The internal structures, stability, and elastic properties of free-standing filament bundles of bent-core smectic liquid crystals are studied using polarizing microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and a customized cantilever containing, temperature controlled heat stage for force measurements. We find that in bundles, the individual filaments fuse together to form semiseparable filaments wi...

The thermal conductivity of ultraclean YBa2Cu3O7 was measured at very low temperature in magnetic fields up to 13 T. The temperature and field dependence of the electronic heat conductivity show that two widespread assumptions of transport theory applied to unconventional superconductors fail for clean cuprates: impurity scattering cannot be treated in the usual unitary limit (nor indeed in the...

We analyze oscillatory instabilities in a fluid layer of infinite horizontal extent, heated from above or cooled from below, taking into account the nonlinearity of the reference temperature profile during the transient state of heat conduction. The linear stability analysis shows that a nonlinear reference temperature profile can have a strong effect on the system, either stabilizing or destab...

Thermoacoustic engines use heat to produce acoustic power. The subject of this manuscript is modeling of thermoacoustic engines. A finite element simulation has been performed on a theoretical example of a two-dimensional standing wave thermoacoustic engine. The simulation solves the linearized Navier-Stokes equations in the frequency domain. The analysis is used to obtain the (thermo)acoustic ...

Materials and methods: Multiparous sows were randomly assigned to treatment at weaning. From weaning, twice-daily boar exposure facilitated estrus detection. Untreated control sows (n = 150; CONT) were artificially inseminated at least twice. Treated sows (n = 168; LUT) received 5 mg pLH intramuscularly concomitant with the first detection of standing heat. To coincide with the normal working d...

Sliding and rolling are two outstanding deformation modes in granular media. The first one induces frictional dissipation whereas the latter one involves deformation with negligible resistance. Using numerical simulations on two-dimensional shear cells, we investigate the effect of the grain rotation on the energy dissipation and the strength of granular materials under quasistatic shear deform...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether a provider-focused reminder improved vaccination rates as compared with no reminder. STUDY DESIGN This was a retrospective cohort study comparing vaccination rates among pregnant patients seen in October and November 2003 (no reminder) and October and November 2005 (provider-focused reminder). Charts of all patients presenting for prenatal care during those mont...

By Loch Long, a couple of hours’ cycle ride from Glasgow, the wind was biting, the sun was shining, and the nuclear weapons were just across the water. I went to my first protest at Faslane when I was a medical student in the late 1980s. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was a visible protest group then, rather than a symbol seen on T shirts sold to fashionable people with no allegiance to t...