Polymers are nowadays actively used in numerous applications owing their low cost and optimized structural properties. Besides, the miniaturization of the novel materials down to nano and even atomic scale needs the use of Electron Microscopy techniques both for imaging and structuring abilities. When used for surface modification, electrons and ions allow altering the surface properties toward...

Among the techniques of electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) represents a high-performance method of investigating structures and devices in the domain of nanometer dimensions. This paper is a synthesis of the possible applications of SEM in the investigation of the nanometer domain, nanomaterials and nanotechnologies. It includes the results of the authors’ research work as ...

Electron Microscopy (EM) is an important viewing technique for the study of microorganisms. More specifically, Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) are extremely useful tools for the ultrastructural examination of prokaryotic cells as well as for the study of the interaction between bacterial pathogens and host cells. Perhaps one of the most interesting ...

This paper describes our system entered for the *SEM 2013 shared task on Semantic Textual Similarity (STS). We focus on the core task of predicting the semantic textual similarity of sentence pairs. The current system utilizes machine learning techniques trained on semantic similarity ratings from the *SEM 2012 shared task; it achieved rank 20 out of 90 submissions from 35 different teams. Give...

Layering is found and exploited in a variety of soft material systems, ranging from complex macromolecular self-assemblies to block copolymer and small-molecule liquid crystals. Because the control of layer structure is required for applications and characterization, and because defects reveal key features of the symmetries of layered phases, a variety of techniques have been developed for the ...

In the behavioral and social sciences, structural equation models (SEMs) have become widely accepted as a modeling tool for the relation between latent and observed variables. SEMs can be seen as a unification of several multivariate analysis techniques. SEM Trees combine the strengths of SEMs and the decision tree paradigm by building tree structures that separate a data set recursively into s...

Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscopy (FIB-SEM) can automatically generate 3D images with superior z-axis resolution, yielding data that needs minimal image registration and related post-processing. Obstacles blocking wider adoption of FIB-SEM include slow imaging speed and lack of long-term system stability, which caps the maximum possible acquisition volume. Here, we present technique...

Structural equation modeling using partial least squares (PLS-SEM) has become a main-stream modeling approach in various disciplines. Nevertheless, prior literature still lacks a practical guidance on how to properly test for differences between parameter estimates. Whereas existing techniques such as parametric and non-parametric approaches in PLS multi-group analysis solely allow to assess di...

Monte Carlo experiments aimed at assessing the statistical power of structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques typically focus on true population path coefficients, ignoring true sample path coefficients. We demonstrate the limitations stemming from such practice in statistical power assessments. This is done in the context of SEM techniques employing the partial least squares (PLS) method, ...