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1. Ionically crosslinked cellulose nanocrystals by metal nitrates for the preparation of stable emulsions with tunable interface properties

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-48703-3  

   Batta-Mpouma, Joseph ; Kandhola, Gurshagan ; Kim, Jin-Woo ( December 2023 , Scientific Reports)

   Biologically extracted cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are rod-like and amphiphilic materials with surface-exposed (hydrophilic sites) and hidden (hydrophobic sites) hydroxyl groups. These physicochemical characteristics make CNCs suitable for use as emulsifying agents to stabilize emulsions. Stable oil-in-water emulsions, using sulfated (i.e., –$${{\text{SO}}}_{3}^{-}$$${\text{SO}}_3^{-}$) CNCs that were ionically crosslinked with alkaline-earth (i.e.,$${{\text{Mg}}}^{2+}$$${\text{Mg}}^{2+}$) or transition-d-block (i.e.,$${{\text{Zn}}}^{2+}$$${\text{Zn}}^{2+}$) metal cations, were developed without the use of any synthetic surfactants or prior functionalization of pure CNCs with hydrophobic molecules. Various emulsion surface properties such as interfacial tension, surface charge, surface chemistry, as well as rheology were characterized. Ionically crosslinked CNCs (iCNCs) adsorbed at the interface of an oil and water and fortified the emulsion droplets (5–30 µm) against coalescence by lowering the interfacial tension from 65 mN/m (i.e., pure CNC mixture with oil) to 25 mN/m (i.e., iCNC mixture with oil) and reducing zeta potential with surface charge values (–30 mV to –10 mV), ideal to maintain droplet layer assembly at the water–oil interface. This study provided an alternative approach to achieve particle-stabilized and surfactant-free emulsions by using divalent metal nitrates to develop “clean” emulsion-based technologies for applications in many industries from agriculture to food to pharmaceuticals.

    

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2. Measurement of inclusive and differential cross sections for single top quark production in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 13 TeV

   https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2023)046  

   Tumasyan, A. ; Adam, W. ; Andrejkovic, J. W. ; Bergauer, T. ; Chatterjee, S. ; Damanakis, K. ; Dragicevic, M. ; Escalante Del Valle, A. ; Hussain, P. S. ; Jeitler, M. ; et al ( July 2023 , Journal of High Energy Physics)

   Measurements of the inclusive and normalised differential cross sections are presented for the production of single top quarks in association with a W boson in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data used were recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC during 2016–2018, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb⁻¹. Events containing one electron and one muon in the final state are analysed. For the inclusive measurement, a multivariate discriminant, exploiting the kinematic properties of the events is used to separate the signal from the dominant$$ \textrm{t}\overline{\textrm{t}} $$$t\overline{t}$background. A cross section of$$ 79.2\pm 0.9{\left(\textrm{stat}\right)}_{-8.0}^{+7.7}\left(\textrm{syst}\right)\pm 1.2\left(\textrm{lumi}\right) $$$79.2\pm 0.9{\left(\text{stat}\right)}_{-8.0}^{+7.7}\left(\text{syst}\right)\pm 1.2\left(\text{lumi}\right)$pb is obtained, consistent with the predictions of the standard model. For the differential measurements, a fiducial region is defined according to the detector acceptance, and the requirement of exactly one jet coming from the fragmentation of a bottom quark. The resulting distributions are unfolded to particle level and agree with the predictions at next-to-leading order in perturbative quantum chromodynamics.

    

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3. Ultrahigh evaporative heat transfer measured locally in submicron water films

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-26182-2  

   Wang, Xiaoman ; Ghaffarizadeh, S. Arman ; He, Xiao ; McGaughey, Alan J. H. ; Malen, Jonathan A. ( December 2022 , Scientific Reports)

   Thin film evaporation is a widely-used thermal management solution for micro/nano-devices with high energy densities. Local measurements of the evaporation rate at a liquid-vapor interface, however, are limited. We present a continuous profile of the evaporation heat transfer coefficient ($$h_{\text {evap}}$$$h_{\text{evap}}$) in the submicron thin film region of a water meniscus obtained through local measurements interpreted by a machine learned surrogate of the physical system. Frequency domain thermoreflectance (FDTR), a non-contact laser-based method with micrometer lateral resolution, is used to induce and measure the meniscus evaporation. A neural network is then trained using finite element simulations to extract the$$h_{\text {evap}}$$$h_{\text{evap}}$profile from the FDTR data. For a substrate superheat of 20 K, the maximum$$h_{\text {evap}}$$$h_{\text{evap}}$is$$1.0_{-0.3}^{+0.5}$$$1.0_{-0.3}^{+0.5}$ MW/$$\text {m}^2$$${\text{m}}^2$-K at a film thickness of$$15_{-3}^{+29}$$${15}_{-3}^{+29}$ nm. This ultrahigh$$h_{\text {evap}}$$$h_{\text{evap}}$value is two orders of magnitude larger than the heat transfer coefficient for single-phase forced convection or evaporation from a bulk liquid. Under the assumption of constant wall temperature, our profiles of$$h_{\text {evap}}$$$h_{\text{evap}}$and meniscus thickness suggest that 62% of the heat transfer comes from the region lying 0.1–1 μm from the meniscus edge, whereas just 29% comes from the next 100 μm.

    

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4. 3D Mirror Symmetry for Instanton Moduli Spaces

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s00220-023-04831-5  

   Koroteev, Peter ; Zeitlin, Anton M. ( September 2023 , Communications in Mathematical Physics)

   We prove that the Hilbert scheme ofkpoints on$${\mathbb {C}}^2$$$C^2$($$\hbox {Hilb}^k[{\mathbb {C}}^2]$$${\text{Hilb}}^k\left[C^2\right]$) is self-dual under three-dimensional mirror symmetry using methods of geometry and integrability. Namely, we demonstrate that the corresponding quantum equivariant K-theory is invariant upon interchanging its Kähler and equivariant parameters as well as inverting the weight of the$${\mathbb {C}}^\times _\hbar $$$C_{ħ}^{\times }$-action. First, we find a two-parameter family$$X_{k,l}$$$X_{k,l}$of self-mirror quiver varieties of type A and study their quantum K-theory algebras. The desired quantum K-theory of$$\hbox {Hilb}^k[{\mathbb {C}}^2]$$${\text{Hilb}}^k\left[C^2\right]$is obtained via direct limit$$l\longrightarrow \infty $$$l⟶\infty$and by imposing certain periodic boundary conditions on the quiver data. Throughout the proof, we employ the quantum/classical (q-Langlands) correspondence between XXZ Bethe Ansatz equations and spaces of twisted$$\hbar $$$ħ$-opers. In the end, we propose the 3d mirror dual for the moduli spaces of torsion-free rank-Nsheaves on$${\mathbb {P}}^2$$$P^2$with the help of a different (three-parametric) family of type A quiver varieties with known mirror dual.

    

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5. Measurement of the Higgs boson inclusive and differential fiducial production cross sections in the diphoton decay channel with pp collisions at $$ \sqrt{s} $$ = 13 TeV

   https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP07(2023)091  

   Tumasyan, A. ; Adam, W. ; Andrejkovic, J. W. ; Bergauer, T. ; Chatterjee, S. ; Damanakis, K. ; Dragicevic, M. ; Escalante Del Valle, A. ; Hussain, P. S. ; Jeitler, M. ; et al ( July 2023 , Journal of High Energy Physics)

   The measurements of the inclusive and differential fiducial cross sections of the Higgs boson decaying to a pair of photons are presented. The analysis is performed using proton-proton collisions data recorded with the CMS detector at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb⁻¹. The inclusive fiducial cross section is measured to be$$ {\sigma}_{\textrm{fid}}={73.4}_{-5.3}^{+5.4}{\left(\textrm{stat}\right)}_{-2.2}^{+2.4}\left(\textrm{syst}\right) $$${\sigma }_{\mathrm{fid}}={73.4}_{-5.3}^{+5.4}{\left(\text{stat}\right)}_{-2.2}^{+2.4}\left(\text{syst}\right)$fb, in agreement with the standard model expectation of 75.4 ± 4.1 fb. The measurements are also performed in fiducial regions targeting different production modes and as function of several observables describing the diphoton system, the number of additional jets present in the event, and other kinematic observables. Two double differential measurements are performed. No significant deviations from the standard model expectations are observed.

    

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