Thin Ag films deposited onto substrates by DC magnetron sputtering and thereafter annealed ,it temperatures 100-50 are investigated by scanning tunneling and atomic forte microscopy. It is shown that the film surface topography and microstructure are considerably changed as a result of annealing. To provide a quantitative estimation of the surface topography changes of Ag films the surface fractal dimension was calculated. Elasticity and hardness of the films are studied by a nanoindentation technique. The films are found to have value of elastic modulus close to that of bulk silver while their hardness and yield stress are essentially higher.

Nanostructured high strength metastable Al-, Mg- and Ti-based alloys containing different amorphous, quasicrystalline and nanocrystalline phases are synthesized by non-equilibrium processing techniques. Such alloys can be prepared by quenching from the melt or by powder metallurgy techniques. This paper focuses on one hand on mechanically alloyed and ball milled powders containing different volume fractions of amorphous or nano-(quasi)crystalline phases, consolidated bulk specimens and, on the other hand. on cast specimens containing different constituent phases with different length-scale. As one example. - based metallic glass matrix composites are produced by mechanical alloying of elemental powder mixtures containing up to 30 vol.% particles. The comparison with the particle-free metallic glass reveals that the nanosized second phase oxide particles do not significantly affect the glass-forming ability upon mechanical alloying despite some limited particle dissolution. A supercooled liquid region with an extension of about 50 K can be maintained in the presence of the oxides. The distinct viscosity decrease in the supercooled liquid regime allows to consolidate the powders into bulk samples by uniaxial hot pressing. The additions increase the mechanical strength of the composites compared to the metallic glass. The second example deals with Al-Mn-Ce and Al-Cu-Fe composites with quasicrystalline particles as reinforcements, which are prepared by quenching from the melt and by powder metallurgy. (x =5,6,7) melt-spun ribbons containing a major quasicrystalline phase coexisting with an Al-matrix on a nanometer scale are pulverized by ball milling. The powders are consolidated by hot extrusion. Grain growth during consolidation causes the formation of a micrometer-scale microstructure. Mechanical alloying of leads to single-phase quasicrystalline powders. which are blended with different volume fractions of pure Al-powder and hot extruded forming (x = 40,50,60,80) micrometer-scale composites. Compression test data reveal a high yield strength of 700 MPa and a ductility of 5% for than the Al-Mn-Ce bulk samples. The strength level of the Al-Cu-Fe alloys is 550 MPa significantly lower. By the addition of different amounts of aluminum, the mechanical properties can be tuned to a wide range. Finally, a bulk metallic glass-forming Ti-Cu-Ni-Sn alloy with in situ formed composite microstructure prepared by both centrifugal and injection casting presents more than 6% plastic strain under compressive stress at room temperature. The in situ formed composite contains dendritic hcp Ti solid solution precipitates and a few -(Cu, Sn) grains dispersed in a glassy matrix. The composite micro- structure can avoid the development of the highly localized shear bands typical for the room temperature defor-mation of monolithic glasses. Instead, widely developed shear bands with evident protuberance are observed. resulting in significant yielding and homogeneous plastic deformation over the entire sample.

This paper concerns with the relationship between the visual perception of the degree of pucker or wrinkles of garment surfaces and the geometrical parameters of surfaces. In this study, four potentially relevant parameters of the surface profile are considered, namely, the variance (σ2), the cutting frequency (Fc), the effective disparity curvature (Dce) (Defined as the average disparity curvature of the wrinkled surface over the eyeball distance of the observer) and the frequency component of the disparity curvature ( Dcf). Based on the experiments using garment seams having varying degree of pucker (i.e. the wrinkles along a seam line), it was found that, while the logarithm of each of these four parameters has a strong linear relationship with the visually perceived degree of wrinkles, following the Web-Fetchner Law, the effective disparity curvature ( Dce) and the frequency component of the disparity curvature (Dcf) appeared to have stronger relationships with the visual perception. This finding is in agreement with the suggestion by Rogers & Cagenello that human visual system may compute the disparity curvature in discriminating curved surfaces. It also suggested an objective method of measuring the degree of surface wrinkles.

A new species of th Ennominae, Psilalcis keytiparki sp. n., distributed in Korea, the southern part of Russian Far East and in central China, is described; its systematic position is discussed.

An x-ray astronomy experiment consisting of three collimated proportional counters and an X-ray Sky Monitor (XSM) was flown aboard the Indian Satellite IRS-P3 launched on March 21, 1996 from SHAR range in India. The Satellite is in a circular orbit of 830 km altitude with an orbital inclination of 98° and has three axis stabilized pointing capability. Each pointed-mode Proportional Counter (PPC) is a multilayer, multianode unit filled with P-10 gas (90% Ar + 10% CH4) at 800 torr and having an aluminized mylar window of 25 micron thickness. The three PPCs are identical and have a field of view of 2°×2° defined by silver coated aluminium honeycomb collimators. The total effective area of the three PPCs is about 1200 cm2. The PPCs are sensitive in 2-20 keV band. The XSM consists of a pin-hole of 1 cm2 area placed 16 cm above the anode plane of a 32 cm×32 cm position sensitive proportional counter sensitive in 3-8 keV interval. The position of the x-ray events is determined by charge division technique using nichrome wires as anodes. The principal objective of this experiment is to carry out timing studies of x-ray pulsars, x-ray binaries and other rapidly varying x-ray sources. The XSM will be used to detect transient x-ray sources and monitor intensity of bright x-ray binaries. Observations of black-hole binary Cyg X-1 and few other binary sources were carried out in early May and July-August 1996 period. Details of the x-ray detector characteristics are presented and preliminary results from the observations are discussed.