There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

THE DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF EXPERIMENTS. By Oscar Kempthorne. New York, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1952. 631 pp. $8.50. This book by a teacher of statistics (as well as a consultant for \"experimenters\") is a comprehensive study of the philosophical background for the statistical design of experiment. It is necessary to have some facility with algebraic notation and manipulation to be able to use the volume intelligently. The problems are presented from the theoretical point of view, without such practical examples as would be helpful for those not acquainted with mathematics. The mathematical justification for the techniques is given. As a somewhat advanced treatment of the design and analysis of experiments, this volume will be interesting and helpful for many who approach statistics theoretically as well as practically. With emphasis on the \"why,\" and with description given broadly, the author relates the subject matter to the general theory of statistics and to the general problem of experimental inference. MARGARET J. ROBERTSON

The Design and Analysis of Experiments

J. Appl. Cryst.の発刊に際して

Diamond-like carbon (DLC) is a metastable form of amorphous carbon with significant sp3 bonding. DLC is a semiconductor with a high mechanical hardness, chemical inertness, and optical transparency. This review will describe the deposition methods, deposition mechanisms, characterisation methods, electronic structure, gap states, defects, doping, luminescence, field emission, mechanical properties and some applications of DLCs. The films have widespread applications as protective coatings in areas, such as magnetic storage disks, optical windows and micro-electromechanical devices (MEMs).

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Diamond-like amorphous carbon

IN two previous notes1, Prof. Max Born and I have shown that one can obtain a theory of superconductivity by taking account of the fact that the interaction of the electrons with the ionic lattice is appreciable only near the boundaries of Brillouin zones, and particularly strong near the corners of these. This leads to the criterion that the metal should be superconductive if a set of corners of a Brillouin zone is lying very near the Fermi surface, considered as a sphere, which limits the region in the momentum space completely filled with electrons.

On the theory of superconductivity

Recycling of rare earths: a critical review

The phase-field method has become an important and extremely versatile technique for simulating microstructure evolution at the mesoscale. Thanks to the diffuse-interface approach, it allows us to study the evolution of arbitrary complex grain morphologies without any presumption on their shape or mutual distribution. It is also straightforward to account for different thermodynamic driving forces for microstructure evolution, such as bulk and interfacial energy, elastic energy and electric or magnetic energy, and the effect of different transport processes, such as mass diffusion, heat conduction and convection. The purpose of the paper is to give an introduction to the phase-field modeling technique. The concept of diffuse interfaces, the phase-field variables, the thermodynamic driving force for microstructure evolution and the kinetic phase-field equations are introduced. Furthermore, common techniques for parameter determination and numerical solution of the equations are discussed. To show the variety in phase-field models, different model formulations are exploited, depending on which is most common or most illustrative.

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Bart Blanpain

Papers

Recycling of rare earths: a critical review

An introduction to phase-field modeling of microstructure evolution

Towards zero-waste valorisation of rare-earth-containing industrial process residues: a critical review

Cold rolling behaviour of an austenitic Fe–30Mn–3Al–3Si TWIP-steel: the importance of deformation twinning

Surface oxidation of NiTi shape memory alloy.