The idea of utilizing the second-order plasmon resonance of gold nanorod π-dimers for plasmon rulers is introduced. We report on a qualitatively different dependence of the plasmon resonance shift on the interparticle distance for the first- and second-order longitudinal modes of the nanorods, extending the working range of plasmon rulers up to the distance values of approximately 400 nm.

Hostility towards a population, whether on religious, ethnic, cultural or socioeconomic grounds, confronts rulers with a trade-off between taking advantage of population members’ eagerness to maintain their identity and inducing them to “comply” (conversion, quit, exodus or any other way of pleasing the hostile rulers). This paper first analyzes the rulers’ optimal mix of discriminatory and non...

The Math Factor podcast posed the problem of finding the smallest number of inch marks on a 12 inch ruler so that one could still measure any integer length from 1 to 12. One needs only four additional marks besides 0 and 12; for example 1, 4, 7, 10 works. This entertaining problem lead to others during the next few minutes (you can listen at mathfactor.uark.edu/2005/10) and inspired us to look...

This article explores civilian agency and civil resistance under Islamist insurgents’ rule in southern Somalia the period 2006 to 2012. After almost two decades of war, local institutions were weakened communities could not resist tight control. The traditional authorities either fled or chose cooperate with new rulers. However, while treading a fine line, still able raise community concerns in...

An l-ruler is a chain of n links, each of length l. The links, which are allowed to cross, are modelled by line segments whose endpoints act as joints. A given connguration of an l-ruler is said to fold if it can be moved to a connguration in which all its links coincide. We show that l-rulers connned inside an equilateral triangle of side 1 exhibit the following surprising alternation property...

A set {ai | 1 ≤ i ≤ k} of non-negative integers is a Golomb ruler if differences ai − aj , for any i 6= j, are all distinct. A set of I disjoint Golomb rulers (DGR) each being a J-subset of {1, 2, · · · , n} is called an (I, J, n) − DGR. Let H(I, J) be the least positive n such that there is an (I, J, n) − DGR. In this paper, we propose a series of conjectures on the constructions and structure...