The periodic system and the idea of a chemical element: From Mendeleev to superheavy elements

Like other scientific concepts, the idea of a chemical element has changed considerably over time, since it was first established in the Enlightenment era. In Dmitri Mendeleev's construction of the periodic system, he distinguished between simple substances and elements as defined by their atomic weights. The foundation of the periodic system on the latter concept led to several challenges. For example, the system seemed unable to accommodate the radioactive substances eventually recognised as isotopes. Around 1920, elements were consequently redefined in terms of their atomic numbers, a nuclear property that could be determined by X‐ray spectroscopy. Although this understanding of an element has stood the test of time, new questions turned up relating to the concept of an element following the syntheses of transuranic elements since the early 1940s. These syntheses of very heavy elements have additionally led chemists and physicists to reconsider the criteria for the discovery of a new element. Recently, elements have been officially recognised on the sole ground that a small number of very heavy atomic nuclei were identified. The paper discusses how the notion of an element was modified during different periods of time, the reasons for the modifications, and the values ascribed to them in the communities of chemists and physicists.     

Rhombellation: a builder for multi-shell clusters

Rhombellanes are mathematical structures, proposed by us in 2017; they may appear both in periodic crystals or in finite structures. The simplest rhombellane is rbl.5 or K_2.3, the complete bipartite graph. In this paper, rhombellation operation is iteratively applied on three classes of structures: cube, tori and cubic pcu-network, respectively. The structural topological parameters are detailed.     

Stimulation of densification during the reduction of U3O8 to UO2 by atmosphere control

A reduction process in the head-end for pyroprocessing has been adopted to avoid oxidation attack on the molybdenum crucible during sintering. The reduction process is employed to reduce U₃O₈ pellets to UO₂ prior to sintering. This allows elimination of the oxygen source, which causes oxidation attack during sintering, thereby permitting the use of a metallic crucible. However, little densification occurs due to the low reduction temperature limited by the INCONEL crucible. Consequently, the amount of material scraps from the pellets increases, thus creating an additional processing burden due to its high radioactivity. To reduce the amount of scraps, densification should be enhanced. This study suggests a simple atmospheric control strategy and clarifies its effects. With the atmospheric control, a higher bulk density and better attrition resistance were obtained in comparison to without this strategy. This can be explained in terms of O/U ratio dependent diffusion kinetics during the reduction of U₃O₈ to UO₂.     

Controlled Secure Direct Communication Protocol via the Three-Qubit Partially Entangled Set of States

In this paper, we first re-examine the previous protocol of controlled quantum secure direct communication of Zhang et al.’s scheme, which was found insecure under two kinds of attacks, fake entangled particles attack and disentanglement attack. Then, by changing the party of the preparation of cluster states and using unitary operations, we present an improved protocol which can avoid these two kinds of attacks. Moreover, the protocol is proposed using the three-qubit partially entangled set of states. It is more efficient by only using three particles rather than four or even more to transmit one bit secret information. Given our using state is much easier to prepare for multiqubit states and our protocol needs less measurement resource, it makes this protocol more convenient from an applied point of view.     

Stream-Based Data Sampling Mechanism for Process Object

Process object is the instance of process. Vertexes and edges are in the graph of process object. There are different types of the object itself and the associations between object. For the large-scale data, there are many changes reflected. Recently, how to find appropriate real-time data for process object becomes a hot research topic. Data sampling is a kind of finding c hanges o f p rocess o bjects. There i s r equirements f or s ampling to be adaptive to underlying distribution of data stream. In this paper, we have proposed a adaptive data sampling mechanism to find a ppropriate d ata t o m odeling. F irst o f all, we use concept drift to make the partition of the life cycle of process object. Then, entity community detection is proposed to find changes. Finally, we propose stream-based real-time optimization of data sampling. Contributions of this paper are concept drift, community detection, and stream-based real-time computing. Experiments show the effectiveness and feasibility of our proposed adaptive data sampling mechanism for process object.     

Nano-to-macroporous TiO2 (anatase) by cold sintering process

Cold Sintering Process (CSP) was applied on commercial nanopowders to produce nanostructured TiO₂ anatase with nano-to-macro porosity. Nanoporous TiO₂ based materials were obtained by applying CSP at 150 °C and pressures up to 500 MPa on three TiO₂ nanopowders with different specific surface area (s.s.a. = 50, 90 and 370 m²/g), using water as transient aqueous environment. Although TiO₂ is insoluble in water, a density of 68% and s.s.a. = 117 m²/g were achieved from the powder with the highest specific surface area. A post annealing process at 500 °C increased the density up to 73% with a s.s.a. = 59 m²/g, and the crystallites dimensions passed from 110 Å in the powder to 130 Å in CSP material and 172 Å after post annealing. Finally, macroporosity was produced by using thermoplastic polymer beads as sacrificial templates within TiO₂ nanopowder during CSP, followed by a debonding at 500 °C.     

Sintering,microwave properties,and circulator applications of textured Sc-substituted M-type ferrite thick films

Sc³⁺ substituted M-type ferrites are effective microwave magnetic materials with a ferromagnetic resonance frequency in the range of 20 GHz–50 GHz. We report on the fabrication of oriented ferrite thick films as microwave components for application in the K_a-band at 30 GHz. Films of BaFe_11.5.Sc_0.5O₁₉ were prepared by screen-printing on alumina substrates, drying in an external magnetic field, and sintering at 900 °C. Low-temperature sintering is achieved through use of a mixed BBSZ/CuO sintering aid. A strong anisotropy of the sintered ferrite films is revealed by XRD analysis. Microwave properties of the films were determined in a coplanar waveguide setup. The ferromagnetic resonance frequency of the films is at 30 GHz and the textured films possess good nonreciprocal properties which scale with film thickness. The films were tested in a Y-junction circulator, and represent promising materials for self-biased microwave components fabricated in thick film technology.     

Analyzing Dynamic Change in Social Network Based on Distribution-Free Multivariate Process Control Method

Social organizations can be represented by social network because it can mathematically quantify and represent complex interrelated organizational behavior. Exploring the change in dynamic social network is essential for the situation awareness of the corresponding social organization. Social network usually evolves gradually and slightly, which is hard to be noticed. The statistical process control techniques in industry field have been used to distinguish the statistically significant change of social network. But the original method is narrowed due to some limitation on measures. This paper presents a generic framework to address the change detection problem in dynamic social network and introduces a distribution-free multivariate control charts to supervise the changing of social network. Three groups of network parameters are integrated together in order to achieve a comprehensive view of the dynamic tendency. The proposed approaches handle the non-Gaussian data based on categorizing and ranking. Experiments indicate that nonparametric multivariate procedure is promising to be applied to social network analysis.     

Tuning effect of silicon substitution on magnetic and high frequency electromagnetic properties of R2Fe17 and their composites

In this work, we report the tuning effect of the Si substitution on the magnetic and high frequency electromagnetic properties of R₂Fe₁₇ compounds and their paraffin composites. It is found that the introduction of Si can remarkably improve the magnetic and electromagnetic properties of the R₂Fe₁₇ compounds, making the R₂Fe_17–xSi_x-paraffin composites excellent microwave absorption materials (MAMs). By introducing the Si element, their saturation magnetizations decrease slightly, while much higher Curie temperatures are obtained. Furthermore, better impedance match is reached due to the decrease of the high-frequency permittivity ε′ by about 40%–50%, which finally enhances the performance of the microwave absorption. The peak frequency (f_RL) of the reflection loss (RL) curve moves toward high frequency domain and the qualified bandwidth (QB, RL ≤ ?10 dB) increases remarkably. The maximum QB of 3.3 GHz (12.0–15.3 GHz) is obtained for the Sm_1.5Y_0.5Fe₁₅Si₂-paraffin composite (d = 1.0 mm) and the maximum RL of ?53.6 dB is achieved for Nd₂Fe₁₅Si₂-paraffin composite (d = 2.2 mm), both surpassing most of the reported MAMs. Additionally, a distinguished dielectric microwave absorption peak is observed, which further increases the QB in these composites.