purpose: scientific databases are the most important and useful sources where information is accessible via user interfaces. one of the approaches to eliminating the existing challenges in databases user interface is utilizing the sense-making theory (smt) approach. smt approach helps the users to understand problematic situations they have faced with and bridges the cognitive and information g...

Highly mineralized natural materials such as teeth or mollusk shells boast unusual combinations of stiffness, strength and toughness currently unmatched by engineering materials. While high mineral contents provide stiffness and hardness, these materials also contain weaker interfaces with intricate architectures, which can channel propagating cracks into toughening configurations. Here we repo...

CeO2 and Y2O3-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) are two typical candidates for electrolyte materials in solid oxide fuel cells attributed to their high ion conductivities. However, the conductivities of these materials are closely connected with high temperatures. Therefore, it is important to develop electrolyte materials which can conduct oxygen ions at lower temperatures. Recent experiments have sho...

Nanostructured (NS) materials may have different irradiation resistance from their coarse-grained (CG) counterparts. In this review, we focus on the effect of grain boundaries (GBs)/interfaces on irradiation induced microstructure evolution and the irradiation tolerance of NS materials under irradiation. The features of void denuded zones (VDZs) and the unusual behavior of void formation near G...

Interface engineering has become an important strategy for designing radiation-resistant materials. Critical to its success is fundamental understanding of the interactions between interfaces and radiation-induced defects, such as voids. Using transmission electron microscopy, here we report an interesting phenomenon in their interaction, wherein voids adhere to only one side of the bimetal int...

Clean, safe and economical nuclear energy requires new materials capable of withstanding severe radiation damage. One strategy of imparting radiation resistance to solids is to incorporate into them a high density of solid-phase interfaces capable of absorbing and annihilating radiation-induced defects. Here we show that elastic interactions between point defects and semicoherent interfaces lea...

Mineralization is a typical strategy used in natural materials to achieve high stiffness and hardness for structural functions such as skeletal support, protection or predation. High mineral content generally leads to brittleness, yet natural materials such as bone, mollusk shells or glass sponge achieve relatively high toughness considering the weakness of their constituents through intricate ...

As devices are reduced in size, interfaces start to dominate electrical transport, making it essential to be able to describe reliably how they transmit and reflect electrons. For a number of nearly perfectly lattice-matched materials, we calculate from first principles the dependence of the interface transparency on the crystal orientation. Quite remarkably, the largest anisotropy is predicted...

This paper presents our work on building low-cost music controllers intended for educational and creative use. The main idea was to build an electronic music controller, including sensors and a sensor interface, on a “10 euro” budget. We have experimented with turning commercially available USB game controllers into generic sensor interfaces, and making sensors from cheap conductive materials s...

molecular electronics growing, and prospects of single-molecule electronics improving, there is an increasing need to understand the interactions and electronic structure at interfaces between molecular and nonmolecular phases1-3. The level of activity in new materials for organic light-emitting diodes, organic field-effect transistors, and organic solar cells; optical or transport characteriza...