Nanoweb Formation: 2D Self‐Assembly of Semiconductor Gallium Oxide Nanowires/Nanotubes

This paper reports a method to produce networks of crystalline gallium oxide comprised of one‐dimensional (1D) nanostructures. Because of the unique arrangement of wires, these crystalline networks are termed as ‘nanowebs’. Nanowebs are of great technological interest since they contain wire densities of the order of 10⁹ cm^–2. A possible mechanism for the fast self‐assembly of crystalline metal oxide nanowires involves multiple nucleation and coalescence via oxidation–reduction reactions at the molecular level. The preferential growth of nanowires parallel to the substrate enabled them to coalesce into regular polygonal networks. The individual segments of the polygonal network consist of both nanowires and nanotubules of β‐gallium oxide. Individual wire properties contribute to a nanoweb’s overall capacity and the implications for devices based on nanowebs are expected to be enormous.     

Distinctiveness and Correlation in Conceptual Structure: Behavioral and Computational Studies.

Patients with category-specific deficits have motivated a range of hypotheses about the structure of the conceptual system. One class of models claims that apparent category dissociations emerge from the internal structure of concepts rather than fractionation of the system into separate substores. This account claims that distinctive properties of concepts in the living domain are vulnerable because of their weak correlation with other features. Given the assumption that mutual activation among correlated properties produces faster activation in the normal system, the authors predicted a disadvantage for the distinctive features of living things for unimpaired adults. Results of a speeded feature verification study supported this prediction, as did a computational simulation in which networks mapped from orthography to semantics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pile Response Adjacent to Braced Excavation

The excavation of soil for the construction of basements or cut-and-cover tunnels results in ground movements. One particular concern is that the excavation-induced lateral soil movements may adversely affect any nearby pile foundation. The lateral loads imposed by the soil movements induce bending moments and deflections in the pile, which may lead to structural distress and failure. This paper presents the results of an actual full-scale instrumented study that was carried to examine the behavior of an existing pile due to nearby excavation activities resulting from the construction of a 16 m deep cut-and-cover tunnel. The pile was located 3 m behind a 0.8 m thick diaphragm wall. Excavation to the formation level that was 16 m below the ground surface resulted in a maximum lateral pile movement of 28 mm. A simplified numerical procedure based on the finite-element method was used to analyze the pile response. Generally, the theoretical predictions were in reasonable agreement with the measured results.     

Microstructural and textural characterization of a hot-rolled IF steel

The present paper reports the experimental results on the microstructural and textural characterization of a hot-rolled IF steel. The IF steel was hot-rolled in multiple passes in the austenitic field (1,070 °C) followed by air-cooling. SEM, TEM, and LOM were used to image the microstructure of the material. The global texture was determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. The mesotexture of selected regions was investigated by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). Results show the presence of a diffuse (nearly random) and weak texture in the hot-band that consists of recrystallized polygonal grains and subgrains. The fraction of boundaries with misorientations comprised in the interval 2° ≤ ψ < 15° was found to be lower than 5%. It can be concluded that these low angle boundaries and the presence of subgrains can be associated to the existence of a few areas softened by recovery during or after hot rolling in austenitic field.     

Methodologies for characterizing traffic in wide area networks: Analysis and benchmarking

Since computer networks play an important role in distributed computing environments, an application's performance depends heavily on the quality of service provided by the communication networks. To ensure a high performance, the characteristics of wide area networks, WANs, must be well understood. This paper presents methodologies to characterize WAN traffic based on real measurements from Bellcore's backbone network that connects remote sites using dedicated T1 links. This paper also suggests some workload models that can be used for wide area network sizing and performance evaluation studies. It is found that the inter-site traffic pattern depends on the time of the day and the day of the week. Furthermore, the traffic between two sites is found to be reasonably symmetric, except for those sites designated as back-up sites. The coefficient of variation is used as a measure for the traffic burstiness and it is found to be 1·5 degree during working hours. The methods presented here are easy to use and cost-effective.