1,147 research outputs found

    High pressure behaviour of AIP04-5 in penetrating/ non penetrating pressure medium

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    Aluminophosphate are objects of a growing research interest due to their potential technologieal and industriaI applications [e.g 1,2]. Their large channels serve as ideaI host for organie compounds and small polymers. Among those, AIP0-5 is a synthetic zeolite characterized by an open-framework of (P,AI)O4 tetrahedra. The tetrahedra are connected to form six-and twelve-membered rings, in such a way that a large channel (0~7.3À), parallel to the [001] direction, occurs. Klap et al. [3] underlines that every crystal of AIP0-5 is built up by three different microdomains, in which the positions of the framework oxygen atoms are slightly different; the main effect of the structural disorder is the very large anisotropie displacement parameters of the framework oxygens. We performed two in situ single-crystal synchrotron X-ray diffraction experiments using both penetrating (methanol:ethanol:H20 mix, m:e:w) and non-penetrating (silicon oil) pressure media [4]. The structure refinements showed that: 1) for compression in m:e:w mix, H20 molecules are absorbed at low-P regime, forming a H20-network by H-bonding interaction; 2) the elastic parameters of the super-hydrated AIP04 5 are different if compared to the one compressed in silicon oil; 3) the structural deformation mechanisms of super-hydrated and regular AIP04 -5 are different; 4) evidence of a incommensurately modulated structure occur (according to [3]), and there is an evolution of the non-Bragg reflections with pressure. The author acknowledges the ltalian Ministry of Education, MIUR-Project: "Futuro in Ricerca 2012 -ImPACT-RBFR12CLQD". [lJ Tang Z.K. et al. Applied Physies Letters 1998; 73, 2287-2289. [2] Yang W.S. et al. Microporous and mesoporous materials 20i6; 219,87-92. [3J Klap G.J. et al. Mieroporous and mesoporous materials 2000; 38,403-412. [4J Gatta, G.D. Mieroporous and Mesoporous Material 2010; 128, 78-84

    F.C. Hawthorne, Landmark papers : structure topology

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    In this second volume of the Mineralogical Society’s ‘Landmark’ series, Prof. Frank Hawthorne has selected a number of key papers, some of which are true milestones of mineralogy and crystallography, showing the acceleration of research and the increase in knowledge in the field of crystal-chemistry. The papers follow in chronological sequence, allowing the reader to see how crystallography and, particularly, mineralogy have evolved during the last 80 years. He has chosen the papers on the basis of three related aspects: (a) the nature of chemical bonds, and (b) their relation to bond topology, leading to (c) the prediction of bond topologies and their hierarchical organization. His commentaries on the selected papers provided a coherent narrative thread running through the volume. In the first chapter ‘Bond topology and Minerals’, Hawthorne reviews the long history of the mineralogy and crystallography, reporting the evolution of the knowledge and the experimental findings in the last 2,000 years. The author introduces the mathematical concept of topology and how to use this tool for the description of the structural configuration in crystals. In addition, he discusses the motivation of mineralogists for understanding and developing principles of bond topology. In chapter 2, two milestone papers by Linus Pauling (both published in 1929) on the structure of complex ionic crystals are reported and enriched with comments. Chapter 3 is devoted to a further milestone paper for mineralogy written by W.L. Bragg (1930), on the structure classification of the silicate minerals, the isomorphous replacement in silicates and on the application of the Pauling’s rules to this class of minerals. In Chapter 4, we jump to the 1970s with the paper of P.B. Moore (1970) on the stereoisomerism among octahedral and tetrahedral chains. Moore based his study not on a specific mineral structure, but examined the different ways in which polyhedra could link via vertices to form chains. He defines the concept of ‘‘structural hierarchy’’ as a general scheme that ties together a certain number of arrangements. An extension of the structural analysis of Moore is found in chapter 6, which is devoted to his systematic study of edge-sharing clusters, deriving the possible arrangements based solely on topological and geometrical principles according to the notions of energy minima and stability (Moore 1974). Chapter 5 deals with the paper by Brown and Shannon (1973), on the empirical bond-valence/ bond-length curves for oxides. A further refinement of the Brown and Shannon approach, into a comprehensive theory that addresses many aspects of the chemical bonding, was developed by Brown (1981), and is presented in chapter 8. Bond-valence analysis of inorganic crystal structures is an essential check on the validity of any structure determination. In his commentary on chapter 8, Hawthorne outlines the critical points introduced by Brown in the bond-valence theory, with interesting application in mineralogy, and presents the bond-valence theory as a molecular orbital theory and as an ionic theory. Chapter 7 is devoted to the paper by L.S. Dent Glasser (1979) on non-existent silicates, emphasizing that the observed arrangements in silicates represent only a small fraction of those topologically possible. Chapter 9 deals with the paper of Hawthorne (1983) on the graphical enumeration of polyhedral clusters. The author developed a ‘‘structural hierarchy’’ hypothesis which has an energetic basis and relates to paragenetic sequences. An example is Bowen’s reaction series shown as a function of the polymerization characteristic of the structure involved. A related topic is covered in chapter 10, which discusses the energetic content of bond topology with reference to the paper by Burdett et al. (1984). The last paper of this collection constituting chapter 11 is devoted to the role of OH and H2O in oxide and oxysalt minerals, based on Hawthorne (1992). The author analysed the roleplayed by (OH) , (H2O)0, (H3O)+ and (H5O2)2+ in controlling bonding topology, topological dimensionality and the role of H2O as a bond-valence transformer, which bears on the, often highly selective, uptake of interstitial cations by environmentally significant minerals. Chapter 12 is the coda, focusing on the prediction of bond topology and of the stoichiometry of stable compounds in a given chemical system. I think that the re-publication of these landmark papers, accompanied by the commentaries of Prof. Hawthorne, will be useful not only for undergraduate or PhD students, but for all structural mineralogists. This collection provides valuable insights into the evolution of structural mineralogy and its wider application to the petrology. As several of the milestone papers collected in this book are published in German journals (Zeitschrift fu ̈r Kristallographie, Neues Jahrbuch fu ̈r Mineralogie Monatshefte), I did a little inquiry and I found that these journals are often not readily available in departmental libraries, and so this is another good reason to have this book in your own library. In conclusion, I warmly recommend this volume to all mineralogists and to Earth sciences libraries. G. DIEGO GATT

    Ultra-fast escape of a deformable jet-propelled body

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    In this work a cephalopod-like deformable body that fills an internal cavity with fluid and expels it to propel an escape manoeuvre, while undergoing a drastic external shape change through shrinking, is shown to employ viscous as well as mainly inviscid hydrodynamic mechanisms to power an impressively fast start. First, we show that recovery of added-mass energy enables a shrinking rocket in a dense inviscid flow to achieve greater escape speed than an identical rocket in a vacuum. Next, we extend the shrinking body results of Weymouth & Triantafyllou (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 702, 2012, pp. 470–487) to three-dimensional bodies and show that three hydrodynamic mechanisms must be combined to achieve rapid escape performance in a viscous fluid: added-mass energy recovery; flow separation elimination; and an optimized energy storage and recovery. In particular, we show that the mechanism of separation elimination achieved through rapid body shrinking, coordinated with the mechanism of recovering the initially imparted added-mass energy, is critical to achieving a high escape speed. Hence a flexible, collapsing body can be vastly superior to a rigid-shell jet-propelled body

    A Letter from Sir Charles G.D. Roberts (A Personal Memoir)

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    Skala recounts her first and subsequent meetings with Charles G.D. Roberts whom she met when he was in his late seventies, and she in her teens. Roberts was a man of paradox, an author of emotionally-distanced verse yet a man of strong sentiment. He was a chameleon, a person who was everything to everybody; he played the role of gentle poet, mentor, and editor; he was a husband, father, and friend. He wrote about unique characters, animal or human, and he was quite naturally an elitist, though his "elite" could have been chosen from all ranks of society, and, indeed, from all societies. Also discussed are some of the critical views on Roberts' work, praiseworthy and not, as well as Roberts' own critical assessment of Skala's early verse

    Search for admixture of scalar top quarks in the t anti-t lepton+jets final state at s**(1/2) = 1.96-TeV

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    A search for pair production of the lightest supersymmetric partner of the top quark, {tilde t}{sub 1}, is performed in the lepton+jets channel using 0.9 fb{sup -1} of data collected by the D0 experiment. Kinematic differences between {tilde t}{sub 1}{bar {tilde t}}{sub 1} and the dominant top quark pair production background are used to separate the two processes. First limits from Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider for the scalar top quark decaying to a chargino and a b quark ({tilde t}{sub 1} {yields} {tilde {chi}}{sub 1}{sup +} b) are obtained for scalar top quark masses of 130-190 GeV and chargino masses of 90-150 GeV

    Measurement of spin correlation between top and antitop quarks produced in p¯p collisions at √ s = 1.96 TeV

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    We present a measurement of the correlation between the spins of t and View the MathML source quarks produced in proton–antiproton collisions at the Tevatron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV. We apply a matrix element technique to dilepton and single-lepton+jets final states in data accumulated with the D0 detector that correspond to an integrated luminosity of 9.7 fb−1. The measured value of the correlation coefficient in the off-diagonal basis, View the MathML source, is in agreement with the standard model prediction, and represents evidence for a top–antitop quark spin correlation difference from zero at a level of 4.2 standard deviations
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