We present an analysis of the thermodynamic properties of small transition-metal clusters and show how the commonly used indicators of phase transitions such as peaks in the specific heat or magnetic susceptibility can lead to deceptive interpretations of the underlying physics. The analysis of the distribution of zeros of the canonical partition function in the whole complex temperature plane ...

We give a brief review of modern theoretical understanding of the physics of QCD at finite temperature and density. We concentrate in particular on the properties of hadron gas at relatively small temperatures and discuss in details the physics of the phase transition. We argue that the phase transition in temperature is probably absent, but it can appear with a vengeance when finite density ef...

The electron spin resonance technique shows that the heat denaturation of oxyhemoglobin involves (a) oxidation to methemoglobin or related material (high spin ferric), (b) conversion to low spin ferric species in an irreversible step, and (c) further changes in these low spin species under drastic conditions. The last two occurrences are observed with methemoglobin. The electron spin resonance ...

A zero-temperature magnetic-to-nonmagnetic transition has been investigated in the heavy-fermion ferromagnet CeRu2Ge2 from electrical-resistance measurements at pressures up to 15 GPa and temperatures down to 60 mK. We found that the magnetic-to-nonmagnetic phase boundary exists at around Pc;10 GPa. The resistivity shows the quadratic temperature variation expected for the conventional Fermi li...

Simple pair potentials are constructed which give hexagonal-or square-lattice ground states in two dimensions, depending on the value of a single parameter controlling the width of the potential well. Molecular dynamics calculations for free clusters of a few hundred particles are used to examine a structural transition from the square lattice, at low temperatures, to the hexagonal lattice at h...

Sodium borate glasses with two different composit ions have been prepared using cooling rates in the range 7 • 10" C / s 2 • 10 °C/s. Structural characterization has been carried out by X-ray diffraction, and glass transition temperatures have been measured by Differential Scanning Calorimetry. The samples exhibit slightly different density values and glass transition temperatures. However, rad...

A microbial fermentation system was designed to convert glucose to 4-hydroxyphenyllactic acid (DHPA), which is an aromaticcontaining derivative of lactic acid. By methylation, DHPA was transformed to a diol monomer for synthesis of bio-based polyesters with benzene rings in their backbone. The polycondensation of the DHPA diol was performed with a series of aliphatic diacid chlorides to produce...

The effect on the nematic to smectic-A transition in octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB) due to dispersions of hydrogen-bonded silica (aerosil) particles is characterized with high-resolution x-ray scattering. The particles form weak gels in 8CB creating a quenched disorder that replaces the transition with the growth of short-range smectic correlations. The correlations include thermal critical fluctuati...

Using the dynamical mean-field approximation we investigate the formation of excitonic condensate in the two-band Hubbard model in the vicinity of the spin-state transition. With temperature and band filling as the control parameters we realize all symmetry allowed spin-triplet excitonic phases, some exhibiting a ferromagnetic polarization. While the transitions are first order at low temperatu...

The thermodynamic properties of fully-hydrated lipids provide important information about the stability of membranes and the energetic interactions of lipid bilayers with membrane proteins (Nagle and Scott, Physics Today, 2:39, 1978). The lamellar/inverse hexagonal (L –HII) phase transition of 1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphatidylethanolamine (DOPE) water mixtures is a first-order transition a...