values used on the accuracy of estimated Intravoxel Incoherent Motion (IVIM) parameters using simulation and clinical data.

Materials And Methods: Simulations with seven combinations of b values were performed for 4, 6, 8, and 13 numbers of b values with six different values of D, D*, and f parameters. Two methodologies were implemented for IVIM analysis: standard biexponential model (BE) and biexponential model with total variation penalty function (BE + TV).

Increased cerebral blood flow with increased amyloid burden in the preclinical phase of alzheimer's disease.

Background: Arterial spin labeling (ASL) is an emerging MRI technique for noninvasive measurement of cerebral blood flow (CBF) that has been used to show hemodynamic changes in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease (AD). CBF changes have been measured using positron emission tomography (PET) across the AD spectrum, but ASL showed limited success in measuring CBF variations in the preclinical phase of AD, where amyloid β (Aβ) plaques accumulate in the decades prior to symptom onset.

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between CBF measured by multiphase-pseudocontinuous-ASL (MP-PCASL) and Aβ burden as measured by C-PiB PET imaging in a study of cognitively normal (CN) subjects age over 65.

Correlative study of lattice imperfections in long-range ordered, nano-scale domains in a Fe-Co-Mo alloy.

Recent advancements in data mining methods in atom probe microscopy have enabled new quantitative chemical and microstructural characterization beyond the standard three-dimensional reconstruction. For example, spatial distribution maps have been developed to enable visualisation of the local lattice occupation of a selected region of interest. However, the precision of such studies yet remains unknown as correlation with complementary methods would be required.

Intercomparison of Small Unmanned Aircraft System (sUAS) Measurements for Atmospheric Science during the LAPSE-RATE Campaign.

Small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS) are rapidly transforming atmospheric research. With the advancement of the development and application of these systems, improving knowledge of best practices for accurate measurement is critical for achieving scientific goals. We present results from an intercomparison of atmospheric measurement data from the Lower Atmospheric Process Studies at Elevation-a Remotely piloted Aircraft Team Experiment (LAPSE-RATE) field campaign.

Puncture-Resistant Hydrogel: Placing Molecular Complexes Along Phase Boundaries.

Trendy advances in electric cars and wearable electronics triggered growing awareness in device lethality/survivability from accidents. A divergent design in protection calls for high stress resistance, large ductility, as well as efficient energy dissipation, all from the device itself, while keeping the weight-specific device performance to its premium. Unfortunately, the polymer electrolyte or the ductile elastomer lacks a mechanistic design to resist puncture or tear at a high stress level.

Assessing the Spatial Accuracy of the Reconstruction in Atom Probe Tomography and a New Calibratable Adaptive Reconstruction.

We define a measure for the accuracy of tomographic reconstruction in atom probe tomography, named here the spatial error index. We demonstrate that this index can be used to compare rigorously the spatial accuracy of various different approaches to the calculation of tomographic reconstruction. This is useful, for example, to evaluate the performance of alternate tomographic reconstruction approaches, and ensures that the comparisons are independent of individual data quality or other instrumental parameters.

Ab-initio investigation on ion-associated species and association process in Li[B(OH)] solution.

In this paper, the factors determining the spectroscopic characteristics of v-B(OH) band including coupling effect, hydrogen bonding effect, and direct contact effect in Li[B(OH)] solutions are investigated by using ab initio calculation. The coupling effect between the liberations of water and [B(OH)] has a larger effect on v-B(OH) in solvent-shared ion pair (SIP) and monodentate contact ion pair (MCIP), but the smaller effect in bidentate contact ion pair (BCIP). Water molecule tends to hydrate to the middle position between the first sphere of B(OH) and outer-sphere of [Li(HO)] and has a different effect on v-B(OH) in ion pairs.

Introducing a Crystallography-Mediated Reconstruction (CMR) Approach to Atom Probe Tomography.

Current approaches to reconstruction in atom probe tomography produce results that exhibit substantial distortions throughout the analysis depth. This is largely because of the need to apply a multitude of assumptions when estimating the evolution of the tip shape, and other pseudo-empirical reconstruction factors, which vary both across the face of the tip and throughout the analysis depth. We introduce a new crystallography-mediated reconstruction to improve the spatial accuracy and dramatically reduce these in-depth variations.

Atom Probe Microscopy of Strengthening Effects in Alloy 718.

Polycrystalline Ni-based superalloys for aerospace and power generation applications are often precipitation hardened to achieve strengthening at elevated temperatures. Here, atom probe microscopy has become an essential tool to study the complex morphology of nanoscale precipitates. This study focuses on Alloy 718, which is hardened by semi-coherent, ordered γ' (Ni3(Al, Ti)) and γ″ (Ni3(Nb)) particles.

Linking Cortical and Connectional Pathology in Schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is associated with cortical thickness (CT) deficits and breakdown in white matter microstructure. Whether these pathological processes are related remains unclear. We used multimodal neuroimaging to investigate the relationship between regional cortical thinning and breakdown in adjacent infracortical white matter as a function of age and illness duration.

Robust Identification of Rich-Club Organization in Weighted and Dense Structural Connectomes.

The human brain is a complex network, in which some brain regions, denoted as 'hub' regions, play critically important roles. Some of these hubs are highly interconnected forming a rich-club organization, which has been identified based on the degree metric from structural connectomes constructed using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI)-based fiber tractography. However, given the limitations of DTI, the yielded structural connectomes are largely compromised, possibly affecting the characterization of rich-club organizations.

On the retrieval of crystallographic information from atom probe microscopy data via signal mapping from the detector coordinate space.

Atom probe tomography is a powerful microscopy technique capable of reconstructing the 3D position and chemical identity of millions of atoms within engineering materials, at the atomic level. Crystallographic information contained within the data is particularly valuable for the purposes of reconstruction calibration and grain boundary analysis. Typically, analysing this data is a manual, time-consuming and error prone process.

Precipitation of string-shaped morphologies consisting of aligned α phase in a metastable β titanium alloy.

String-shaped morphologies consisting of preferentially aligned lath-shaped α precipitates were observed in the metastable β Ti-6Cr-5Mo-5V-4Al alloy after deformations at high strain rates and elevated temperatures. The morphology and 3-dimentional arrangement of this feature have been elaborated based on the characterizations via a combination of transmission electron microscopy, transmission kikuchi diffraction and atom probe tomography. The 2D projected morphology of the coalescent α laths observed in the etched samples by SEM depends on the metallographic section.

Broadband dual-anisotropic solid metamaterials.

We have proposed solid elastic metamaterials with anisotropic stiffness and inertial mass simultaneously, denoted as the dual anisotropy, for the potential use of elastic wave controlling. The dual anisotropy has been designed weakly dispersive in a broad frequency range, wherein broadband anisotropic mass is achieved by employing the sliding-interface concept in fluid-solid composites. Results have been validated through the band-structure, effective-medium, and modal-field analyses.

Near-Perfect Spin Filtering and Negative Differential Resistance in an Fe(II)S Complex.

Density functional theory and nonequilibrium Green's function calculations have been used to explore spin-resolved transport through the high-spin state of an iron(II)sulfur single molecular magnet. Our results show that this molecule exhibits near-perfect spin filtering, where the spin-filtering efficiency is above 99%, as well as significant negative differential resistance centered at a low bias voltage. The rise in the spin-up conductivity up to the bias voltage of 0.

Dual-Physical Cross-Linked Tough and Photoluminescent Hydrogels with Good Biocompatibility and Antibacterial Activity.

Development of novel photoluminescent hydrogels with toughness, biocompatibility, and antibiosis is important for the applications in biomedical field. Herein, novel tough photoluminescent lanthanide (Ln)-alginate/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogels with the properties of biocompatibility and antibiosis have been facilely synthesized by introducing hydrogen bonds and coordination bonds into the interpenetrating networks of Na-alginate and PVA, via approaches of frozen-thawing and ion-exchanging. The resultant hydrogels exhibit high mechanical strength (0.

Time domain characteristics of wave motion in dispersive and anisotropic continuum acoustic metamaterials.

The authors study the wave propagation in continuum acoustic metamaterials whose all or not all of the principal elements of the mass tensor or the scalar compressibility can be negative due to wave dispersion. Their time-domain wave characteristics are particularly investigated by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, in which algorithms for the Drude and Lorentz dispersion pertinent to acoustic metamaterials are provided necessarily. Wave propagation nature of anisotropic acoustic metamaterials with all admissible material parameters are analyzed in a general manner.

Self-healing polysaccharide-based hydrogels as injectable carriers for neural stem cells.

Self-healing injectable hydrogels can be formulated as three-dimensional carriers for the treatment of neurological diseases with desirable advantages, such as avoiding the potential risks of cell loss during injection, protecting cells from the shearing force of injection. However, the demands for biocompatible self-healing injectable hydrogels to meet above requirements and to promote the differentiation of neural stem cells (NSCs) into neurons remain a challenge. Herein, we developed a biocompatible self-healing polysaccharide-based hydrogel system as a novel injectable carrier for the delivery of NSCs.

Hydrogel microphones for stealthy underwater listening.

Exploring the abundant resources in the ocean requires underwater acoustic detectors with a high-sensitivity reception of low-frequency sound from greater distances and zero reflections. Here we address both challenges by integrating an easily deformable network of metal nanoparticles in a hydrogel matrix for use as a cavity-free microphone. Since metal nanoparticles can be densely implanted as inclusions, and can even be arranged in coherent arrays, this microphone can detect static loads and air breezes from different angles, as well as underwater acoustic signals from 20 Hz to 3 kHz at amplitudes as low as 4 Pa.

Biodegradation and Osteosarcoma Cell Cultivation on Poly(aspartic acid) Based Hydrogels.

Development of novel biodegradable and biocompatible scaffold materials with optimal characteristics is important for both preclinical and clinical applications. The aim of the present study was to analyze the biodegradability of poly(aspartic acid)-based hydrogels, and to test their usability as scaffolds for MG-63 osteoblast-like cells. Poly(aspartic acid) was fabricated from poly(succinimide) and hydrogels were prepared using natural amines as cross-linkers (diaminobutane and cystamine).

Pattern formation in plastic liquid films on elastomers by ratcheting.

Plastic liquids, also known as Bingham liquids, retain their shape when loads are small, but flow when loads exceed a threshold. We discovered that plastic liquid films coated on elastomers develop wavy patterns under cyclic loads. As the number of cycles increases, the wavelength of the patterns remains unchanged, but the amplitude of the patterns increases and then saturates.

Fe3 O4 Anisotropic Nanostructures in Hydrogels: Efficient Catalysts for the Rapid Removal of Organic Dyes from Wastewater.

Fe3 O4 anisotropic nanostructures that exhibit excellent catalytic performance are rarely used to catalyze Fenton-like reactions because of the inevitable drawbacks resulting from traditional preparation methods. In this study, a facile, nontoxic, water-based approach is developed for directly regulating a series of anisotropic morphologies of Fe3 O4 nanostructures in a hydrogel matrix. In having the advantages of both the catalytic activity of Fe3 O4 and the adsorptive capacity of an anionic polymer network, the hybrid nanocomposites have the capability to effect the rapid removal of cationic dyes, such as methylene blue, from water samples.