ALBERT

Description: 〈p〉In recent years, interfacial solar vapor generation has shown great potential in realizing desalination and wastewater treatment with high energy conversion efficiency. However, high evaporation rate cannot be maintained because of the seemingly unavoidable fouling or salt accumulation on the solar absorbers. The degradation accelerates as the solute concentration increases. Here, we demonstrate a water lily–inspired hierarchical structure that enables efficient evaporation (~80% solar-to-vapor efficiency) out of high-salinity brine [10 weight % (wt %)] and wastewater containing heavy metal ions (30 wt %). More notably, neither decrease in evaporation rate nor fouling on absorbers was observed during the entire evaporation process until water and solute were completely separated. With the capabilities of stable and high-rate evaporation out of high-salinity brine and the effective separation of solute from water, it is expected that this technology can have direct implications in various fields such as wastewater treatment, sea-salt production, and metal recycling.〈/p〉

Description: Author(s): H. Luo, T. Liu, J. Ma, P. Wang, Y. Wang, Y. Leprince-Wang, and G. Jing A new study shows that a moving contact line could be more dangerous for a hydrophobic coating layer on a surface than lamellar flow. The tiny water drops generate a driving force that removes the coating molecules, collecting and depositing them on the substrate as the contact line recedes. [Phys. Rev. Fluids 1, 053901] Published Thu Sep 15, 2016

Description: 〈p〉A wide variety of single molecules can be identified by nanopore sensing. However, all reported nanopore sensing applications result from the same measurement configuration adapted from electrophysiology. Although urgently needed in commercial nanopore sequencing, parallel electrophysiology recording is limited in its cost and its throughput due to the introduced complexities from electronic integration. We present the first electrode-free nanopore sensing method defined as DiffusiOptoPhysiology (DOP), in which single-molecule events are monitored optically without any electrical connections. Single-molecule sensing of small molecules, macromolecules, and biomacromolecules was subsequently demonstrated. As a further extension, a fingertip-sized, multiplexed chip with single-molecule sensing capabilities has been introduced, which suggests a new concept of clinical diagnosis using disposable nanopore sensors. DOP, which is universally compatible with all types of channels and a variety of fluorescence imaging platforms, may benefit diverse areas such as nanopore sequencing, drug screening, and channel protein investigations.〈/p〉

Description: Context. Recent surveys of the Galactic plane in the dust continuum and CO emission lines reveal that large (≳50 pc) and massive (≳105 M⊙) filaments, know as giant molecular filaments (GMFs), may be linked to Galactic dynamics and trace the mid-plane of the gravitational potential in the Milky Way. Yet our physical understanding of GMFs is still poor. Aims. We investigate the dense gas properties of one GMF, with the ultimate goal of connecting these dense gas tracers with star formation processes in the GMF. Methods. We imaged one entire GMF located at l ~ 52–54° longitude, GMF54 (~68 pc long), in the empirical dense gas tracers using the HCN(1–0), HNC(1–0), and HCO+(1–0) lines, and their 13C isotopologue transitions, as well as the N2H+(1–0) line. We studied the dense gas distribution, the column density probability density functions (N-PDFs), and the line ratios within the GMF. Results. The dense gas molecular transitions follow the extended structure of the filament with area filling factors between 0.06 and 0.28 with respect to 13CO(1–0). We constructed the N-PDFs of H2 for each of the dense gas tracers based on their column densities and assumed uniform abundance. The N-PDFs of the dense gas tracers appear curved in log–log representation, and the HCO+ N-PDF has the flattest power-law slope index. Studying the N-PDFs for sub-regions of GMF54, we found an evolutionary trend in the N-PDFs that high-mass star-forming and photon-dominated regions have flatter power-law indices. The integrated intensity ratios of the molecular lines in GMF54 are comparable to those in nearby galaxies. In particular, the N2H+/13CO ratio, which traces the dense gas fraction, has similar values in GMF54 and all nearby galaxies except Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies. Conclusions. As the largest coherent cold gaseous structure in our Milky Way, GMFs, are outstanding candidates for connecting studies of star formation on Galactic and extragalactic scales. By analyzing a complete map of the dense gas in a GMF we have found that: (1) the dense gas N-PDFs appear flatter in more evolved regions and steeper in younger regions, and (2) its integrated dense gas intensity ratios are similar to those of nearby galaxies.

Description: The Complete Calibration of the Colour–Redshift Relation survey (C3R2) is a spectroscopic effort involving ESO and Keck facilities designed specifically to empirically calibrate the galaxy colour–redshift relation – P(z|C) to the Euclid depth (iAB = 24.5) and is intimately linked to the success of upcoming Stage IV dark energy missions based on weak lensing cosmology. The aim is to build a spectroscopic calibration sample that is as representative as possible of the galaxies of the Euclid weak lensing sample. In order to minimise the number of spectroscopic observations necessary to fill the gaps in current knowledge of the P(z|C), self-organising map (SOM) representations of the galaxy colour space have been constructed. Here we present the first results of an ESO@VLT Large Programme approved in the context of C3R2, which makes use of the two VLT optical and near-infrared multi-object spectrographs, FORS2 and KMOS. This data release paper focuses on high-quality spectroscopic redshifts of high-redshift galaxies observed with the KMOS spectrograph in the near-infrared H- and K-bands. A total of 424 highly-reliable redshifts are measured in the 1.3 ≤ z ≤ 2.5 range, with total success rates of 60.7% in the H-band and 32.8% in the K-band. The newly determined redshifts fill 55% of high (mainly regions with no spectroscopic measurements) and 35% of lower (regions with low-resolution/low-quality spectroscopic measurements) priority empty SOM grid cells. We measured Hα fluxes in a 1.″2 radius aperture from the spectra of the spectroscopically confirmed galaxies and converted them into star formation rates. In addition, we performed an SED fitting analysis on the same sample in order to derive stellar masses, E(B − V), total magnitudes, and SFRs. We combine the results obtained from the spectra with those derived via SED fitting, and we show that the spectroscopic failures come from either weakly star-forming galaxies (at z 〈  1.7, i.e. in the H-band) or low S/N spectra (in the K-band) of z 〉  2 galaxies.

Description: Author(s): L. Wang, Y. Cai, A. M. He, and S. N. Luo Premelting or virtual melting was proposed previously as an important deformation mechanism for high strain-rate loading. However, two questions remain outstanding: how premelting occurs exactly, and whether it plays a role in plastic deformation independent of, parasitic on, or synergetic with, dis… [Phys. Rev. B 93, 174106] Published Tue May 10, 2016

Description: Author(s): C. N. Kuo, C. W. Tseng, C. M. Wang, C. Y. Wang, Y. R. Chen, L. M. Wang, C. F. Lin, K. K. Wu, Y. K. Kuo, and C. S. Lue Superconducting Sr 3 Rh 4 Sn 13 has been of current interest due to indications of a characteristic phase transition associated with structural distortions in its normal state. To further shed light on the nature of the phase transition, we performed a detailed study of single crystalline Sr 3 Rh 4 Sn 13 by m... [Phys. Rev. B 91, 165141] Published Thu Apr 30, 2015

Description: Author(s): Zahra Yamani, W. J. L. Buyers, F. Wang, Y.-J. Kim, J.-H. Chung, S. Chang, P. M. Gehring, G. Gasparovic, C. Stock, C. L. Broholm, J. C. Baglo, Ruixing Liang, D. A. Bonn, and W. N. Hardy Neutron scattering from high-quality YBa 2 Cu 3 O 6.33 ( YBCO6.33 ) single crystals with a T c of 8.4 K shows no evidence of a coexistence of superconductivity with long-range antiferromagnetic order at this very low, near-critical doping of p ∼ 0.055 . However, we find short-range three-dimensional spin correl... [Phys. Rev. B 91, 134427] Published Wed Apr 29, 2015

Description: Author(s): T. N. Stanislavchuk, Yazhong Wang, Y. Janssen, G. L. Carr, S.-W. Cheong, and A. A. Sirenko The existence of electric dipole active magnetic excitations, or electromagnons, in rare-earth orthoferrites was theoretically predicted more than two decades ago but their experimental observation has not been confirmed until now. In this work, magnetic modes in DyFeO 3 single crystals were studied at low temperatures and in external magnetic fields ( H ) by means of synchrotron radiation-based far-infrared spectroscopy. The authors report observation of two electromagnons, which appear in the spectra at 20 cm − 1 and 50 cm − 1 only below the magnetic ordering temperature T N of Dy 3 + of 4.2 K. It is demonstrated that electromagnons provide a significant contribution to the static electric permittivity along the c axis ε c (0). Both the frequency of the electromagnons and ε c (0, H ) manifest a strong hysteresis upon cycling of the external magnetic field. [Phys. Rev. B 93, 094403] Published Fri Mar 04, 2016

Description: Author(s): W. Q. Wang, Y. Yin, T. P. Yu, H. Xu, D. B. Zou, and F. Q. Shao The development of transverse instability in the radiation-pressure-acceleration dominant laser-foil interaction is numerically examined by two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. When a plane laser impinges on a foil with modulated surface, the transverse instability is incited, and periodic … [Phys. Rev. E 92, 063111] Published Mon Dec 28, 2015