Most of shape memory alloys are functional intermetallics. They are now practically being used for couplings, actuators, medical guide wires etc., and are hopeful candidates for smart materials, which already exist. In the present paper, recent developments within nearly 10 years on shape memory alloys and martensitic: transformations, on which shape memory e€ect and superelasticity are based, ...

We have used the publicly available data from the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey to test the hypothesis that there is a periodicity in the redshift distribution of quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) found projected close to foreground galaxies. These data provide by far the largest and most homogeneous sample for such a study, yielding 1647 QSO–galaxy pairs. There is no ev...

The addition of chemically etched distance marks to standard oesophageal guide wires is described so that guide wire retraction during progressive oesophageal dilatation and impending impaction of the dilator onto the flexible wire tip can be quickly and easily recognised.

Over the past several years, several extensions to Bayesian knowledge tracing have been proposed in order to improve predictions of students’ in-tutor and post-test performance. One such extension is Contextual Guess and Slip, which incorporates machine-learned models of students’ guess and slip behaviors in order to enhance the overall model’s predictive performance [Baker et al. 2008a]. Simil...

Gravitational Lensing is a unique tool to constrain the mass distribution of collapsed structures, this is particularly true for galaxies, either on a case by case basis using multiple images of background sources (such as quasars), or statistically using the so called galaxy-galaxy lensing technique. First, I will present the lensing theory, and then discuss the various methods applied to curr...

This is the text of a Lagrange Lecture given in the mathematics department of the University of Torino. It aims at describing quite briefly the main milestones in the proof of the Geometrization conjecture due to G. Perelman using R. Hamilton’s Ricci Flow. It is by no means exhaustive and intends to be a rough guide to the reading of the detailed literature on the subject. Extended notes have b...