Thermal and spectroscopic investigations of glasses in the system PbO-PbCl2-PbBr2

Glass formation has been examined in the system 15PbO.xPbCl(2).(85-x)PbBr2 (where 0 <= x <= 25)where the PbO concentration is kept constant while PbCl2 and PbBr2 concentrations are varied. The glasses have been examined using thermal and spectroscopic techniques. T-8, Delta C-p, refractive index, optical basicity have been found to remain unaffected by the composition which is a curious feature of these glasses. It is found that there is a wide infrared window available for use in the investigated glasses. The IR window extends from 1000 to 1500 cm(-1) and in glasses where PbCl2 is less than 20 mol%, the window extends up to 2260 cm(-1). X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) revealed that the 4f(5/2) and 4f(7/2) peaks due to f-level transitions have a constant difference in energies, but with energy and FWHM values that varying sensitively and systematically with composition. The observations are discussed and suitable explanations are provided.

Studies on Carbon Mediated Paste Screen Printed Sensors for Blood Glucose Sensing Application

Ready-to-use screen printed glucose sensors are fabricated using Prussian Blue (PB) and Cobalt Phthalocyanine (CoPC) mediated carbon inks as working electrodes. The reference and counter electrodes are screen printed using silver/silver chloride and graphitic carbon paste respectively. The screen printed reference electrodes (internal reference electrode (IRE)) are found to be stable for more than 60 minutes when examined with saturated calomel electrode. Optimal operating voltage for PB and CoPC screen printed sensors are determined by hydrodynamic voltammetric technique. Glucose oxidase is immobilized on the working electrodes by cross-linking method. PB mediated glucose sensor exhibits a sensitivity of 5.60 mA cm(-2)/mM for the range, 10 to 1000 mu M. Sensitivity of CoPC mediated glucose sensor is found to be 5.224 mu A cm(-2)/mM and amperometeric response is linear for the range, 100 to 1500 mu M. Interference studies on the fabricated glucose sensors are conducted with species like uric acid and ascorbic acid. PB mediated sensors showed a completely interference-free behavior. The sensing characteristics of PB mediated glucose sensors are also studied in diluted human serum samples and the results are compared with the values obtained through standard clinical method. The co-efficient of variation is found to be less than 5%. (C) 2015 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.

Novel Mechanical Behavior Of Zno Nanorods

A novel stress-strain relation with two stages of linear elastic deformation is observed in [0 0 0 1]-oriented ZnO nanorods under uniaxial tensile loading. This phenomenon results from a phase transformation from wurtzite (WZ, P6(3)mc space group) to a body-centered tetragonal structure with four-atom rings (denoted as BCT-4) belonging to the P4(2)/mnm space group. The analysis here focuses on the effects of nanorod size and temperature on the phase transformation and the associated mechanical behavior. It is found that as size is increased from 19.5 to 45.5 angstrom, the critical stress for nucleation of the transformation decreases by 25% from 21.90 to 16.50 GPa and the elastic moduli of the WZ- and BCT-4-structured nanorods decrease by 24% (from 299.49 to 227.51 GPa) and 38% (from 269.29 to 166.86 GPa), respectively. A significant temperature effect is also observed, with the critical stress for transformation initiation decreasing 87.8% from 17.89 to 2.19 GPa as temperature increases from 300 to 1500 K. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

La pregunta detrás de la obra

Resumen: La poesía es minuciosa: celebra cada pequeño don que constantemente se ofrece; lo rescata, lo menciona. La poesía es también magnánima: canta los secretos vínculos que, en cada cosa, teje a todas en una sola ofrenda donde todo se reúne y alude. La poesía es sabia: pregunta y conoce al ser en sus profundidades, allí desde donde surge y se sostiene cuanto se celebra y canta por medio de la palabra poética; tiene afinidad con él, connaturalidad. La poesía, por fin, es esperanzada y abierta. Ella sabe que tiene un límite, pero que no es una clausura sino un umbral: aguarda y anhela la Palabra, vedada a la pronunciación humana, que sólo puede decirse por sí misma, aquella en la que todo, incluso el ser, tiene su consistencia. La poesía hace silencio y oye, convoca, anhela el Don que desciende y se corporiza. Hasta aquí llega el gran poeta, el hermano mayor. Entre los argentinos, quizás sea Jorge Luis Borges el que mejor adaptó el lenguaje para alcanzar este lugar, el más alto, el que lo torna a uno más cercano al misterio y, a la vez, el mejor testigo de la distancia. De estas materias, que son una sola, está hecha su poesía. Desde lo más frágil y pequeño hasta lo más inmenso y definitivo, pronunciado, encarnado. Por eso aquello de Von Balthasar: La resurrección de la carne da la razón a los poetas.

Belleza de Cristo : hitos para una estética cristológica en la obra de Olegario González de Cardedal

Resumen: El autor presenta los hitos que se encuentran en la obra de Olegario González de Cardedal para configurar lo que llamamos una “estética cristológica” la cual, a partir de las bases fundamentales sentadas en el siglo XX por H. U. von Balthasar, consiste en una reconfiguración del lenguaje teológico con el que nos referimos al misterio de Cristo con una perspectiva estética. No se trata de amoldar la cristología a la estética filosófica (esto sería un esteticismo vacío), sino que la estética queda configurada por la cristología (estética cristológica). Desde esta perspectiva, González de Cardedal propone un nuevo camino, en forma programática, para decir, pensar y oír el siempre nuevo y siempre antiguo misterio de Cristo en el siglo XXI. Camino fascinante y atrayente como lo es el mismo Cristo por el fulgor de su Belleza.

Ikasleen hizkuntza erroreak eta hutsegiteak : zuzentzeko proposamena

[Es]El presente trabajo se basa en las consultas que los profesores y profesoras de distintas asignaturas nos hacen al profesorado de lengua. Muchas veces los profesores debemos corregir no sólo el contenido de los trabajos de nuestros alumnos, sino también la lengua. La discusión no es nueva: ¿somos todos los profesores también profesores de lengua? Es un desafío del que difícilmente podemos escapar, ya que la lengua además de ser una materia de estudio también es el vehículo en el que se imparten los contenidos de todas las asignaturas. Con el presente trabajo pretendemos ayudar a los profesores que no imparten lengua como asignatura a corregir los trabajos de sus alumnos. Esta propuesta consta de tres ejes de actuación marcados por un orden de prioridad: prevenir, autocorregir y ayudar.

Transparência do orçamento público brasileiro : exame dos documentos orçamentários da União e uma proposta de estrutura para o Orçamento-Cidadão

Sugere medidas para o aperfeiçoamento da transparência do sistema orçamentário federal brasileiro. A partir de pesquisa exploratória busca relacionar o instituto do orçamento público aos conceitos de planejamento, participação popular, controle social, cidadania, accountability e democracia - relações que fundamentam a defesa da transparência orçamentária. Examina se são emitidos dez documentos orçamentários e avalia seus conteúdos. São eles: Declaração Pré-Orçamentária, Proposta de Orçamento do Executivo, Orçamento, Relatórios Mensais, Relatório Semestral, Relatório Anual, Relatório do Auditor, Relatório Pré-Eleitoral, Relatório Plurianual e Orçamento-Cidadão.

Alejandra Pizarnik: "Si no me escribo soy una ausencia"

[ES] Este trabajo propone una lectura de los seis primeros cuadernos del diario que Alejandra Pizarnik escribió a lo largo de toda su vida, desde los 18 años y hasta que murió a la edad de 36. El análisis de estos cuadernos, escritos entre 1954 y 1958, nos permite recorrer el itinerario que Alejandra Pizarnik realiza por la cuestión genérica, la cuestión nacional y la cuestión sexual. Desde su experiencia en cuanto sujeto, la escritura registra esta primera fase en la construcción del yo que Pizarnik desea para su diario. Esta fase, que se puede denominar etapa-derribo, está dominada por el desafío a las ideas del discurso hegemónico. Una vez haya resuelto este escollo en la construcción del yo de su diario, la escritura de Pizarnik no volverá sobre estos temas. Sin embargo, la búsqueda el “verdadero” yo se registra como proceso en el que a un movimiento de construcción del yo, le sigue un movimiento de destrucción de lo que las palabras han conformado, en secuencias en las que la apelación a la mentira de lo escrito o la desconfi anza en la capacidad del lenguaje para expresarlo, son la pauta de dicha escritura.

Cost effectiveness of a combination of instruments for global warming: a quantitative approach for Spain

Climate change is an important environmental problem and one whose economic implications are many and varied. This paper starts with the presumption that mitigation of greenhouse gases is a necessary policy that has to be designed in a cost effective way. It is well known that market instruments are the best option for cost effectiveness. But the discussion regarding which of the various market instruments should be used, how they may interact and what combinations of policies should be implemented is still open and very lively. In this paper we propose a combination of instruments: the marketable emission permits already in place in Europe for major economic sectors and a CO(2) tax for economic sectors not included in the emissions permit scheme. The study uses an applied general equilibrium model for the Spanish economy to compute the results obtained with the new mix of instruments proposed. As the combination of the market for emission permits and the CO(2) tax admits different possibilities that depend on how the mitigation is distributed among the economic sectors, we concentrate on four possibilities: cost-effective, equalitarian, proportional to emissions, and proportional to output distributions. Other alternatives to the CO(2) tax are also analysed (tax on energy, on oil and on electricity). Our findings suggest that careful, well designed policies are needed as any deviation imposes significant additional costs that increase more than proportionally to the level of emissions reduction targeted by the EU.

Formation of X-waves at fundamental and harmonics by infrared femtosecond pulse filamentation in air

We experimentally observe the formation of X-waves at fundamental, third harmonic, and fifth harmonic wavelengths by infrared (central wavelength at similar to 1500 nm) femtosecond laser pulse filamentation in air. By fitting the angularly resolved spectra of the fundamental and harmonic waves using X-wave relations, we confirm that all the X-waves have nearly the same group velocity, indicating that they are locked in space and time during their propagation in filament.

La ansiedad en el aprendizaje de segundas lenguas

[SPA] El objetivo de este Trabajo de Fin de Grado es realizar una investigación sobre cómo afecta la ansiedad en el proceso de aprendizaje de segundas lenguas y posteriormente ofrecer técnicas o estrategias para combatir dicha ansiedad. CASTELLANO

Dating and characterizing late holocene earthquakes using paleomagnetics

In this thesis I apply paleomagnetic techniques to paleoseismological problems. I investigate the use of secular-variation magnetostratigraphy to date prehistoric earthquakes; I identify liquefaction remanent magnetization (LRM), and I quantify coseismic deformation within a fault zone by measuring the rotation of paleomagnetic vectors.

In Chapter 2 I construct a secular-variation reference curve for southern California. For this curve I measure three new well-constrained paleomagnetic directions: two from the Pallett Creek paleoseismological site at A.D. 1397-1480 and A.D. 1465-1495, and one from Panum Crater at A.D. 1325-1365. To these three directions I add the best nine data points from the Sternberg secular-variation curve, five data points from Champion, and one point from the A.D. 1480 eruption of Mt. St. Helens. I derive the error due to the non-dipole field that is added to these data by the geographical correction to southern California. Combining these yields a secular variation curve for southern California covering the period A.D. 670 to 1910, with the best coverage in the range A.D. 1064 to 1505.

In Chapter 3 I apply this curve to a problem in southern California. Two paleoseismological sites in the Salton trough of southern California have sediments deposited by prehistoric Lake Cahuilla. At the Salt Creek site I sampled sediments from three different lakes, and at the Indio site I sampled sediments from four different lakes. Based upon the coinciding paleomagnetic directions I correlate the oldest lake sampled at Salt Creek with the oldest lake sampled at Indio. Furthermore, the penultimate lake at Indio does not appear to be present at Salt Creek. Using the secular variation curve I can assign the lakes at Salt Creek to broad age ranges of A.D. 800 to 1100, A.D. 1100 to 1300, and A.D. 1300 to 1500. This example demonstrates the large uncertainties in the secular variation curve and the need to construct curves from a limited geographical area.

Chapter 4 demonstrates that seismically induced liquefaction can cause resetting of detrital remanent magnetization and acquisition of a liquefaction remanent magnetization (LRM). I sampled three different liquefaction features, a sandbody formed in the Elsinore fault zone, diapirs from sediments of Mono Lake, and a sandblow in these same sediments. In every case the liquefaction features showed stable magnetization despite substantial physical disruption. In addition, in the case of the sandblow and the sandbody, the intensity of the natural remanent magnetization increased by up to an order of magnitude.

In Chapter 5 I apply paleomagnetics to measuring the tectonic rotations in a 52 meter long transect across the San Andreas fault zone at the Pallett Creek paleoseismological site. This site has presented a significant problem because the brittle long-term average slip-rate across the fault is significantly less than the slip-rate from other nearby sites. I find sections adjacent to the fault with tectonic rotations of up to 30°. If interpreted as block rotations, the non-brittle offset was 14.0+2.8, -2.1 meters in the last three earthquakes and 8.5+1.0, -0.9 meters in the last two. Combined with the brittle offset in these events, the last three events all had about 6 meters of total fault offset, even though the intervals between them were markedly different.

In Appendix 1 I present a detailed description of my standard sampling and demagnetization procedure.

In Appendix 2 I present a detailed discussion of the study at Panum Crater that yielded the well-constrained paleomagnetic direction for use in developing secular variation curve in Chapter 2. In addition, from sampling two distinctly different clast types in a block-and-ash flow deposit from Panum Crater, I find that this flow had a complex emplacement and cooling history. Angular, glassy "lithic" blocks were emplaced at temperatures above 600° C. Some of these had cooled nearly completely, whereas others had cooled only to 450° C, when settling in the flow rotated the blocks slightly. The partially cooled blocks then finished cooling without further settling. Highly vesicular, breadcrusted pumiceous clasts had not yet cooled to 600° C at the time of these rotations, because they show a stable, well clustered, unidirectional magnetic vector.

Control of dynamical systems with temporal logic specifications

This thesis is motivated by safety-critical applications involving autonomous air, ground, and space vehicles carrying out complex tasks in uncertain and adversarial environments. We use temporal logic as a language to formally specify complex tasks and system properties. Temporal logic specifications generalize the classical notions of stability and reachability that are studied in the control and hybrid systems communities. Given a system model and a formal task specification, the goal is to automatically synthesize a control policy for the system that ensures that the system satisfies the specification. This thesis presents novel control policy synthesis algorithms for optimal and robust control of dynamical systems with temporal logic specifications. Furthermore, it introduces algorithms that are efficient and extend to high-dimensional dynamical systems.

The first contribution of this thesis is the generalization of a classical linear temporal logic (LTL) control synthesis approach to optimal and robust control. We show how we can extend automata-based synthesis techniques for discrete abstractions of dynamical systems to create optimal and robust controllers that are guaranteed to satisfy an LTL specification. Such optimal and robust controllers can be computed at little extra computational cost compared to computing a feasible controller.

The second contribution of this thesis addresses the scalability of control synthesis with LTL specifications. A major limitation of the standard automaton-based approach for control with LTL specifications is that the automaton might be doubly-exponential in the size of the LTL specification. We introduce a fragment of LTL for which one can compute feasible control policies in time polynomial in the size of the system and specification. Additionally, we show how to compute optimal control policies for a variety of cost functions, and identify interesting cases when this can be done in polynomial time. These techniques are particularly relevant for online control, as one can guarantee that a feasible solution can be found quickly, and then iteratively improve on the quality as time permits.

The final contribution of this thesis is a set of algorithms for computing feasible trajectories for high-dimensional, nonlinear systems with LTL specifications. These algorithms avoid a potentially computationally-expensive process of computing a discrete abstraction, and instead compute directly on the system's continuous state space. The first method uses an automaton representing the specification to directly encode a series of constrained-reachability subproblems, which can be solved in a modular fashion by using standard techniques. The second method encodes an LTL formula as mixed-integer linear programming constraints on the dynamical system. We demonstrate these approaches with numerical experiments on temporal logic motion planning problems with high-dimensional (10+ states) continuous systems.

Etxebizitza baten kalifikazio energetikoa eta hobekuntzen analisia

[EU]Txosten honen bitartez, etxebizitza baten egiaztatze teknikoa burutu da. Horretarako, beharrezkoa den etxearen informazioa lortu egin da eta CE3X programa erabiliz neurtu dira etxearen bero galerak. Hau egin eta gero, etxe honen bero galerak minimizatzeko zenbait hobekuntza garatu dira, europar batasunean eta estatu espainiarrean dagoen legedia aztertu ostean hobekuntzak gauzatzeko laguntzarik dagoen ikusteko. Hauen bitartez, kalifikazioa hobetu egin da Ftik Cra pasatuz. Azkenik, hobekuntza bakoitzaren txosten teknikoak eta aurrekontuak garatu dira.

I. Anisotropy and crystal structure of ferromagnetic thin films. II. Investigations into magnetic microstructure by Lorentz microscopy

The induced magnetic uniaxial anisotropy of Ni-Fe alloy films has been shown to be related to the crystal structure of the film. By use of electron diffraction, the crystal structure or vacuum-deposited films was determined over the composition range 5% to 85% Ni, with substrate temperature during deposition at various temperatures in the range 25° to 500° C. The phase diagram determined in this way has boundaries which are in fair agreement with the equilibrium boundaries for bulk material above 400°C. The (α+ ɤ) mixture phase disappears below 100°C.

The measurement of uniaxial anisotropy field for 25% Ni-Fe alloy films deposited at temperatures in the range -80°C to 375°C has been carried out. Comparison of the crystal structure phase diagram with the present data and those published by Wilts indicates that the anisotropy is strongly sensitive to crystal structure. Others have proposed pair ordering as an important source of anisotropy because of an apparent peak in the anisotropy energy at about 50% Ni composition. The present work shows no such peak, and leads to the conclusion that pair ordering cannot be a dominant contributor.

Width of the 180° domain wall in 76% Ni-Fe alloy films as a function of film thickness up to 1800 Å was measured using the defocused mode of Lorentz microscopy. For the thinner films, the measured wall widths are in good agreement with earlier data obtained by Fuchs. For films thicker than 800 Å, the wall width increases with film thickness to about 9000 Å at 1800 Å film thickness. Similar measurements for polycrystalline Co films with thickness from 200 to 1500 Å have been made. The wall width increases from 3000 Å at 400 Å film thickness to about 6000 Å at 1500 Å film thickness. The wall widths for Ni-Fe and Co films are much greater than predicted by present theories. The validity of the classical determination of wall width is discussed, and the comparison of the present data with theoretical results is given.

Finally, an experimental study of ripple by Lorentz microscopy in Ni-Fe alloy films has been carried out. The following should be noted: (1) the only practical way to determine experimentally a meaningful wavelength is to find a well-defined ripple periodicity by visual inspection of a photomicrograph. (2) The average wavelength is of the order of 1µ. This value is in reasonable agreement with the main wavelength predicted by the theories developed by others. The dependence of wavelength on substrate deposition temperature, alloy composition and the external magnetic field has been also studied and the results are compared with theoretical predictions. (3) The experimental fact that the ripple structure could not be observed in completely epitaxial films gives confirmation that the ripple results from the randomness of crystallite orientation. Furthermore, the experimental observation that the ripple disappeared in the range 71 and 75% Ni supports the theory that the ripple amplitude is directly dependent on the crystalline anisotropy. An attempt to experimentally determine the order of magnitude of the ripple angle was carried out. The measured angle was about 0.02 rad. The discrepancy between the experimental data and the theoretical prediction is serious. The accurate experimental determination of ripple angle is an unsolved problem.