Nanoindentation was used to measure hardness before and after room temperature He ion implantation on sputter-deposited V/Ag multilayers of different layer thickness as well as pure Ag and V. The ...radiation-induced hardening was found to decrease with decreasing individual layer thickness. No change in hardness after implantation was measured in multilayers with a layer thickness of less than 10nm, which is of the order of the average spacing of He bubbles. The pure V films exhibit significant hardening due to a dense distribution of 0.8nm diameter He bubbles, but in the nanocrystalline pure Ag films bubbles grow to a diameter of approximately 20nm and become ineffective in causing hardening. A model describing layer-thickness-dependent radiation hardening in multilayers was developed by extending the Friedel model to take into account the layer thickness and the He bubble spacing.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
A multifocus optical vortex metalens, with enhanced signal‐to‐noise ratio, is presented, which focuses three longitudinal vortices with distinct topological charges at different focal planes. The ...design largely extends the flexibility of tuning the number of vortices and their focal positions for circularly polarized light in a compact device, which provides the convenience for the nanomanipulation of optical vortices.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Metamaterials open up various exotic means to control electromagnetic waves and among them polarization manipulations with metamaterials have attracted intense attention. As of today, static ...responses of resonators in metamaterials lead to a narrow-band and single-function operation. Extension of the working frequency relies on multilayer metamaterials or different unit cells, which hinder the development of ultra-compact optical systems. In this work, we demonstrate a switchable ultrathin terahertz quarter-wave plate by hybridizing a phase change material, vanadium dioxide (VO2), with a metasurface. Before the phase transition, VO2 behaves as a semiconductor and the metasurface operates as a quarter-wave plate at 0.468 THz. After the transition to metal phase, the quarter-wave plate operates at 0.502 THz. At the corresponding operating frequencies, the metasurface converts a linearly polarized light into a circularly polarized light. This work reveals the feasibility to realize tunable/active and extremely low-profile polarization manipulation devices in the terahertz regime through the incorporation of such phase-change metasurfaces, enabling novel applications of ultrathin terahertz meta-devices.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
This Letter reports a measurement of the flux and energy spectrum of electron antineutrinos from six 2.9 GWth nuclear reactors with six detectors deployed in two near (effective baselines 512 and 561 ...m) and one far (1579 m) underground experimental halls in the Daya Bay experiment. Using 217 days of data, 296 721 and 41 589 inverse β decay (IBD) candidates were detected in the near and far halls, respectively. The measured IBD yield is (1.55±0.04) ×10(-18) cm(2) GW(-1) day(-1) or (5.92±0.14) ×10(-43) cm(2) fission(-1). This flux measurement is consistent with previous short-baseline reactor antineutrino experiments and is 0.946±0.022 (0.991±0.023) relative to the flux predicted with the Huber-Mueller (ILL-Vogel) fissile antineutrino model. The measured IBD positron energy spectrum deviates from both spectral predictions by more than 2σ over the full energy range with a local significance of up to ∼4σ between 4-6 MeV. A reactor antineutrino spectrum of IBD reactions is extracted from the measured positron energy spectrum for model-independent predictions.
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CMK, CTK, FMFMET, IJS, NUK, PNG, UM
Aim: To isolate and characterize lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and determine whether they could potentially be used as heavy metal (cadmium and lead) absorbing probiotics. Methods and Results: The study ...used 53 environmental (mud and sludge) samples to isolate cadmium‐ and lead‐resistant LAB, by following spared plate technique. A total of 255 cadmium‐ and lead‐resistant LAB were isolated from these samples. The survival of 26 of the LAB was found after passing through sequential probiotic characterizations. These 26 probiotic LAB exhibited remarkable variations in their metal‐resistant and metal‐removal abilities. Of 26, seven (Cd54‐2, Cd61‐7, Cd69‐12, Cd70‐13, Pb82‐8, Pb96‐19 and Cd109‐16) and four (Pb71‐1, Pb73‐2, Pb85‐9 and Pb96‐19) strains displayed relatively elevated cadmium‐ and lead‐removal efficiencies from water, respectively, compare with that of the remaining strains. Strains Cd70‐13 and Pb71‐1 showed the highest cadmium (25%) and lead (59%) removal capacity from MRS (De Man, Rogosa and Sharpe) culture medium, respectively, amongst the selected strains and showed a good adhesive ability on fish mucus. A phylogenetic analysis of their 16S rDNA sequences revealed that the strains Cd70‐13 and Pb71‐1 belong to Lactobacillus reuteri. Conclusion: Excellent probiotic, metal sorption and adhesive characteristics of newly identified Lact. reuteri strains Cd70‐13 and Pb71‐1 were isolated, which indicated their high potential abilities to survive in the intestinal milieu and to uptake the tested metals from the environment. Significance and Impact of the Study: To our knowledge, this is the first study that has aimed to isolate, characterize and identify metal‐resistant LAB strains that have potential to be a probiotic candidate for food and in vivo challenge studies in the intestinal milieu of fish for the uptake and control of heavy metal bioaccumulation.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The Daya Bay experiment has observed correlations between reactor core fuel evolution and changes in the reactor antineutrino flux and energy spectrum. Four antineutrino detectors in two experimental ...halls were used to identify 2.2 million inverse beta decays (IBDs) over 1230 days spanning multiple fuel cycles for each of six 2.9 GW_{th} reactor cores at the Daya Bay and Ling Ao nuclear power plants. Using detector data spanning effective ^{239}Pu fission fractions F_{239} from 0.25 to 0.35, Daya Bay measures an average IBD yield σover ¯_{f} of (5.90±0.13)×10^{-43} cm^{2}/fission and a fuel-dependent variation in the IBD yield, dσ_{f}/dF_{239}, of (-1.86±0.18)×10^{-43} cm^{2}/fission. This observation rejects the hypothesis of a constant antineutrino flux as a function of the ^{239}Pu fission fraction at 10 standard deviations. The variation in IBD yield is found to be energy dependent, rejecting the hypothesis of a constant antineutrino energy spectrum at 5.1 standard deviations. While measurements of the evolution in the IBD spectrum show general agreement with predictions from recent reactor models, the measured evolution in total IBD yield disagrees with recent predictions at 3.1σ. This discrepancy indicates that an overall deficit in the measured flux with respect to predictions does not result from equal fractional deficits from the primary fission isotopes ^{235}U, ^{239}Pu, ^{238}U, and ^{241}Pu. Based on measured IBD yield variations, yields of (6.17±0.17) and (4.27±0.26)×10^{-43} cm^{2}/fission have been determined for the two dominant fission parent isotopes ^{235}U and ^{239}Pu. A 7.8% discrepancy between the observed and predicted ^{235}U yields suggests that this isotope may be the primary contributor to the reactor antineutrino anomaly.
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CMK, CTK, FMFMET, IJS, NUK, PNG, UM
In recent years, it has been observed that there is an increasing rate of road accidents due to the low vigilance of drivers. Thus, the estimation of drivers' vigilance state plays a significant role ...in public transportation safety. We have adopted a feature fusion strategy that combines the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals collected from various sites of the human brain, including forehead, temporal, and posterior and forehead electrooculogram (forehead-EOG) signals, to address this factor. The level of vigilance is predicted through a new learning model known as double-layered neural network with subnetwork nodes (DNNSNs), which comprises several subnetwork nodes, and each node in turn is composed of many hidden nodes that have various capabilities of feature selection (dimension reduced), feature learning, etc. The proposed single modality that uses only forehead-EOG signal exhibits a mean root-mean-square error (RMSE) of 0.12 and a mean Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient (COR) of 0.78. On one hand, an EEG signal achieved a mean RMSE of 0.13 and a mean COR of 0.72. Whereas, on the other, the proposed multimodality achieved values of 0.09 and 0.85 for the mean RMSE and the mean COR, respectively. Experimental results show that the proposed DNNSN with multimodality fusion outperforms the model with single modality for vigilance estimation due to the complementary information between forehead-EOG and EEG. After a favorable learning rate was applied to the input layer, the mean RMSE/COR improved to 0.11/0.79, 0.12/0.74, and 0.08/0.86, respectively. Hence, this quantitative analysis proves that the proposed method provides better feasibility and efficiency learning capability and surmounts other state-of-the-art techniques.
A search for light sterile neutrino mixing was performed with the first 217 days of data from the Daya Bay Reactor Antineutrino Experiment. The experiment's unique configuration of multiple baselines ...from six 2.9 GW(th) nuclear reactors to six antineutrino detectors deployed in two near (effective baselines 512 m and 561 m) and one far (1579 m) underground experimental halls makes it possible to test for oscillations to a fourth (sterile) neutrino in the 10(-3) eV(2)<|Δm(41)(2) |< 0.3 eV(2) range. The relative spectral distortion due to the disappearance of electron antineutrinos was found to be consistent with that of the three-flavor oscillation model. The derived limits on sin(2) 2θ(14) cover the 10(-3) eV(2) ≲ |Δm(41)(2)| ≲ 0.1 eV(2) region, which was largely unexplored.
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CMK, CTK, FMFMET, IJS, NUK, PNG, UM
One of the most promising approaches to reach a high gain in inertial confinement fusion is the fast ignition scheme. In this scheme, a relativistic electron beam is generated; this passes through ...the imploded plasma and deposits parts of its energy in the core. However, the large angular spread of the relativistic electron beam and the poorly controlled compression of the target affect realization of the fast ignition technique. Here, we demonstrate that indirectly driven (that is, driven by X-rays generated inside a gold hohlraum) implosions with a ‘high-foot’ and a short-coast time of less than 200 ps allow us to tightly compress the shell. Furthermore, we show the ability to optimize the symmetry of the imploding shell by changing the hohlraum length, successfully tuning a suitable tube-shaped shell to compensate for the large angular spread of the relativistic electron beam and to enhance the electron-to-core coupling efficiency via resistive magnetic fields. Benefiting from those experimental techniques, a significant enhancement in neutron yield was achieved in our indirectly driven fast ignition experiments. These results pave the way towards high-coupling fast ignition experiments with indirectly driven targets similar to those at the National Ignition Facility.Experiments realizing the indirect-drive fast ignition scheme for inertial confinement fusion are reported. Enabled by a tightly compressed target, an increase of neutron yield is observed.
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FZAB, GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
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