Thermoelastic Model for Impulsive Stimulated Scattering Monitoring the Evolution from Capillary to Rayleigh Type Wave Propagation on the Surface of Viscoelastic Materials Throughout the Glass Transition

In recent decades, the impulsive stimulated scattering (ISS) method, which is based on photothermal and photoacoustic phenomena, has been successfully used to simultaneously investigate the thermal and elastic properties in a four-wave mixing configuration, both in transmission in semitransparent materials and on reflecting surfaces of solids. In this report, an extension of the technique is proposed to study a laser-induced thermoelastic response at the free surface of glass-forming liquids. The employed all-optical configuration allows extraction of information about the acoustic shear modulus in the MHz frequency range, and hence is complementary to the classical ISS configuration in the transmission mode, which is suitable to study the relaxation of the longitudinal acoustic modulus, and to another earlier reported ISS configuration, which is exciting and probing laser-induced thermoelastic phenomena at a liquid?Csolid interface. A theoretical model is presented and numerically illustrated for the glass transition of glycerol, and experimentally validated for water at room temperature.     

Analysis of native biological surfaces using a 100 kV massive gold cluster source

In the present work, the advantages of a new, 100 kV platform equipped with a massive gold cluster source for the analysis of native biological surfaces are shown. Inspection of the molecular ion emission as a function of projectile size demonstrates a secondary ion yield increase of ~100× for 520 keV Au(400)(4+) as compared to 130 keV Au(3)(1+) and 43 keV C(60). In particular, yields of tens of percent of molecular ions per projectile impact for the most abundant components can be observed with the 520 keV Au(400)(4+) probe. A comparison between 520 keV Au(400)(4+) time-of-flight-secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) and matrix assisted laser desorption ionization-mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) data showed a similar pattern and similar relative intensities of lipid components across a rat brain sagittal section. The abundant secondary ion yield of analyte-specific ions makes 520 keV Au(400)(4+) projectiles an attractive probe for submicrometer molecular mapping of native surfaces.     

Quantitative label-free characterization of avidin-biotin assemblies on silanized glass

In this study, a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometer TOF-SIMS, operating in the event-by-event bombardment/detection mode was used to characterize avidin-biotin assemblies on silane-modified glass substrates. SIMS was used to analyze several variants of the biointerface, including avidin physically adsorbed on a monofunctional acryl silane surface and covalently attached on monofunctional (amine terminated) and bifunctional (amine and acryl terminated) silanes. The goal of these studies was to determine density of avidin and biotin layers chemically or physically adsorbed on silanized glass substrate. An individual impact of a C(60) projectile used in this study creates a hemispherical crater (～10 nm in diameter) and emits large numbers of secondary ions from the same nanovolume. Thus, a single impact enables one to unfold distinct secondary ions that span the thickness of the assembled film. This method was used to monitor the presence of glass, silane, and protein ions and to estimate the thickness and density of the avidin layer. In addition, we employed the double coincidence mass spectrometry approach to identify ions coemitted from a specific stratum of the biointerface. This approach was used to determine density of biotin and avidin immobilization while eliminating interferences from isobaric ions that originated from other constituents on the surface. Overall, novel TOF-SIMS quantitative approaches employed here were useful for examining complex biointerfaces and determining both lateral and in depth composition of the film.     

Temperature coefficient of the high-frequency guided acoustic mode in a photonic crystal fiber

High-frequency guided acoustic Brillouin modes have recently been observed in small-core silica photonic crystal fibers. In this paper, we investigate the temperature dependence of the optical sideband frequency generated by one of these guided acoustic waves. The experimental results show a temperature coefficient of 100 kHz/°C at an acoustic resonance frequency of 1.15 GHz and are in very good agreement with the theoretical predictions. This coefficient demonstrates a temperature sensitivity 10 times larger than that previously reported in conventional single-mode fibers, which is promising in view of potential applications to optical fiber sensors.     

Study on How to Adapt Raw Clay Housing to Climate Change： Locust Bean Tree （Parkia Biglobosa） Used as Protecting Material

The use of raw clay in housing construction dates back from ancient times and is still living on. Traditional habitat comprising various buildings all over different places of our planet, give evidence. Among any other pathologies affecting naked earthen walls, the rain water wash remains a major concern and deserves careful consideration. Which justifies the interest of this research focused on the protection means of such types of walls. This article relates the experiment conducted on low walls made out of raw clay mixed with composite protecting products （traditional and modern ones as well）, being tested to intensive water floods. The result of the tests assessed through efficiency of the protecting materials, shows that the locust bean tree （local tree） fruit husk extract added to raw clay mortar and carefully blended seems to provide better ability to protect walls against water assault. Moreover, consistency check and plasticity reveal better performance in clay material properties.     

Sign Language Recognition by Combining Statistical DTW and Independent Classification

To recognize speech, handwriting or sign language, many hybrid approaches have been proposed that combine Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) or Hidden Markov Models (HMM) with discriminative classifiers. However, all methods rely directly on the likelihood models of DTW/HMM. We hypothesize that time warping and classification should be separated because of conflicting likelihood modelling demands. To overcome these restrictions, we propose to use Statistical DTW (SDTW) only for time warping, while classifying the warped features with a different method. Two novel statistical classifiers are proposed (CDFD and Q-DFFM), both using a selection of discriminative features (DF), and are shown to outperform HMM and SDTW. However, we have found that combining likelihoods of multiple models in a second classification stage degrades performance of the proposed classifiers, while improving performance with HMM and SDTW. A proof-of-concept experiment, combining DFFM mappings of multiple SDTW models with SDTW likelihoods, shows that also for model-combining, hybrid classification can provide significant improvement over SDTW. Although recognition is mainly based on 3D hand motion features, these results can be expected to generalize to recognition with more detailed measurements such as hand/body pose and facial expression.     

Fractographic observations on delamination growth and the subsequent migration through the laminate

This paper describes fractographic observations from the detailed examination of delamination fracture surfaces and offers an interpretation of the key growth mechanisms. Firstly, the relationship between toughness, delamination failure criteria and fracture morphology is presented and the influence of cusp formation and deformation on toughness is discussed. Observations regarding delaminations migrating through the lamina at multidirectional ply interfaces are then discussed. It is demonstrated how this migration process can be avoided in fracture toughness coupons and consequently the toughness of multidirectional ply interfaces can be characterised. The influence of migration on delamination growth from embedded defects in laminates under compression is presented, and these results are extended to demonstrate how migration influences damage growth in structures. The paper concludes by making recommendations for realistic modelling of migration, and suggests how it can be exploited in damage tolerant structural design.     

Synthesis of diamond from a chlorinated organic substance under hydrothermal conditions

Hydrothermal growth of diamond particles and films was achieved during interaction of a liquid organic precursor (C₂H₃Cl₃) and 10 M NaOH in the presence of diamond or cubic BN seeds at the temperature 300 °C and 1 GPa pressure. Synthesized diamond was thoroughly characterized by TG-DTA, SEM, EDX, TEM, Raman spectroscopy and had (220) preferable orientation according to XRD pattern in the case of the film.