During the Afghan War, the Mujahideen claimed that the Afghan communists were atheists who were subservient to Moscow and did not have the legitimacy to rule Afghanistan. The war became a contest for ...legitimacy in Afghanistan and internationally. The Soviets and the Afghan communists portrayed communist Afghanistan as Islamic and therefore legitimate in the international arena. The Soviets elaborated an information campaign emphasising Islam and strengthened Afghanistan's contacts with Muslim countries to show that the Afghan communists were Muslims too. They hoped international recognition would reduce Muslim countries' support to the Mujahideen and improve the Afghan communists' acceptance at home.
Recent developments in the area of resonant dielectric nanostructures have created attractive opportunities for concentrating and manipulating light at the nanoscale and the establishment of the new ...exciting field of all-dielectric nanophotonics. Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) with nanopatterned surfaces are especially promising for these tasks. Still, the fabrication of these structures requires sophisticated lithographic processes, drastically complicating application prospects. To bridge this gap and broaden the application scope of TMDC nanomaterials, we report here femtosecond laser-ablative fabrication of water-dispersed spherical TMDC (MoS
and WS
) nanoparticles (NPs) of variable size (5 to 250 nm). Such NPs demonstrate exciting optical and electronic properties inherited from TMDC crystals, due to preserved crystalline structure, which offers a unique combination of pronounced excitonic response and high refractive index value, making possible a strong concentration of electromagnetic field in the NPs. Furthermore, such NPs offer additional tunability due to hybridization between the Mie and excitonic resonances. Such properties bring to life a number of nontrivial effects, including enhanced photoabsorption and photothermal conversion. As an illustration, we demonstrate that the NPs exhibit a very strong photothermal response, much exceeding that of conventional dielectric nanoresonators based on Si. Being in a mobile colloidal state and exhibiting superior optical properties compared to other dielectric resonant structures, the synthesized TMDC NPs offer opportunities for the development of next-generation nanophotonic and nanotheranostic platforms, including photothermal therapy and multimodal bioimaging.
Soviet leaders sent troops into Afghanistan in December 1979 to support a friendly Marxist-Leninist regime in its conflict against a popular insurgency and help it build a new society. When the ...Soviet troops withdrew nine years later, they left behind a state that had none of the nominal characteristics of a Soviet-type Communist country. During the war, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan had discarded Marxism-Leninism and turned to Islam. This article examines how, with Moscow's support, the Afghan Communists Islamicized their discourse and policies as they tried to gain support from the population and co-opt insurgent fighters.
Communist Muslims Klimentov, Vassily A
Journal of cold war studies,
01/2022, Volume:
24, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Soviet leaders sent troops into Afghanistan in December 1979 to support a friendly Marxist-Leninist regime in its conflict against a popular insurgency and help it build a new society. When the ...Soviet troops withdrew nine years later, they left behind a state that had none of the nominal characteristics of a Soviet-type Communist country. During the war, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan had discarded Marxism-Leninism and turned to Islam. This article examines how, with Moscow's support, the Afghan Communists Islamicized their discourse and policies as they tried to gain support from the population and co-opt insurgent fighters.
Boron-based nano-formulations look very promising for biomedical applications, including photo- and boron neutron capture therapies, but the fabrication of non-toxic water-dispersible boron ...nanoparticles (NPs), which contain the highest boron atom concentration, is difficult using currently available chemical and plasma synthesis methods. Here, we demonstrate purely aqueous synthesis of clean boron NPs by methods of femtosecond laser ablation from a solid boron target in water, thus free of any toxic organic solvents, and characterize their properties. We show that despite highly oxidizing water ambience, the laser-ablative synthesis process follows an unusual scenario leading to the formation of boron NPs together with boric acid (H
BO
) as an oxidation by-product coating the nanoparticles, which acts to stabilize the elemental boron NPs dispersion. We then demonstrate the purification of boron NPs from residual boric acid in deionized water, followed by their coating with polyethylene glycol to improve colloidal stability and biocompatibility. It was found that the formed NPs have a spherical shape with averaged size of about 37 nm, and are composed of elemental boron in mostly amorphous phase with the presence of certain crystalline fraction. The synthesized NPs demonstrate low toxicity and exhibit strong absorption in the NIR window of relative tissue transparency, promising their use in photoacoustic imaging and phototherapy, in addition to their promise for neutron capture therapy. This combined potential ability of generating imaging and therapy functionalities makes laser-synthesized B NPs a very promising multifunctional agent for biomedical applications.
Using methods of pulsed laser ablation from a silicon target in helium (He)-nitrogen (N2) gas mixtures maintained at reduced pressures (0.5–5 Torr), we fabricated substrate-supported silicon (Si) ...nanocrystal-based films exhibiting a strong photoluminescence (PL) emission, which depended on the He/N2 ratio. We show that, in the case of ablation in pure He gas, Si nanocrystals exhibit PL bands centered in the “red - near infrared” (maximum at 760 nm) and “green” (centered at 550 nm) spectral regions, which can be attributed to quantum-confined excitonic states in small Si nanocrystals and to local electronic states in amorphous silicon suboxide (a-SiOx) coating, respectively, while the addition of N2 leads to the generation of an intense “green-yellow” PL band centered at 580 nm. The origin of the latter band is attributed to a radiative recombination in amorphous oxynitride (a-SiNxOy) coating of Si nanocrystals. PL transients of Si nanocrystals with SiOx and a-SiNxOy coatings demonstrate nonexponential decays in the micro- and submicrosecond time scales with rates depending on nitrogen content in the mixture. After milling by ultrasound and dispersing in water, Si nanocrystals can be used as efficient non-toxic markers for bioimaging, while the observed spectral tailoring effect makes possible an adjustment of the PL emission of such markers to a concrete bioimaging task.
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