Investigation of structural,optical, electrical,and magnetic properties of Fe-doped La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 manganites

In this work, the physical properties of nanocrystalline samples of La_0.7Sr_0.3Mn_1−xFe_xO₃ (0.0 ≤ x ≤ 0.20) perovskite manganites synthesized by the reverse micelle (RM) technique were explored in detail. The phase purity, crystal structure, and crystallite size of the samples were determined using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. All the samples had rhombohedral crystal structure and crystallite size increased with increase in Fe content in La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃. The scanning electron micrographs (SEMs) exhibited smooth surface morphology and nonuniform shape of the particles. The optical properties studied using UV-visible absorption spectroscopy revealed a decrease in the absorbance and optical band gap with an increase in Fe content in La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ compound. The temperature-dependent resistivity measurements revealed semiconducting nature of x = 0 and 0.1 samples up to the studied temperature range, while a metal-to-insulator transition was observed at higher Fe doping. Magnetic studies revealed weak ferromagnetism in all the samples and a reduction in the maximum magnetization with an increase in Fe content. A close correlation between electrical transport and magnetic properties was observed with the doping of Fe ion in La_0.7Sr_0.3MnO₃ at Mn site. These results advocate strong interactions associated with the double exchange mechanism among Fe³⁺ and Mn³⁺ ions.     

Ag/BiVO4复合纳米纤维光催化性能的研究

本文采用静电纺丝法制备了不同Ag负载含量的Ag/BiVO₄纳米纤维复合材料,并对其相结构,形貌,可见光催化性能进行了表征。结果表明,Ag的引入能够很大程度的提高复合材料的光催化效率,10%Ag负载的Ag/BiVO₄复合纳米纤维能够在可见光辐照20min内将罗丹明B完全降解。这种异质结够有利于光生电子对的分离,提高光生载流子寿命,是Ag/BiVO₄复合纳米纤维光催化性能显著提高的原因。     

Magnetron sputtered Dy_2O_3 with chromium and copper contents for antireflective thin films with enhanced absorption

Dy_2O_3 is a rare earth oxide having a number of advanced applications in various fields including protective or antireflective coatings, Main objective of this novel research work is to check the effect of Cr and Cu addition on different properties of Dy_2O_3 and achievement of antireflective thin films with enhanced abso rption. Thin films of these materials we re deposited using DC magnetron with reactive cosputtering. XRD studies reveals the crystalline nature of thin films having Dy_2O_3(222) reflection in all samples with Cr_2O_3(116) and CuO(111) reflections in Cr and Cu containing compositions. Field emission scanning electron microscopy demonstrates the homogeneous deposition of thin films with uniform shape, size and distribution of grains. Refractive index, extinction coefficient and absorption coefficient significantly increase while optical reflectance decreases with Cr and Cu mediation corroborating an improved antireflective mechanism. The imaginary part of dielectric constant is found to increase slightly with low tangent loss for Cr containing composition co nsidered favorable for energy storage applications.     

Effect of precipitation on the geological development of badlands in arid regions

The main objective of this paper was to study the effect of precipitation on the geological development of badlands in arid regions. Field observations and laboratory investigations were carried out to characterize the surface soils of the Avonlea badlands in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, which is currently experiencing a rapid development in infrastructure. Three distinct surface sediments were identified: an upper slope of cemented sandstone, a mid-slope on weathered mudrock and a relatively flat basal pediment. Each of these soils reacts differently to rainfall events. Precipitation results in grain size reduction which, together with the consistency limits, explains the water sensitivity of the soils; the fines increased by 16% in the cemented sandstone, 78% in the weathered mudrock and 33% in the basal pediment. Erosion susceptibility was highest in the basal pediment (2% clays) followed by cemented sandstone (cementation by 6% active clays) and then by weathered mudrock (cohesion due to the 40% clay).     

High input impedance current conveyor filters

Two new active RC canonic band pass filters are presented. The new configurations offer a very high input impedance and employ single grounded resistors for independent adjustments of ω₀, Q and gain.     

Vibrations of functionally graded cylindrical shells based on elastic foundations

In this paper, a study on the vibrations of functionally graded cylindrical shells based on the Winkler and Pasternak foundations is presented. The shell equations are amended by inducting the moduli of the Winkler and Pasternak foundations. The wave propagation method is employed to solve the shell dynamical equations. The method is based on the approximate eigenvalues of characteristic beam functions. The validity and accuracy of the present approach are verified by a number of comparisons.     

Imaging-based detection of AAR induced map-crack damage in concrete structure

Imaging-based inspection methods are increasingly being employed for crack detection in concrete structures, because they provide quantitative information compared to inspections based solely on conventional visual approaches. However, efficient image analysis methods are needed. This study proposes the application of the grey level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) texture analysis approach and an artificial neural network (ANN) classifier to obtain surface damage information, such as the total amount of superficial cracking, as well as the total length, and range of crack widths. These methods were applied to thermographic, visual colour and greyscale images of concrete blocks from CANMET that were exposed outdoors for ten years, as well as slabs from GRAI that were kept indoors, all specimens exhibiting various levels of alkali-aggregate reaction (AAR) damage. Results of the classifications show that the greyscale imagery performed fairly well, with an overall classification accuracy range of 72.3–76.5% for the CANMET blocks, and 68.7–75.3% for the GRAI slabs. Classifications using the colour imagery were slightly better than the greyscale imagery, with accuracies ranging from 71.4% to 75.2% for CANMET blocks and 70.9–72.0% for the GRAI slabs. The thermographic imagery, however, produced the highest overall classification accuracies, which range from 73.1% to 76.3% for the CANMET blocks and 74.2–76.9% for the GRAI slabs. The results show that all three types of imagery are relatively effective in characterizing and quantifying crack damage; however, the infrared thermography produced more accurate results compared to the visual colour, and greyscale images.     

Overdependence on degraded gist memory in Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) reduces associative effects on false recognition in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott task, either due to impaired memory for gist or impaired use of gist in memory decisions. Gist processes were manipulated by blocking or mixing studied words according to their associations and by varying the associative strength between studied and nonstudied words at test. Both associative blocking and associative strength had smaller effects on false recognition in AD patients than in control participants, consistent with gist memory impairments. However, unlike the case with control participants, blocking influenced true and false recognition equally in AD patients, demonstrating an overdependence on gist when making memory decisions. AD also impaired item-specific recollections, relative to control participants, as true recognition of studied words was reduced even when the two groups were equated on gist-based false recognition. We propose that the overdependence on degraded gist memory in AD is caused by even larger impairments in item-specific recollections. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Action Planning for Directed Model Checking of Petri Nets

Petri nets are fundamental to the analysis of distributed systems especially infinite-state systems. Finding a particular marking corresponding to a property violation in Petri nets can be reduced to exploring a state space induced by the set of reachable markings. Typical exploration(reachability analysis) approaches are undirected and do not take into account any knowledge about the structure of the Petri net. This paper proposes heuristic search for enhanced exploration to accelerate the search. For different needs in the system development process, we distinguish between different sorts of estimates.Treating the firing of a transition as an action applied to a set of predicates induced by the Petri net structure and markings, the reachability analysis can be reduced to finding a plan to an AI planning problem. Having such a reduction broadens the horizons for the application of AI heuristic search planning technology. In this paper we discuss the transformations schemes to encode Petri nets into PDDL. We show a concise encoding of general place-transition nets in Level 2 PDDL2.2, and a specification for bounded place-transition nets in ADL/STRIPS. Initial experiments with an existing planner are presented.