Black titania, with greatly improved solar absorption, has demonstrated its effectiveness in photocatalysis and photoelectrochemical cells (PEC), inspiring us to explore the blackening of other wide band-gap oxide materials for enhanced performance. Herein, we report the fabrication of black, reduced Nb2O5 nanorods (r-Nb2O5), with active exposed (001) surfaces, and their enhanced photocatalytic...

UNLABELLED The neuronal mechanism underlying the representation of color surfaces in primary visual cortex (V1) is not well understood. We tested on color surfaces the previously proposed hypothesis that visual perception of uniform surfaces is mediated by an isomorphic, filled-in representation in V1. We used voltage-sensitive-dye imaging in fixating macaque monkeys to measure V1 population re...

We consider the theory of pure gravity in 2+1 dimensions, with negative cosmological constant. The theory contains simple matter in the form of point particles; the later are classically described as lines of conical singularities. We propose a formalism in which quantum amplitudes for process involving black holes and point particles are obtained as the Liouville field theory (LFT) correlation...

1550-7998=20 We define and extensively test a set of boundary conditions that can be applied at black-hole excision surfaces when the Hamiltonian and momentum constraints of general relativity are solved within the conformal thin-sandwich formalism. These boundary conditions have been designed to result in black holes that are in quasiequilibrium and are completely general in the sense that the...

We analyze the allowed energy levels of Hawking radiation from Schwarzschild surfaces in space-times with large extra dimensions. From the requirement that the wave functions associated with these particles be single-valued and obey radial boundary conditions, we derive an upper bound of their discrete energy spectrum as a function of the number of large extra dimensions and the mass of the bla...

The first law of black hole mechanics (in the form derived by Wald), is expressed in terms of integrals over surfaces, at the horizon and spatial infinity, of a stationary, axisymmetric black hole, in a diffeomorphism invariant Lagrangian theory of gravity. The original statement of the first law given by Bardeen, Carter and Hawking for an Einstein-perfect fluid system contained, in addition, v...

The rst law of black hole mechanics (in the form derived by Wald), is expressed in terms of integrals over surfaces, at the horizon and spatial in nity, of a stationary, axisymmetric black hole, in a di eomorphism invariant Lagrangian theory of gravity. The original statement of the rst law given by Bardeen, Carter and Hawking for an Einstein-perfect uid system contained, in addition, volume in...

Over the past decade, the civil engineering community has ever more realized the importance and perspective of the reliability-based design optimization (RBDO), the selection of a design that satisfies performance constraints with a specified probability. Since then several stochastic simulation algorithms for computing small failure probabilities encountered in reliability analysis of engineer...