Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy of Suspended Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes

We have performed low-temperature STM measurements on single-wall carbon nanotubes that are freely suspended over a trench. The nanotubes were grown by CVD on a Pt substrate with predefined trenches etched into it. Atomic resolution was obtained on the freestanding portions of the nanotubes. Spatially resolved spectroscopy on the suspended portion of both metallic and semiconducting nanotubes was also achieved, showing a Coulomb-staircase behavior superimposed on the local density of states. The spacing of the Coulomb blockade peaks changed with tip position reflecting a changing tip-tube capacitance

Management and Organization in the work of Michel Houellebecq

Research in management and organization may only gain by being inspired from arts, culture and humanities in order to rethink practices but also to nourish its own perspectives. Life in organizations is artificially separate from ordinary life: all of mundane objects are thus conducive to astonishment, inspiration, and even problematization. The unplugged subsection “voices” gives the opportunity to academics and non-academics to deliver an interpretation about an object from the cultural or artistic world. Interpreted objects are or not directly related to organizational life, resonate or not with the moment, but share some intriguing features. These interpretations suggest a patchwork of variations on the same object

An ICF-based education programme in amputation rehabilitation for medical residents in the Netherlands

Background and Aim: Education programmes of the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) are directed primarily at prosthetists and orthotists. In a multidisciplinary setting, greater attention should be given to other professionals working in the field of amputation, prosthetics and orthotics. This includes, among others, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and residents and physicians from orthopaedics, vascular surgery and physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R). The aim of this paper is to describe the education programme in amputation and prosthetics for residents in PM&R in the Netherlands. The programme is based on concepts of the International Classification on Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Technique: This narrative paper presents the amputation and prosthetics education programme for residents in PM&R in the Netherlands. The programme is based on two models: the ICF and the Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists (CanMEDS). Discussion: ICF core sets for amputation and prosthetics need further development. Subsequently, the application of these core sets can help stimulate the education of residents in PM&R, and other multidisciplinary team members who work in amputation rehabilitatio

Dynamical friction force exerted on spherical bodies

We present a rigorous calculation of the dynamical friction force exerted on a spherical massive perturber moving through an infinite homogenous system of field stars. By calculating the shape and mass of the polarization cloud induced by the perturber in the background system, which decelerates the motion of the perturber, we recover Chandrasekhar's drag force law with a modified Coulomb logarithm. As concrete examples we calculate the drag force exerted on a Plummer sphere or a sphere with the density distribution of a Hernquist profile. It is shown that the shape of the perturber affects only the exact form of the Coulomb logarithm. The latter converges on small scales, because encounters of the test and field stars with impact parameters less than the size of the massive perturber become inefficient. We confirm this way earlier results based on the impulse approximation of small angle scatterings.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted in MNRA

Quantum and thermal spin relaxation in diluted spin ice: Dy(2-x)MxTi2O7 (M = Lu, Y)

We have studied the low temperature a.c. magnetic susceptibility of the diluted spin ice compound Dy(2-x)MxTi2O7, where the magnetic Dy ions on the frustrated pyrochlore lattice have been replaced with non-magnetic ions, M = Y or Lu. We examine a broad range of dilutions, 0 <= x <= 1.98, and we find that the T ~ 16 K freezing is suppressed for low levels of dilution but re-emerges for x > 0.4 and persists to x = 1.98. This behavior can be understood as a non-monotonic dependence of the quantum spin relaxation time with dilution. The results suggest that the observed spin freezing is fundamentally a single spin process which is affected by the local environment, rather than the development of spin-spin correlations as earlier data suggested.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figure

Landauer-type transport theory for interacting quantum wires: Application to carbon nanotube Y junctions

We propose a Landauer-like theory for nonlinear transport in networks of one-dimensional interacting quantum wires (Luttinger liquids). A concrete example of current experimental focus is given by carbon nanotube Y junctions. Our theory has three basic ingredients that allow to explicitly solve this transport problem: (i) radiative boundary conditions to describe the coupling to external leads, (ii) the Kirchhoff node rule describing charge conservation, and (iii) density matching conditions at every node.Comment: final version, to be published in PR

Online rules for container stacking

Container stacking rules are an important factor in container terminal efficiency. In this paper, we investigate two concepts to increase efficiency and compare them to several benchmark algorithms, using a discrete-event simulation tool. The first concept is to use knowledge about container departure times, in order to limit the number of reshuffles. We stack containers leaving shortly before each other on top of each other. The second concept is the trade-off between stacking further away in the terminal versus stacking close to the exit points and accepting more reshuffles. It is concluded that even the use of imperfect or imprecise departure time information leads to significant improvements in efficiency. Minimizing the difference in departure times proved to be important. It was also found that the trade-off between stacking further away in the terminal versus stacking close by the exit points and accepting more reshuffles leads to improvements over the benchmark

de-Broglie Wave-Front Engineering

We propose a simple method for the deterministic generation of an arbitrary continuous quantum state of the center-of-mass of an atom. The method's spatial resolution gradually increases with the interaction time with no apparent fundamental limitations. Such de-Broglie Wave-Front Engineering of the atomic density can find applications in Atom Lithography, and we discuss possible implementations of our scheme in atomic beam experiments.Comment: The figures' quality was improved, the text remains intact. 5 pages, 3 figures; submitted to PR

Competition between magnetic field dependent band structure and coherent backscattering in multiwall carbon nanotubes

Magnetotransport measurements in large diameter multiwall carbon nanotubes (20-40 nm) demonstrate the competition of a magnetic-field dependent bandstructure and Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak oscillations. By means of an efficient capacitive coupling to a backgate electrode, the magnetoconductance oscillations are explored as a function of Fermi level shift. Changing the magnetic field orientation with respect to the tube axis and by ensemble averaging, allows to identify the contributions of different Aharonov-Bohm phases. The results are in qualitative agreement with numerical calculations of the band structure and the conductance.Comment: 4 figures, 5 page