In industrial metal-forming processes, quantitative and physical models are required to control and optimize the microstructure of the finished products. A detailed understanding of the behavior of polycrystalline materials during deformation processes is essential to develop such models. A number of instruments and analytical tools are available for deformation studies within the microscopy an...

Stem cells receive numerous cues from their associated substrate that help to govern their behaviour. However, identification of influential substrate characteristics poses difficulties because of their complex nature. In this study, we developed an integrated experimental and systems level modelling approach to investigate and identify specific substrate features influencing differentiation of...

A novel, highly effective and environmentally friendly film-forming material, phytic acid (PA)/silane (denoted as PAS) hybrid with a three-dimensional (3D) network structure, was prepared through a condensation reaction of PA with methyltrihydroxysilane generated from the hydrolysis of methyltriethoxysilane (MTES). Two kinds of PAS-based pretreatment layers, namely NaBrO3-free and NaBrO3-doped ...

A study was carried out with the goal of obtaining high open circuit voltages (Voc) in a-Si:H n-i-p solar cells, taking into account the evolutionary nature of the microstructure of the p-layers during growth. It is found that cells with players in the protocrystalline Si:H growth regime give the highest values of Voc not those with microcrystalline Si:H p-layers. Evidence for this conclusion i...

Selected carbon-rich refinery residues ('binders') mixed with mineral particles can form composite materials ('bituminous concrete') with bulk mechanical properties comparable to those of cement concrete. The microstructural mechanism underlying the remarkable composite properties has been related to the appearance of a rigid percolating network consisting of asphaltenes and mineral particles [...

The paper shows that there is no finite set of forbidden minors which characterizes classes of independence models that are representable by Gaussian, discrete and binary distributions, respectively. In addition, a way to prove the nonexistence of a finite characterization for any other class of independence models is suggested. MSC 2000: 60A99, 68T30, 94A15

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In this paper, we obtain a forbidden-minor characterization of the class of binary gammoids M such that, for every pair of elements x, y of M, both the splitting matroid Mx,y and the element splitting matroid M ′ x,y are binary gammoids.

A connected edge-colored graphG is said to be rainbow-connected if any two distinct vertices of G are connected by a path whose edges have pairwise distinct colors, and the rainbow connection number rc(G) ofG is the minimum number of colors that can make G rainbow-connected. We consider families F of connected graphs for which there is a constant kF such that every connected F-free graph G with...

Categorical skew lattices are a variety of skew lattices on which the natural partial order is especially well behaved. While most skew lattices of interest are categorical, not all are. They are characterized by a countable family of forbidden subalgebras. We also consider the subclass of strictly categorical skew lattices.