Domain and stripe formation between hexagonal and square ordered fillings of colloidal particles on periodic pinning substrates

Using large scale numerical simulations, we examine the ordering of colloidal particles on square periodic two-dimensional muffin-tin substrates consisting of a flat surface with localized pinning sites. We show that when there are four particles per pinning site, the particles adopt a hexagonal ordering, while for five particles per pinning site, a square ordering appears. For fillings between four and five particles per pinning site, we identify a rich variety of distinct ordering regimes, including disordered grain boundaries, crystalline stripe structures, superlattice orderings, and disordered patchy arrangements. We characterize the different regimes using Voronoi analysis, energy dispersion, and ordering of the domains. We show that many of the boundary formation features we observe occur for a wide range of other fillings. Our results demonstrate that grain boundary tailoring can be achieved with muffin-tin periodic pinning substrates

Psychologie der Kreativität

Ein kleiner Streifzug durch die psychologische Kreativitätsforschung befasst sich mit den Möglichkeiten der Erfassung kreativer Prozesse, ihrer Manifestation, den Determinanten, der Frage nach der Notwendigkeit zu kreativem Denken und schließlich Erkenntnissen darüber, wie kreatives Denken gefördert werden kann

Sense of coherence and diabetes: A prospective occupational cohort study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Sense of coherence (SOC) is an individual characteristic related to a positive life orientation leading to effective coping. A weak SOC has been associated with indicators of general morbidity and mortality. However, the relationship between SOC and diabetes has not been studied in prospective design. The present study prospectively examined the relationship between a weak SOC and the incidence of diabetes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The relationship between a weak SOC and the incidence of diabetes was investigated among 5827 Finnish male employees aged 18–65 at baseline (1986). SOC was measured by questionnaire survey at baseline. Data on prescription diabetes drugs from 1987 to 2004 were obtained from the Drug Imbursement Register held by the Social Insurance Institution.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>During the follow-up, 313 cases of diabetes were recorded. A weak SOC was associated with a 46% higher risk of diabetes in participants who had been =<50 years of age on entry into the study. This association was independent of age, education, marital status, psychological distress, self-rated health, smoking status, binge drinking and physical activity. No similar association was observed in older employees.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results suggest that besides focusing on well-known risk factors for diabetes, strengthening SOC in employees of =<50 years of age can also play a role in attempts to tackle increasing rates of diabetes.</p

Interplay between the genetics of personality traits, severe psychiatric disorders and COVID-19 host genetics in the susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection

BACKGROUND: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, with its impact on our way of life, is affecting our experiences and mental health. Notably, individuals with mental disorders have been reported to have a higher risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. Personality traits could represent an important determinant of preventative health behaviour and, therefore, the risk of contracting the virus. AIMS: We examined overlapping genetic underpinnings between major psychiatric disorders, personality traits and susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection. METHOD: Linkage disequilibrium score regression was used to explore the genetic correlations of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) susceptibility with psychiatric disorders and personality traits based on data from the largest available respective genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In two cohorts (the PsyCourse (n = 1346) and the HeiDE (n = 3266) study), polygenic risk scores were used to analyse if a genetic association between, psychiatric disorders, personality traits and COVID-19 susceptibility exists in individual-level data. RESULTS: We observed no significant genetic correlations of COVID-19 susceptibility with psychiatric disorders. For personality traits, there was a significant genetic correlation for COVID-19 susceptibility with extraversion (P = 1.47 × 10-5; genetic correlation 0.284). Yet, this was not reflected in individual-level data from the PsyCourse and HeiDE studies. CONCLUSIONS: We identified no significant correlation between genetic risk factors for severe psychiatric disorders and genetic risk for COVID-19 susceptibility. Among the personality traits, extraversion showed evidence for a positive genetic association with COVID-19 susceptibility, in one but not in another setting. Overall, these findings highlight a complex contribution of genetic and non-genetic components in the interaction between COVID-19 susceptibility and personality traits or mental disorders

Surface effects in nanoscale structures investigated by a fully-nonlocal energy-based quasicontinuum method

Surface effects in nanoscale mechanical systems such as nanoporous solids or small-scale structures can have a significant impact on the effective material response which deviates from the material behavior of bulk solids. Understanding such phenomena requires modeling techniques that locally retain atomistic information while transitioning to the relevant macroscopic length scales. We recently introduced a fully-nonlocal energy based quasicontinuum (QC) method equipped with new summation rules. This technique accurately bridges across scales from atomistics to the continuum through a thermodynamically-consistent coarse-graining scheme. Beyond minimizing energy approximation errors and spurious force artifacts, the new method also qualifies to describe free surfaces, which is reported here. Surfaces present a major challenge to coarse-grained atomistics, which has oftentimes been circumvented by costly ad hoc extensions of the traditional QC method. We show that our new coarse-graining scheme successfully and automatically reduces spurious force artifacts near free surfaces. After discussing the computational model, we demonstrate its benefits in the presence of free surfaces by several nanomechanical examples including surface energy calculations, elastic size effects in nano-rods and in plates with nano-sized holes. Overall, we demonstrate the importance of surface effects as well as a new strategy to accurately capture those computationally via coarse-grained atomistics

The Quasicontinuum Method: Theory and Applications

The quasicontinuum (QC) method has become a popular technique to bridge the gap between atomistic and continuum length scales in crystalline solids. In contrast to many other concurrent scale-coupling methods, the QC method only relies upon constitutive information on the lowest scale (viz., on interatomic potentials) and thus avoids empirical constitutive laws at the larger scales. This is achieved by the application of a seamless coarse-graining scheme to the discrete atomistic ensemble and the careful selection of a small set of representative atoms. Since its inception almost two decades ago, many different variants and flavors of the QC method have been developed, not only to study the mechanics of solids but also to describe such physical phenomena as mass and heat transfer, or to efficiently describe fiber networks and truss structures. Here, we review the theoretical fundamentals and give a (non-exhaustive) overview of the state of the art in QC theory, computational methods, and applications. We particularly emphasize the fully nonlocal QC formulation which adaptively ties atomistic resolution to moving defects, and we illustrate simulation results based on this framework. Finally, we point out challenges and open questions associated with the QC methodology