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Sacroiliac joint pain is one of the common misdiagnosed orthopedic causes of low back pain, which affects between 15 to 30 percent of individuals with mechanical low back pain below L5. The sacroiliac joint is found out to be a source of dysfunction and pain in 10% to 27% of suspected cases of patients with chronic low back pain. Clinicians use different electrotherapy modalities, biomechanical correction techniques, and exercises for addressing SI joint pain. Many studies have been undertaken to find out the efficacy of different treatment tools in combination or isolation. Likewise, there are studies done to understand the effect of piriformis stretch and muscles activation exercises on sacroiliac joint pain but, there exists very little evidence studying the combined effect of both the treatment tools. So our study aims to determine the combined effect of piriformis stretch and muscles activation exercises in patients with sacroiliac joint pain. About 30 subjects, both male and female with a primary diagnosis of sacroiliac joint pain by the physician were recruited into two groups. Group A having 15 patients received piriformis stretch and muscles activation exercises, and Group B having 15 patients received only muscles activation exercises. All the subjects received therapy sessions thrice weekly for four weeks. Outcome measures used were the visual analog scale (VAS) and oswestry disability index(ODI). Pre- intervention assessment and post-intervention assessment was carried out for both groups and the received data was analyzed using paired and independent t-test. According to the results of the analysis, the average improvement of VAS for Group A and Group B were 2.33 and 3.53 respectively. The paired t-test was 23.129 and 14.270, which is statistically highly significant (p-value = 0.000). The average improvement in oswestry disability index for group A and group B were 16.13 and 26.13 respectively using mean and standard deviation. The paired t-test was 11.014 and 6.934 respectively, which is statistically highly significant (p-value = 0.000). There is a significant improvement in both Group A and Group B. However, Group A (piriformis stretch and muscle activation exercises) showed significant improvement in the treatment of sacroiliac joint pain. The results indicated that both Group A and Group B had significant improvement in the scores of VAS and ODI scores at the 4th week when compared to baseline values, but when comparing the end results of group A and group B, it has been found out that group A intervention is more effective than Group B in treating patients with sacroiliac joint pain. From the data analysis reports, it can be concluded that when these treatment tools i.e piriformis stretch and muscles activation exercises are applied in combination, it gives better results in the management of sacroiliac joint pain

Recent advances in two-dimensional (2D) materials have led to the renewed interest in intercalation as a powerful fabrication and processing tool. Intercalation is an effective method of modifying the interlayer interactions, doping 2D materials, modifying their electronic structure or even converting them into starkly different new structures or phases. Herein, we discuss different methods of intercalation and provide a comprehensive review of various roles and applications of intercalation in next‐generation energy storage, optoelectronics, thermoelectrics, catalysis, etc. The recent progress in intercalation effects on crystal structure and structural phase transitions, including the emergence of quantum phases are also reviewed.

Here, we report the structural and temperature-dependent transport properties of AsxP1–x (x = 0, 0.2, 0.5, 0.83, and 1) alloys. It is observed that black phosphorous-related phonon modes in the all...

A systematic study on electrochemical charge transfer in Li-doped black phosphorus (BP) was carried out by both in situ and ex situ Raman scattering. Galvanostatic discharge of dedicated in situ el...

Author(s): Karki, B; Alfailakawi, A; Frandsen, BA; Everett, MS; Neuefeind, JC; Xu, B; Wang, H; Fang, M; Freelon, B | Abstract: We describe the local structural properties of the iron oxychalcogenides, La2O2Fe2OM2(M=S,Se), by using pair distribution function analysis applied to total scattering data. Our results from neutron powder diffraction show that M = S and Se possess similar nuclear structures at low and room temperatures. The local crystal structures were studied by investigating deviations in atomic positions and the extent of the formation of orthorhombicity. Analysis of the total scattering data suggests that buckling of the Fe2O plane occurs below 100 K. The buckling may occur concomitantly with a change in octahedral height. Furthermore, within a typical range of 1-2 nm, we observed a short-range orthorhombiclike structure suggestive of nematic fluctuations in both of these materials.

Fluorinated carbon nanocages were prepared using plasma treatment and were tested electrochemically in primary Li/CFx batteries. A systematic increase of F/C ratio and specific capacity was obtained with an increase in fluorination time. For the highest fluorinated material (x = 0.98), the specific capacity reached 850 mA h g−1, i.e., the theoretical value predicted for this composition.

The van der Waals (vdW) chromium trihalides (CrX3) exhibit field-tunable, two-dimensional magnetic orders that vary with the halogen species and the number of layers. Their magnetic ground states with proximity in energies are sensitive to the degree of ligand-metal (p-d) hybridization and relevant modulations in the Cr d-orbital interactions. We use soft X-ray absorption (XAS) and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) spectroscopy at Cr L-edge along with the atomic multiplet simulations to determine the key energy scales such as the crystal field 10 Dq and interorbital Coulomb interactions under different ligand metal charge transfer (LMCT) in CrX3 (X= Cl, Br, and I). Through this systematic study, we show that our approach compared to the literature has yielded a set of more reliably determined parameters for establishing a base Hamiltonian for CrX3.

We studied and compared the effect of tensile strain on the Raman spectra of black phosphorus (BP) and molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe

We have used a lithography free technique for the direct fabrication of vertically stacked two-dimensional (2D) material-based tunnel junctions and characterized by Raman, AFM, XPS. We fabricated Graphene/h-BN/Graphene devices by direct deposition of graphene (bottom layer), h-BN (insulating barrier) and graphene (top layer) sequentially using a plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition on Si/SiO2 substrates. The thickness of the h-BN insulating layer was varied by tuning the plasma power and the deposition time. Samples were characterized by Raman, AFM, and XPS. The I-V data follows the barrier thickness dependent quantum tunneling behavior for equally doped graphene layers. The resonant tunneling behavior was observed at room temperature for oppositely doped graphene layers where hydrazine and ammonia were used for n-doping of one of the graphene layers. The resonance with negative differential conductance occurs when the band structures of the two electrodes are aligned. The doping effect of the resonant peak is observed for varying doping levels. The results are explained according to the Bardeen tunneling model.

We present the results of structural and magnetic phase comparisons of the iron oxychalcogenides ${\mathrm{La}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{2}{\mathrm{Fe}}_{2}\mathrm{O}M{}_{2}(M=\text{S},\text{Se})$. Elastic neutron scattering reveals that $M=\text{S}$ and Se have similar nuclear structures at room and low temperatures. Our neutron diffraction data reveals that both materials obtain antiferromagnetic ordering at a N\'eel temperature ${T}_{N}90.1\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.16$ K and $107.2\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.06$ K for $M=\text{Se}$ and S, respectively. The magnetic arrangements for both $M=\text{S}$, Se compounds are obtained through Rietveld refinement. We find the order parameter exponent $\ensuremath{\beta}$ to be 0.$129\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.006$ for $M=\text{Se}$ and $0.133\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.007$ for $M=\text{S}$. Each of these values is near the Ising symmetry value of 1/8. This suggests that although lattice and electronic structural modifications result from chalcogen replacement, the nature of the magnetic interactions is similar in these materials.

We studied and compared the effect of tensile strain on the Raman spectra of black phosphorus (BP) and molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe2) crystals by using a simple custom strain device. In-situ Raman spectroscopy on BP revealed clear red shifting of all three phonon modes, A1 g, B2g and A2 g, under tensile stress. From our theoretical analyses, we found that such red shifting strongly depends on the direction of the strain exerted on the system even within the elastic deformation limit (i.e. strain ≤ 1 %). In particular, calculated results for the strain along the armchair direction are consistent with our experimental data, confirming that the strain applied to the sample acts effectively along the armchair direction. In a comparative study, we found that the effect of strain on the Raman shifting is larger for BP than that for MoTe2, presumably due to the smaller Young’s modulus of BP. We also see a remarkable resemblance between donor-type intercalation induced vibrational properties and tensile stress-induced vibrational properties in BP. We anticipate that our method of in-situ Raman spectroscopy can be an effective tool that can allow observation of strain effect directly which is critical for future flexible electronic devices.

Using density functional dynamical mean-field theory we investigate the site-selective electronic structure of ${\mathrm{Ca}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}{\mathrm{Fe}}_{3}{\mathrm{S}}_{2}$. We confirm that the parent compound with two distinct iron sites is a multiorbital Mott insulator similar to ${\mathrm{La}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}{\mathrm{Fe}}_{2}{\mathrm{S}}_{2}$. Upon electron/hole doping, carrier localization is found to persist in the two active iron channels because the chemical potential lies in a gap structure with anisotropic and almost vanishing states near the Fermi energy. This emergent behavior stems from large electronic reconstruction caused by dynamical spectral weight transfer involving states with distinct $d$-shell occupancies and orbital character at low energies. We detail the implications of our microscopic analysis and discuss the underlying physics which will emerge in future experiments on ${\mathrm{Ca}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}{\mathrm{Fe}}_{3}{\mathrm{S}}_{2}$.

Nematic fluctuations occur in a wide range of physical systems from liquid crystals to biological molecules to solids such as exotic magnets, cuprates and iron-based high-$T_c$ superconductors. Nematic fluctuations are thought to be closely linked to the formation of Cooper-pairs in iron-based superconductors. It is unclear whether the anisotropy inherent in this nematicity arises from electronic spin or orbital degrees of freedom. We have studied the iron-based Mott insulators La$_{2}$O$_{2}$Fe$_{2}$O$M$$_{2}$ $M$ = (S, Se) which are structurally similar to the iron pnictide superconductors. They are also in close electronic phase diagram proximity to the iron pnictides. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) revealed a critical slowing down of nematic fluctuations as observed by the spin-lattice relaxation rate ($1/T_1$). This is complemented by the observation of a change of electrical field gradient over a similar temperature range using M\"ossbauer spectroscopy. The neutron pair distribution function technique applied to the nuclear structure reveals the presence of local nematic $C_2$ fluctuations over a wide temperature range while neutron diffraction indicates that global $C_{4}$ symmetry is preserved. Theoretical modeling of a geometrically frustrated spin-$1$ Heisenberg model with biquadratic and single-ion anisotropic terms provides the interpretation of magnetic fluctuations in terms of hidden quadrupolar spin fluctuations. Nematicity is closely linked to geometrically frustrated magnetism, which emerges from orbital selectivity. The results highlight orbital order and spin fluctuations in the emergence of nematicity in Fe-based oxychalcogenides. The detection of nematic fluctuation within these Mott insulator expands the group of iron-based materials that show short-range symmetry-breaking.