A number of giant HII regions are associated with soft diffuse X-ray emission. Among these, the Carina nebula possesses the brightest soft diffuse emission. The required plasma temperature and thermal energy can be produced by collisions or termination of fast winds from main-sequence or embedded young O stars, but the extended emission is often observed from regions apart from massive stellar ...

Soft hydrogel particles show a rich structural and mechanical behaviour compared to hard particles, both in bulk and when confined in two dimensions at a fluid interface. Moreover, encapsulation into hydrogel shells makes it possible to transfer the tunability of soft steric interactions to hard nanoparticle cores, which bear interest for applications, e.g. in terms of optical, magnetic and rei...

Core-guided approaches to solving MAXSAT have proved to be effective on industrial problems. These approaches solve a MAXSAT formula by building a sequence of SAT formulas, where in each formula a greater weight of soft clauses can be relaxed. The soft clauses are relaxed via the addition of blocking variables, and the total weight of soft clauses that can be relaxed is limited by placing const...

In recent years, a number of researchers have advocated extending the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology. One of the core arguments made in favour of an extension comes from work on soft inheritance systems, including transgenerational epigenetic effects, cultural transmission and niche construction. In this study, we outline this claim and then take issue with it. We argue that the focus...

Anaerobic microbial hydrocarbon degradation is a major biogeochemical process at marine seeps. Here we studied the response of the microbial community to petroleum seepage simulated for 190 days in a sediment core from the Caspian Sea using a sediment-oil-flow-through (SOFT) system. Untreated (without simulated petroleum seepage) and SOFT sediment microbial communities shared 43% bacterial genu...

Roboticists have begun to design biologically inspired robots with soft or partially soft bodies, which have the potential to be more robust and adaptable, and safer for human interaction, as compared to traditional rigid robots. However, key challenges in the design and manufacture of soft robots include the complex fabrication processes and the interfacing of soft and rigid components. We emp...

We investigate the phase behavior of a single-component system in three dimensions with spherically-symmetric, pairwise-additive, soft-core interactions with an attractive well at a long distance, a repulsive soft-core shoulder at an intermediate distance, and a hard-core repulsion at a short distance, similar to potentials used to describe liquid systems such as colloids, protein solutions, or...

OBJECTIVES To investigate apical leakage of roots filled with 6 different gutta-percha techniques; Thermafil, JS Quick-Fill, Soft Core, Microseal, System B and lateral condensation using a new computerized filtration meter. MATERIALS AND METHODS 60 extracted single rooted teeth were used. Coronal part of each tooth was removed and the root canals were prepared with step-back technique. The ro...