Park University

Intermolecular forces embrace all forms of matter and determine the properties of gases, liquids and solids. These include dissolved solute molecules, small molecular aggregates, or macroscopic particles interacting in liquid or vapor. These interactions ultimately determine the behavior and properties of everyday things, soils, milk and cheese, paints and ink, adhesives and lubricants.

This chapter begins the discussion of the motion of atoms and molecules at surfaces. Here we discuss how atoms vibrate about their equilibrium sites. This chapter includes the measurement of vibrations and what happens during surface melting.

The simplest gas-surface interactions involve several steps beginning with the collision of the incident particle with the surface. The incident particle experiences a potential energy as it approaches the surface. If its kinetic energy is accommodated sufficiently, it is adsorbed. One adsorbed, it may diffuse on the surface, depending on the temperature or morphology of the surface. Finally, the particle may react, or if it has sufficient kinetic energy, desorb from the surface.

A discussion of post-detection matters, including the concerns of proper post-detection communication, the different kinds of contact and the communication challenges they present, the current “post-detection protocols'' as they arose out of the Billingham workshops. Also includes a discussion of the likely effect on contact on humanity and the Rio scale. Concludes with some case studies on famous false alarms, and a short discussion on “who speaks for Earth.'' Includes exercises for students.

In Puerto Rico, Afro-descendants celebrated the Fiesta de San Miguel (Feast of St. Michael the Archangel) every year on September 29 with performances that reflected their Afro-creole culture. The festival had deep colonial roots, though its documentation is most robust for nineteenth-century San Juan and its environs. Like other Black Atlantic traditions, the festivities showcased the celebrants’ social cohesion. The festival was a potent form of cultural agency for Afro-Puerto Ricans overcoming many obstacles to stage it annually, including efforts to suppress it. This article builds on the growing scholarship on Afro-Atlantic festive traditions. It expands on some of the theoretical approaches proposed in this literature and adds to a growing understanding of Afro-Atlantic festive traditions as forms of joyful Black resistance by addressing the historical importance and meaning of the Afro-Puerto Rican Feast of St. Michael. While it highlights broad Atlantic connections, its principal aim is to analyze how Afro-Puerto Ricans formed communities of joy despite the opposition they faced.

Abstract Insoluble starch-chitosan foams were produced through a novel plasticization process that integrates glycerol via a post-expansion soaking and freeze-drying process. Starch foams incorporating 4% and 8% chitosan were first expanded and cross-linked using microwave heating, then soaked in a 7.5% glycerol solution, frozen, and freeze-dried to retain glycerol within the foam matrix. This process uniquely preserves the position of the glycerol in the foam by sublimating water during freeze-drying, allowing for internal plasticization without structural collapse. The resulting foams showed up to a 43% reduction in compressive modulus, yielding mechanically soft yet stable structures. Rheological characterization revealed that chitosan-starch polyelectrolyte complexation helped reduce retrogradation with the presence of glycerol. Increasing chitosan content enhanced foam integrity, while swelling behavior confirmed that both chitosan and glycerol concentrations influenced solution uptake. This study demonstrates a promising method for producing soft, insoluble, stable and retrogradation-resistant starch-based foams for a wide variety of diverse applications. Graphical Abstract

We calculate the renewed phonon bands and mode-Gr\"uneisen parameters for the $Pm\overline{3}m$ phases of $B{\mathrm{F}}_{3}$ ($B=\mathrm{Sc}$, Y, La, Al, Ga, In) including the nonanalytical term correction, as well as the mode-Gr\"uneisen parameters for the $R\overline{3}c$ phase of $\mathrm{Sc}{\mathrm{F}}_{3}$ under hydrostatic pressure derived from the six different types of strains, all of which are based on the comments by Dove and Phillips [Phys. Rev. B (2025)]. As a result, we show that there is no significant change in the discussion given in our original publication [Phys. Rev. B 110, 064104 (2024)]. However, we acknowledge that the disappearance of the negative thermal expansion (NTE) behavior in the $R\overline{3}c$ phase of $\mathrm{Sc}{\mathrm{F}}_{3}$ cannot be solely explained by the less negative Gr\"uneisen parameters of the $Pm\overline{3}m$ phase of $\mathrm{Sc}{\mathrm{F}}_{3}$. We denote that we did not claim that the NTE behavior of $\mathrm{Sc}{\mathrm{F}}_{3}$ is not well understood, and the most important point of our original paper is that we have explained the dynamical stability of the cubic $\mathrm{Sc}{\mathrm{F}}_{3}$ by the group theoretical analyses of the electronic and phonon band structures.

BackgroundEarly Intervention Psychosis Services (EIPS) provide multimodal interventions for young people who are at risk of, or have experienced, a first episode of psychosis. Although recent studies have begun to examine this critical period in a young person’s personal recovery in more depth, little is known about how young people experience EIPS in general, and its influences on their clinical and psychosocial recovery in particular.AimsThis study aimed to explore young people’s experience of EIPS, specifically the factors that have affected their (a) clinical and (b) psychosocial recovery.MethodThis study purposively sampled 27 young people from a range of backgrounds at 6 community-based EIPS in Australia. Audio-recorded, semi-structured interviews were conducted and reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse this data-set.ResultsFour themes of how EIPS enabled recovery were identified. The first three - a safe space, unconditional support and active involvement – were foundational to a fourth theme of gradual self-management. In earlier-stage self-management, participants relied on practical supports to make connections and find education and employment opportunities. By later-stage self-management, they had developed the tools to do these things for themselves. Participants’ movement between earlier- and later-stage self-management was connected to their overall EIPS engagement and, for some, to their engagement with peer support.ConclusionsProviding a safe space, unconditional support and active involvement for clients and their families created the foundational conditions for improved clinical and psychosocial recovery. Peer support programmes, increasing engagement when situational changes such as employment occur and the provision of culturally sensitive care appeared valuable to this process.

Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica, particularly serovar Newport, remains a leading cause of foodborne illnesses in the United States, implicated in numerous outbreaks associated with a diverse array of food products. This study rigorously investigates the virulence of five distinct S. Newport isolates, characterized by varying patterns of pulse-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) molecular-diagnostic subtyping, using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a host model organism. We conducted viability assays on C. elegans to evaluate how these isolates affect nematode survival. The selected bacterial strains, rooted in historical foodborne outbreak significance but environmentally isolated, were previously sequenced to provide a comprehensive genomic framework. A notable focus of our research was on the nearly genetically identical PFGE types Newport-61 and the Newport-1015 isolates, which differ by a ~1.7 Mb genomic inversion. C. elegans survival assays in response to pathogenic-strain infections revealed that one Newport-1015 and the Newport-61 were particularly more virulent compared to other strains tested. These findings enhance our understanding of the pathogenic potential of environmental S. Newport and highlight the need to understand the regulatory mechanisms that contribute to virulence capacity.

Conventionally, Delay and Sum (DAS) has been used to beamform Plane Wave (PW) imaging for ultrafast Ultrasound (US) applications. Although computationally efficient, single-PW DAS suffers from low contrast and resolution. Many adaptive Deep Learning (DL) approaches have been proposed for single PW that improve the image quality by learning certain pixel or channel weights to be combined with the DAS beamformed image. In this work, we explore an overlooked performance alternative for adaptively perturbing the time delays used in DAS by learning the underlying Speed of Sound (SoS) via a Neural Network (NN). Thus, we aim to directly modify the DAS beamforming algorithm and demonstrate that the resulting method produces images of better quality than DAS and other adaptive DL approaches.