Pressure driven polymorphic transitions in nanocrystalline Lu2O3, Tm2O3 and Eu2O3.

The crystallite size of the materials considerably influences the material properties, including their compressibility and resistance to external forces and the stability of the crystalline structure; a corresponding study for which, so far, has been limited for the important class of nanocrystalline Rare Earth Sesquioxides (REOs). In the present study, we report the crystallographic structural transitions in nanocrystalline Rare Earth Oxides (REOs) under the influence of pressure, investigated via high-energy X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) measurements. The study has been carried out on three of the REOs, namely Lutetium oxide (Lu2O3), Thulium oxide (Tm2O3) and Europium oxide (Eu2O3) up to the pressures of 33, 22 and 11 GPa, respectively. The diffraction data of Lu2O3 and Tm2O3 suggests the occurrence of irreversible structural transitions from cubic to monoclinic phase, while Eu2O3 showed a transition from the cubic to hexagonal phase. The transitions were found to be accompanied by a collapse in the volume and the resulting Pressure-Volume (P-V) graphs are fitted with the 3rd order Birch-Murnaghan (BM) equation of state (EOS) to estimate the bulk moduli and their pressure derivatives. Our study establishes a qualitative relationship between the crystallite size and various material properties such as the lattice parameters, transition pressure, bulk modulus etc., and strengthens the knowledge regarding the behaviour of this technologically important class of materials.

A true face of Indian married couples: Effect of age and education on control over own sexuality and sexual violence.

INTRODUCTION: Though there are several interventions evaluated over the past 25 years, significant knowledge gaps continue to exist regarding the effective prevention of sexual violence. This study explored the socio-economic and context-specific distinctive characteristics of husbands and wives on sexual autonomy and unwanted sexual experiences of currently married women in India. METHODOLOGY: We have utilized the recent round of National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4, 2015-16) data for this exploration. The NFHS-4 survey had adopted a stratified two-stage sample design to reach out to the survey households. A total of 63,696 couples are included in the analysis comprising of women of 15-49 years age and men of 15-54 years age. Multivariate techniques have been applied to understand the adjusted effects of socio-economic and demographic variables on control over their sexuality and sexual violence. RESULTS: Uneducated women married to uneducated men experienced more sexual violence and had less control over their sexuality than the other categories. The adjusted multivariate logistic model shows that educated husbands were significantly more likely to exercise control over their educated wives' sexuality (AOR = 0.88; CI:0.78-0.99). Women having older husbands were significantly less likely to be having no-control over own sexuality (AOR = 0.89; CI:0.83-0.95) and experienced sexual violence (AOR = 0.81; CI:0.70-0.95). Women having comparatively more-educated husbands were significantly less likely to experience sexual violence (AOR = 0.62; CI:0.47-0.81). Muslim women were significantly more likely to have no control overown sexuality. SC/ST women were significantly more likely to experience sexual violence (28%). CONCLUSIONS: This study highlights the factors associated with control over one's sexuality and preponderance to sexual violence: age, education, spouse working status, wealth status, husband's alcohol consumption, women autonomy, decision-making, and freedom for mobility. This study suggests that empowering women with education, creating awareness regarding reproductive health, and addressing their socio-economic needs to help them achieve autonomy and derive decision-making power.

Structural and Magnetic Properties of Ni1+x MnSb Bulk Heusler Composite Materials.

Variation in structural and magnetic properties with changing valence electron count (VEC) has been studied well in the family of Heusler compounds, while such changes in VEC resulting in half-Heusler (HH) and full-Heusler (FH) composites have not been reported to observe their effect on the magnetic properties. Herein, we have synthesized the composite of HH and FH phases in Ni1+x MnSb (x = 0.0, 0.3, and 0.6) via changing VEC from 22 to 28 in order to investigate the structural and magnetic properties. Interestingly, a transition from half-metallic ferromagnetic to normal ferromagnetic was revealed in Ni1+x MnSb (x = 0.0, 0.3, and 0.6) materials with increasing VEC. The structural investigations of these materials were performed using a X-ray diffraction technique and analyzed by Rietveld Refinement software for all the samples. Rietveld analysis reveals the presence of a significant amount of the NiSb paramagnetic impurity phase in the HH NiMnSb system while in the case of Ni1+x MnSb (x = 0.3 and 0.6), no such impurity phase was observed. Only FH and HH phases in Ni1+x MnSb (x = 0.3 and 0.6) samples were noticed. The magnetic measurement performed on samples employing a vibrating sample magnetometer reveals the ferromagnetic ordering in all samples. A weak hysteresis loop with saturated magnetic moments ∼2.99 and 2.98 µB at room temperature was observed for NiMnSb and Ni1.3MnSb, respectively, while a strong hysteresis loop with lower magnetic moment of 0.88 µB was observed in the Ni1.6MnSb composite. Furthermore, the observed magnetic moments for the composite Ni1.3MnSb have been explained on the basis of the Slater-Pauling rule in relation to VEC.