[ ] powders were thermally sprayed onto mild steel substrates in air and under a reduced pressure of argon. Several oxides were formed after thermally-spraying the mechanically-alloyed powders in air. After spraying in a reduced pressure of argon, the coating layers obtained from the gently mixed powders consisted of the elemental metals, but an amorphous phase primarily appeared in the thermally-sprayed mechanically-alloyed powders, which transformed into the icosahedral quasicrystal phase and a minor crystal phase after annealing at 828 K. The Vickers hardness and the contact angle with pure water for the quasicrystal layers were about 7 GPa and respectively.

During the hierarchical formation of large scale structure in the universe, the progressive collapse and merging of dark matter should inevitably drive shocks into the gas, with nonthermal particle acceleration as a natural consequence. Two topics in this regard are discussed, emphasizing what important things nonthermal phenomena may tell us about the structure formation (SF) process itself. 1. Inverse Compton gamma-rays from large scale SF shocks and non-gravitational effects, and the implications for probing the warm-hot intergalactic medium. We utilize a semi-analytic approach based on Monte Carlo merger trees that treats both merger and accretion shocks self-consistently. 2. Production of 6Li by cosmic rays from SF shocks in the early Galaxy, and the implications for probing Galaxy formation and uncertain physics on sub-Galactic scales. Our new observations of metal-poor halo stars with the Subaru High Dispersion Spectrograph are highlighted.