Université Grenoble Alpes

REBCO Coated Conductors have high tensile strength along their length. They are however sensitive to delamination when traction force is applied on the tape surface, which in a pancake winding corresponds to radial tensile stress. For this reason, most REBCO magnets are dry-wound (not impregnated). One of the drawbacks of dry winding is that conduction cooling to low temperature (below 20 K) would be inefficient. Edge impregnation structures were developed to mitigate this problem but retaining a soft non-stick insulating layer in between the turn. In this paper, we propose an improved pancake structure with the benefits of edge-impregnation but using Hastelloy tape with thin insulation coating to reinforce the winding. The mechanical behavior of such structure is first estimated then validated with high current tests under large background magnetic field. The insulation performance is then tested by rapid ramping and fast discharge.

For next generation of high field cryogen-free superconducting user magnets, we adopt a robust coil concept, which consists of two tapes co-wound in a face-to-back configuration, a fluorine-coated polyimide tape as the inter-bundle insulation and thin FRP plates glued on the coil edges. To validate our coil design, we investigated electromagnetic and current-voltage properties of 20-stacked REBCO pancake coils wound with Fujikura EuBCO tapes with the robust coil concept at 4.2 K under a background field of 14 T. The inner and outer diameters and total height of the coils are 68 mm, 266 mm, and 101 mm, respectively. The average of measured hoop and axial strain on the outermost winding at the mid plane of the 20-stacked coils were 0.23% and -0.15% respectively at a hoop stress of 370 MPa estimated by the BJR relation. The I - V properties of the coils showed no anomalous behavior up to 25 T totally generated by the coils and background field, suggesting that our coil structure has an advantage against large electromagnetic stress.

We recently proposed a robust REBCO HTS (RareEarth BaCuO) insert coil concept in the framework of a project to upgrade the 25 T Cryogen-Free Superconducting Magnet at the High Field Laboratory For Superconducting Materials to reach 30 T. In this concept, the conductor consists of a two-tape bundle to mitigate the risks posed by local tape degradation. So-called edge impregnation is used to enhance the mechanical stiffness while reducing delamination risk, providing conduction-cooling capability at the same time. This insert is to be protected against the risk of thermal runaway simply by using dump resistor, thanks to an early detection concept. The different ideas forming the robust REBCO insert coil concept were tested successfully on various small scale prototypes. We report here their first implementation on a large-size insert coil, consisting of 20 stacked pancakes from the 30 T CSM upgrade insert. The mechanical behavior of the coil is modelled and validated with experiments. The thermal runaway detection setup is introduced. Its sensitivity and selectivity is discussed based on previous works on thermal runaway scenarios.

Many plant species develop fruits to attract animals that will eat them and then disperse the seeds. However, there are many plant species, whose seeds are dispersed endozoochorically, but their fruits are not particularly attractive to animals. The “Foliage is the fruit” (FF) hypothesis proposes that entire biomass of the plant exists to encourage herbivores to eat it, in order to enhance seed intake and dispersal (Janzen, 1984). We tested the FF hypothesis by combining the results from the greenhouse seedling emergence method (GR) and DNA-metabarcoding of plant remnants in faeces of European moose (Alces alces L.). We processed 665 samples by the GR and 429 by the MB method, hypothesizing that if the safe passage of seeds through the gut of a large herbivore is the result of an evolutionary adaptation to endozoochoric dispersal, then the species composition of plants revealed by the two methods should largely overlap and the abundance of seedlings revealed by the GR method should be positively correlated in time with the read abundance of DNA of the same species. The large discrepancy between the lists of species detected by DNA metabarcoding and the GR method argues against the FF hypothesis. However, in the case of Urtica dioica, Lysimachia vulgaris and Lythrum salicaria, some clues of evolutionary adaptation to endozoochoric dispersal were revealed for: 1) their foliage is attractive to herbivores; 2) seeds are small, rounded in shape, yielded in large numbers and pass safely through the herbivore's gut; 3) the abundance of seeds (seedlings) was significantly and strongly influenced by the abundance of the plant biomass (DNA reads) in dung samples; 4) peaks in seed abundance and biomass consumption coincided in time. However, it should be considered that moose's diet is mostly composed of woody browse, which makes this animal not an optimal model for testing the Janzen's hypothesis and studies on typical grazers are needed in this respect.

Thanks to their outstanding mechanical properties, Bulk Metallic Glasses (BMGs) are new alternatives to traditional crystalline metals for mechanical and micromechanical applications including power transmission. However, the tribological properties of BMGs are still poorly understood, mostly because their amorphous nature induces counter intuitive responses to friction and wear. In the present study, four different BMGs (Cu47Zr46Al7, Zr46Cu45Al7Nb2, Zr60Cu28Al12, and Zr61Cu25Al12Ti2) underwent ball-on-disc friction tests against 100Cr6 steel balls (American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) 52100) at different relative humidities (RHs) ranging from 20% to 80%. Controlling humidity enabled to observe a high repeatability of the friction and wear responses of the BMG. Interestingly, the friction coefficient decreased by a factor of 2 when the humidity was increased, and the wear rate of BMGs was particularly low thanks to a 3rd-body tribolayer that forms on the BMG surface, composed of oxidized wear particles originating from the ball. The morphology of this tribolayer is highly correlated to humidity. The study also identifies how the tribolayer is built up from the initial contact until the steady state is achieved.

Dry etching of amorphous silicon nitride (Si 3 N 4 ) selectively toward silicon dioxide (SiO 2 ), silicon oxicarbide (SiCO), and crystalline silicon (c-Si) in an inductive coupled plasma reactor using CHF 3 /O 2 /He chemistry with SiCl 4 addition is studied. Plasma exposure of c-Si, SiO 2 , and SiCO leads to an oxifluoride deposition. The deposition rate is the same for all these materials and increases linearly with the amount of SiCl 4 added. On the other hand, Si 3 N 4 etching is observed at very small amount of SiCl 4 added (2 SCCM), while oxide deposition takes place at higher SiCl 4 flow (10 SCCM). Quasi- in situ angle resolved x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy investigation shows oxifluoride SiO x F y deposition on c-Si and SiCO, while a thin F-rich reactive layer is observed on Si 3 N 4 . The oxidation of the Si 3 N 4 surface with O 2 plasma prior to CHF 3 /O 2 /He with small SiCl 4 addition plasma treatment showed that the oxidation state plays a significant role in the etching/deposition equilibrium. In addition, it is found that oxifluoride deposition on Si 3 N 4 is driven by ion energy, with deposition observed at 0 V substrate bias voltage, while etching is observed for values higher than 150 V. All these results show that a competition takes place between silicon oxifluoride deposition and etching, depending on the substrate material, surface oxidation, and ion energy. Based on the additional optical emission spectroscopy data, we proposed insights to explain the different etching and deposition behaviors observed. It is focused on the crucial role of ion energy and the nitrogen presence in Si 3 N 4 leading to the formation of CN and HCN, helping to get a thinner reactive layer and to evacuate etch by-products on Si 3 N 4 while an oxifluoride buildup on the other materials takes place.

Terpenoids (isoprene and monoterpenes) are highly reactive Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) known for decades for their biogenic origin. Here, we discuss the nature and magnitude of their anthropogenic emissions. We compiled and re‐analyzed 14 data sets of in situ VOC observations collected over the last decade in contrasting urban areas from mid‐latitudes to subtropical regions. We show the systematic presence of anthropogenic terpenoids in urban ambient air with clear covariations with anthropogenic compounds (R² > 0.50) even during mid‐latitude winters. Despite the emerging importance of monoterpene emissions from consumer products in North American cities, there is some evidence of monoterpene emissions from tailpipe exhaust in cities of the developing world. The traffic‐related fraction of monoterpenes is estimated and can account for up to 40% of their ambient levels. The anthropogenic emission ratios (ER) of some terpenoids (isoprene, α‐pinene and limonene) are estimated and spatially compared. The anthropogenic emissions of terpenoids are indirectly estimated from those ER combined to regional and global emission inventories (CAMS‐GLOB‐ANT_v4.2) at urban and country scale focusing on France, Lebanon, and Vietnam. Those anthropogenic emissions do not represent more than 3% of other anthropogenic VOC emissions. However, they dominate by one to three orders of magnitude the reactivity of other anthropogenic VOCs regarding NO3 oxidation and ozonolysis. This study raises two questions which need further investigations in the future: (a) the significance of terpenoid emissions from traffic, especially in urban areas of the developing world and (b) the role of anthropogenic terpenoids in nighttime and wintertime atmospheric chemistry at mid‐latitudes.

The goal of this article is to give a new proof of the wave trace formula proved by Richard Melrose in an impressive article. This trace formula is an extension of the Chazarain-Duistermaat-Guillemin trace formula (denoted as “CDG trace formula” in this article) to the case of a sub-Riemannian Laplacian on a 3D contact closed manifold. The proof uses a normal form constructed in previous papers, following the pioneering work of Melrose to reduce the case of the invariant Laplacian on the 3D-Heisenberg group. We need also the propagation of singularities results of the works of Ivrii, Lascar, and Melrose.

Tumor antigens can emerge through multiple mechanisms, including translation of non-coding genomic regions. This non-canonical category of antigens has recently gained attention; however, our understanding of how they recur within and between cancer types is still in its infancy. Therefore, we developed a proteogenomic pipeline based on deep learning de novo mass spectrometry to enable the discovery of non-canonical MHC-associated peptides (ncMAPs) from non-coding regions. Considering that the emergence of tumor antigens can also involve post-translational modifications, we included an open search component in our pipeline. Leveraging the wealth of mass spectrometry-based immunopeptidomics, we analyzed 26 MHC class I immunopeptidomic studies of 9 different cancer types. We validated the de novo identified ncMAPs, along with the most abundant post-translational modifications, using spectral matching and controlled their false discovery rate (FDR) to 1%. Interestingly, the non-canonical presentation appeared to be 5 times enriched for the A03 HLA supertype, with a projected population coverage of 54.85%. Here, we reveal an atlas of 8,601 ncMAPs with varying levels of cancer selectivity and suggest 17 cancer-selective ncMAPs as attractive targets according to a stringent cutoff. In summary, the combination of the open-source pipeline and the atlas of ncMAPs reported herein could facilitate the identification and screening of ncMAPs as targeting agents for T-cell therapies or vaccine development.

Objective: Many studies have been published on disorders of the gut-brain interaction (DGBI) in Asia and Western Europe, but no previous study has directly assessed the difference between the two regions. The aim was to compare the prevalence of DGBI in Asia and Western Europe. Methods: We used data collected in a population-based Internet survey, the Rome Foundation Global Epidemiology Study, from countries in Western Europe (Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom) and Asia (China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore). We assessed DGBI diagnoses (Rome IV Adult Diagnostic Questionnaire), anxiety/depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-4, PHQ-4), non-GI somatic symptoms (PHQ-12), and access to and personal costs of doctor visits. Results: The study included 9487 subjects in Asia and 16,314 in Western Europe. Overall, 38.0% had at least one DGBI; younger age, female sex, and higher scores on PHQ4 and PHQ12 were all associated with DGBI. The prevalence of having at least one DGBI was higher in Western Europe than in Asia (39.1% vs 36.1%, OR 1.14 [95% CI 1.08-1.20]). This difference was also observed for DGBI by anatomical regions, most prominently esophageal DGBI (OR 1.67 [1.48-1.88]). After adjustment, the difference in DGBI prevalence diminished and psychological (PHQ-4) and non-GI somatic symptoms (PHQ-12) had the greatest effect on the odds ratio estimates. Conclusion: The prevalence of DGBI is generally higher in Western Europe compared to Asia. A considerable portion of the observed difference in prevalence rates seems to be explained by more severe psychological and non-GI somatic symptoms in Western Europe.

Most bacteriophages present a tail allowing host recognition, cell wall perforation, and viral DNA channeling from the capsid to the infected bacterium cytoplasm. The majority of tailed phages bear a long flexible tail (Siphoviridae) at the tip of which receptor binding proteins (RBPs) specifically interact with their host, triggering infection. In siphophage T5, the unique RBP is located at the extremity of a central fiber. We present the structures of T5 tail tip, determined by cryo-electron microscopy before and after interaction with its E. coli receptor, FhuA, reconstituted into nanodisc. These structures bring out the important conformational changes undergone by T5 tail tip upon infection, which include bending of T5 central fiber on the side of the tail tip, tail anchoring to the membrane, tail tube opening, and formation of a transmembrane channel. The data allow to detail the first steps of an otherwise undescribed infection mechanism.

The Mid-Pleistocene Transition (~1.2–0.8 million years) corresponds to a time interval when high-amplitude ~100,000 years glacial–interglacial cycles replaced the more subdued ~40,000 years glacial–interglacial cycles. Whether it was triggered by physical processes affecting the climate system at a specific time interval or more gradually over the course of the Pleistocene, is still an open question. Here we use an original approach based on conceptual modelling to identify the temporal structure of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition controlling factors. By comparing our new simulations of global ice volume changes with existing paleo-reconstructions over the past 2 million years, we find that it is more relevant to simulate the Mid-Pleistocene Transition with a gradual-rather-than-abrupt change in the climate system. Our results support the hypothesis that a progressive decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations throughout the Pleistocene played a key role in triggering this major climatic transition.

Silicon quantum devices are maturing from academic single- and two-qubit devices to industrially-fabricated dense quantum-dot arrays, increasing operational complexity and the need for better pulsed-gate and readout techniques. We perform gate-voltage pulsing and gate-based reflectometry measurements on a dense 2x2 array of silicon quantum dots fabricated in a 300-mm-wafer foundry. Utilizing the strong capacitive couplings within the array, it is sufficient to monitor only one gate electrode via high-frequency reflectometry to establish single-electron occupation in each of the four dots and to detect single-electron movements with high bandwidth. A global top-gate electrode adjusts the overall tunneling times, while linear combinations of side-gate voltages yield detailed charge stability diagrams. To test for spin physics and Pauli spin blockade at finite magnetic fields, we implement symmetric gate-voltage pulses that directly reveal bidirectional interdot charge relaxation as a function of the detuning between two dots. Charge sensing within the array can be established without the involvement of adjacent electron reservoirs, important for scaling such split-gate devices towards longer 2xN arrays. Our techniques may find use in the scaling of few-dot spin-qubit devices to large-scale quantum processors.

In neocortical layer-5 pyramidal neurons, the action potential (AP) is generated in the axon initial segment (AIS) when the membrane potential (Vm ) reaches the threshold for activation of the voltage-gated Na+ channels (VGNCs) Nav 1.2 and Nav 1.6. Yet, whereas it is known that these VGNCs differ in spatial distribution along the AIS and in biophysical properties, the understanding of the functional differences between the two channels remains elusive. Here, using ultrafast Na+ , Vm and Ca2+ imaging in combination with the partial block of Nav 1.2 by the peptide G1 G4 -huwentoxin-IV, we demonstrate an exclusive role of Nav 1.2 in shaping the generating AP. Precisely, we show that a selective block of ∼30% of Nav 1.2 widens the AP in the distal part of the AIS and we demonstrate that this effect is due to a loss of activation of BK Ca2+ -activated K+ channels (CAKCs). Indeed, Ca2+ influx via Nav 1.2 activates BK CAKCs determining the amplitude and the early phase of repolarisation of the AP in the AIS. By mean of control experiments using 4,9-Anhydrotetrodotoxin, which is a moderately selective inhibitor of Nav 1.6, we concluded that the Ca2+ influx shaping the early phase of the AP is exclusive of Nav 1.2. Hence, we mimicked this result with a NEURON model where the role of the different ion channels tested reproduced the experimental evidence. The exclusive role of Nav 1.2 reported here is important for understanding the physiology and pathology of neuronal excitability. KEY POINTS: We optically analysed the action potential that generates in the axon initial segment of mouse layer-5 neocortical pyramidal neurons and its associated Na+ and Ca2+ currents using ultrafast imaging techniques. We found that the partial selective block of the voltage-gated Na+ channel Nav1.2, produced by a recently developed peptide, widens the shape of the action potential in the distal part of the axon initial segment. We demonstrate that this effect is due to the reduction of the Ca2+ influx through Nav1.2 that activates BK Ca2+-activated K+ channels. To validate our conclusions, we generated a NEURON model that reproduces the ensemble of our experimental results. The present results indicate a specific role of Nav1.2 in the axon initial segment for the shaping of the action potential during its generation. Abstract figure legend In the axon initial segment of neocortical pyramidal neurons the voltage-gated Na+ channel Nav 1.2 contributes to the generation of the action potential by providing a Na+ current and a Ca2+ current that activates BK Ca2+ -activated K+ channels shaping the kinetics of the action potential. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

We determine an explicit upper bound for the stable Faltings height of principally polarised abelian surfaces over number fields corresponding to S-integral points on the Siegel modular variety A2(2)\D\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$A_2(2) \backslash D$$\end{document} where D is the divisor of products of elliptic curves. This upper bound, using Runge’s method, is uniform in S as long as |S|<3\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$|S|<3$$\end{document}.

Two-dimensional electronic states at surfaces are often observed in simple wide-band metals such as Cu or Ag (refs. 1–4). Confinement by closed geometries at the nanometre scale, such as surface terraces, leads to quantized energy levels formed from the surface band, in stark contrast to the continuous energy dependence of bulk electron bands2,5–10. Their energy-level separation is typically hundreds of meV (refs. 3,6,11). In a distinct class of materials, strong electronic correlations lead to so-called heavy fermions with a strongly reduced bandwidth and exotic bulk ground states12,13. Quantum-well states in two-dimensional heavy fermions (2DHFs) remain, however, notoriously difficult to observe because of their tiny energy separation. Here we use millikelvin scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) to study atomically flat terraces on U-terminated surfaces of the heavy-fermion superconductor URu2Si2, which exhibits a mysterious hidden-order (HO) state below 17.5 K (ref. ¹⁴). We observe 2DHFs made of 5f electrons with an effective mass 17 times the free electron mass. The 2DHFs form quantized states separated by a fraction of a meV and their level width is set by the interaction with correlated bulk states. Edge states on steps between terraces appear along one of the two in-plane directions, suggesting electronic symmetry breaking at the surface. Our results propose a new route to realize quantum-well states in strongly correlated quantum materials and to explore how these connect to the electronic environment.

In recent years, interest in expanding from 2D to 3D systems has grown in the magnetism community, from exploring new geometries to broadening the knowledge on the magnetic textures present in thick samples, and with this arises the need for new characterization techniques, in particular tomographic imaging. Here, we present a new tomographic technique based on Fourier transform holography, a lensless imaging technique that uses a known reference in the sample to retrieve the object of interest from its diffraction pattern in one single step of the calculation, overcoming the phase problem inherent to reciprocal-space-based techniques. Moreover, by exploiting the phase contrast instead of the absorption contrast, thicker samples can be investigated. We obtain a 3D full-vectorial image of a 800-nm-thick extended Fe/Gd multilayer in a 5−µm-diameter circular field of view with a resolution of approximately 80 nm. The 3D image reveals wormlike domains with magnetization pointing mostly out of plane near the surface of the sample but that falls in-plane near the substrate. Since the FTH setup is fairly simple, it allows modifying the sample environment. Therefore this technique could enable in particular a 3D view of the magnetic configuration's response to an external magnetic field.