Early results from the Alcator C-Mod tokamak indicate that ohmic energy confinement does not obey the Neo-Alcator scaling. Instead 'Ohmic L-mode' confinement, close to ITER89-P, is obtained, which substantially exceeds Neo-Alcator under some circumstances. ICRF-heated plasmas follow the same scaling. H-modes are observed both in ohmic and ICRF heated plasmas, with confinement enhancements of ab...

The liquid crystalline model biomembrane system consisting of a stack of interacting membranes is studied in the realistic soft confinement regime by the newly developed Fourier Monte Carlo simulation technique. In this regime experiment and simulations show that the functional form of the fluctuation pressure is more nearly exponential rather than the power law valid for the hard confinement r...

Generally, phase transitions are seriously affected by spatial confinement. This effect is important for its own sake, but also for applications to nanotechnology. Here we report the first systematic experimental study on confinement effects on a liquid-liquid transition of a molecular liquid. We found that one liquid can be transformed into another purely by spatial confinement. This indicates...

We optimized potential parameters in a molecular dynamics model to reproduce the experimental contact angle of a macroscopic mercury droplet on graphite. With the tuned potential, we studied the effects of pore size, geometry, and temperature on the wetting of mercury droplets confined in organic-rich shale nanopores. The contact angle of mercury in a circular pore increases exponentially as po...

Controlling chemical reactions within a small space is a significant issue in chemistry, and methods to induce reactions within a desired position have various potential applications. Here we demonstrate localized, efficient photopolymerization by radiation pressure. We induced a one-photon UV polymerization of liquid acrylate solutions in the optical-trapping potential of a focused near-IR (NI...

Strong dense many-spin interactions have been proposed to organize novel orbital dynamics (the Little Effect) for novel chemical and catalytic phenomena. The recent determinations of the relativistic and quantum Hall effects of carriers in graphene under strong magnetic confinement have substantiated the Little Effect. Moreover such nonclassical phenomena under the stronger magnetic confinement...

Nonrotating ("locked") magnetic islands often lead to complete losses of confinement in tokamak plasmas, called major disruptions. Here locked islands were suppressed for the first time, by a combination of applied three-dimensional magnetic fields and injected millimeter waves. The applied fields were used to control the phase of locking and so align the island O point with the region where th...

Geocell structures consist of a series of interconnected single cells, made from different polymer materials. The cell walls completely encase the infill material and provide an all-around confinement to the soil. The confinement effect is based on three main mechanisms: active earth pressure within loaded cell, passive earth resistance in the adjacent cells and hoop stresses in the cell walls....

Salt crystallization is a major cause of weathering of rocks, artworks and monuments. Damage can only occur if crystals continue to grow in confinement, i.e. within the pore space of these materials, thus generating mechanical stress. We report the direct measurement, at the microscale, of the force exerted by growing alkali halide salt crystals while visualizing their spontaneous nucleation an...

the objective of this study has been to examine the relationship between home and the hospital confinement in the treatment of serious illness and the impact of such phenomena on the pattern of the delivery of health care in the rural areas. in this study a total of 10,248 inhabitants of 11 villages in isphahan (mobarakeh area) were studied during a six months period between march and september...