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Abstract: The manuscript elucidates the potential of phase portrait, fast Fourier transform, wavelet, and time-series analyses of the heart murmur (HM) of normal (healthy) and mitral regurgitation (MR) in the diagnosis of valve-related cardiovascular diseases. The temporal evolution study of phase portrait and the entropy analyses of HM unveil the valve dysfunctioninduced haemodynamics. A tenfold increase in sample entropy in MR from that of normal indicates the valve dysfunction. The occurrence of a large number of frequency components between lub and dub in MR, compared to the normal, is substantiated through the spectral analyses. The machine learning techniques, K-nearest neighbour, support vector machine, and principal component analyses give 100% predictive accuracy. Thus, the study suggests a surrogate method of auscultation of HM that can be employed cost-effectively in rural health centres.
Keywords: phase portrait, auscultation, mitral valve dysfunction, heart murmur, nonlinear time series analysis
Published in RUNG: 28.06.2022; Views: 1151; Downloads: 0
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Abstract: The aim of the present study is to characterize and improve the still insufficient knowledge of the recharge processes that have an important influence on the flow and solute transport in karst aquifers and thus also on the quantity and quality of karst water sources. A binary karst aquifer in the recharge area of the Malenščica and Unica springs, which covers an area of about 820 km2 in SW Slovenia, was selected as the study area. A dense monitoring network was established at 20 observation points (six springs, four ponors, seven water-active caves and three surface streams) for simultaneous monitoring of the hydrological characteristics and the physicochemical properties of the water, the so-called natural tracers. Data-loggers were installed to measure water pressure, temperature and conductivity. During selected storm events, samples were taken for chemical and microbiological analyses and discharge measurements were made. The meteorological and hydrological data of the Slovenian Environment Agency complemented the extensive dataset. Collected data allowed the analysis and comparison of the spatial and temporal variations of the natural tracers under different hydrological conditions. Frequent discharge measurements allowed the generation of rating curves and proved to be a crucial element for understanding the hydraulic processes that determine the functioning of this system. The calculation of the water budget allowed an assessment of the proportion of autogenic and allogenic recharge of the springs and a quantitative estimate of autogenic recharge under different hydrological conditions. The hydrological analysis, i.e. the flow duration curve, the hydrograph separation techniques and the recession analysis, revealed that the Malenščica spring has a higher storage capacity, a greater proportion of autogenic recharge, especially at low-flow, and a slower recession than the Unica spring. This was also confirmed by correlation and spectral analyses, which were also used to investigate the relationships between discharges at ponors and springs. However, the results of the cross-correlation analysis showed hardly any difference between the two springs and in this case proved to be unsuitable for studying the influence of allogenic recharge. Instead, partial cross-correlation analysis was used to control the input parameters of effective precipitation and discharge of one of the sinking streams to determine the contribution of the other sinking stream to the observed spring. The results confirmed differences in allogenic recharge of the Unica and Malenščica springs. Hysteresis analysis has been applied as a complementary method to time series analysis and represents an improved approach to the characterization of the karst hydrological system. The hydraulic approach to the construction of hysteresis enabled a detailed analysis of allogenic and autogenic water interaction and its influence on the Malenščica and Unica springs under different hydrological conditions. Narrow shapes of the hysteresis indicate a direct hydraulic connection between the ponor and the spring and thus a well-developed drainage system. Any deviation towards a convex or concave shape indicates a less developed, more matrix-related drainage system or the influence of other recharge sources. Analysis of physicochemical hysteretic function of individual locations confirmed the differences in the recharge characteristics of the two springs. Compared to the Unica spring, the Malenščica spring has specific recharge characteristics that result in lower vulnerability to the effects of the sinking streams. A greater proportion of autogenic recharge in the initial phase of the storm event is important, as it allows for a time delay of the possible negative effects of the sinking stream. However, possible pollution from the area of autogenic recharge can have strong negative effects, as in this initial phase with low discharges the dilution effect is negligible.
Keywords: karst aquifer, dynamics of natural tracers, storm events, discharge measurements, time series analysis, hysteresis, Unica spring, Malenščica spring
Published in RUNG: 01.03.2022; Views: 2144; Downloads: 95
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Abstract: This paper presents a complete study of electronic structures and photoexcited carrier dynamics in topological insulators capped with iron and iron oxide. We combine static and time-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopies (ARPES, TR-ARPES) with time-resolved optical methods (transient optical reflectivity and transmission). Both single crystal and thin films of Bi2Te3 are studied. We show that monolayers of iron and iron oxide significantly affect the electronic band structure at the interface by shifting the Fermi level into the conduction band, which we explain by a band bending effect, and is confirmed by in situ XPS measurements
Keywords: time resolved spectroscopies, topological insulators, interfaces
Published in RUNG: 13.12.2021; Views: 1897; Downloads: 26
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Abstract: Quantum materials display exotic behaviours related to the interplay between temperature-driven phase transitions. Here, we study the electron dynamics in one such material, CaFe$_2$As$_2$, a parent Fe-based superconductor, employing time and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. CaFe$_2$As$_2$ exhibits concomitant transition to spin density wave state and tetragonal to orthorhombic structure below 170 K. The Fermi surface of this material consists of three hole pockets ($\alpha$, $\beta$ and $\gamma$) around $\Gamma$-point and two electron pockets around $X$-point. The hole pockets have $d_{xy}$, $d_{yz}$ and $d_{zx}$ orbital symmetries. The $\beta$ band constituted by $d_{xz}$/$d_{yz}$ orbitals exhibit a gap across the magnetic phase transition. We discover that polarized pump pulses can induce excitations of electrons of a selected symmetry. More specifically, while $s$-polarized light (polarization vector perpendicular to the $xz$-plane) excites electrons corresponding to all the three hole bands, $p$-polarized light excites electrons essentially from ($\alpha$,$\beta$) bands which are responsible for magnetic order. Interestingly, within the magnetically ordered phase, the excitation due to the $p$-polarized pump pulses occur at a time scale of 50 fs, which is significantly faster than the excitation induced by $s$-polarized light ($\sim$ 200 fs). These results suggest that the relaxation of different ordered phases occurs at different time scales and this method can be used to achieve selective excitations to disentangle complexity in the study of quantum materials.
Keywords: Electronic structure, Pnictides and chalcogenides, Time-resolved spectroscopy
Published in RUNG: 13.10.2021; Views: 1837; Downloads: 6
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Abstract: The two-dimensional transition-metal dichalcogenide 1T−TaS2 is a complex material standing out for its puzzling low temperature phase marked by signatures amenable to both Mott-insulating and charge-density wave states. Electronic Mott states, coupled to a lattice, respond to coherent optical excitations via a modulation of the lower (valence) Hubbard band. Such dynamics is driven by strong electron-phonon coupling and typically lasts for tens of picoseconds, mimicking coherent structural distortions. Instead, the response occurring at the much faster timescale, mainly dominated by electronic many-body effects, is still a matter of intense research. By performing time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we investigated the photoinduced phase of 1T−TaS2 and found out that its lower Hubbard band promptly reacts to coherent optical excitations by shifting its binding energy towards a slightly larger value. This process lasts for a time comparable to the optical pump pulse length, mirroring a transient change of the onsite Coulomb repulsion energy (U). Such an observation suggests that the correction to the bare value of U, ascribed to the phonon-mediated screening which slightly opposes the Hubbard repulsion, is lost within an interval of a few tens of femtoseconds and can be understood as a fingerprint of electronic states largely decoupled from the lattice. Additionally, these results enforce the hypothesis, envisaged in the current literature, that the transient photoinduced states belong to a sort of crossover phase instead of an equilibrium metallic one.
Keywords: ultrafast phenomena, time resolved photoemission, strongly correlated systems, transition metal dichalcogenide
Published in RUNG: 13.04.2021; Views: 2385; Downloads: 0
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