Original Ones Research Articles

Laying the Foundation of the Interest-Free Building System as an Alternative Model to Housing Finance Systems

Bilinen temel gerçeklerden biridir ki hammaddenin ana kaynağı yeryüzü, onun yegane sahibi ise Allah Teâlâ’dır. Ancak zamanla Allah Teâlâ’nın bahşettiği taş, toprak ve demirden oluşan yapılar Allah’ın yasakladığı yöntemlerle üretilip bunlara O’nun yasakladığı yöntemlerle sahip olunmaya başlanmıştır. Allah Teâlâ alışverişi helal faizi haram kılmıştır. Faiz her yönüyle insanlığa zararı olan bir müessesedir. Naslar tarafından kat’i olarak haram olduğu ortada olan faiz, değişen dünya düzeni ile iktisadi bir ürün olarak ön plana çıkmış, bankalar aracılığıyla kurumsallaşarak hayatın her alanına girmiştir. Katılımcı gözlemciliğimiz sonucunda günümüzde faizin beslendiği en belirgin kanallardan birisinin, insanların bir an önce sahip olmak istedikleri mallara karşılık, olmayan bedellerini veresiye yolla temin ederken düştükleri ikilem olduğu kanısına varılmıştır. Kanaatimizce gelişen dünyada insanlara “ev sahibi olmayın!” demek mümkün değil ise bunun çözümü faize, faizin nemalandığı finans merkezli alternatifler yerine yapı merkezli alternatifler üretilmesidir. Bu sayede insanların caiz olmayan ile alternatif olan arasındaki kafa karışıklığını doğrudan bilindik ve helal olanla gidermekte mümkün olacaktır. Buna karşılık İslâm’ın ilk dönemlerinden günümüze doğru İslâm iktisadında ortaya konulan ev finansmanı sistemleri için ön görülen çözümlerin asıllardan çok fer’i yöntemlerle üretilen çözümler olduğunu söylemek mümkündür. Zira faiz, akitte ileri sürülen fasit ve haram şarttır. İslâm iktisadında en belirgin yasakların başında faiz gelmekle birlikte İslâm iktisadı sadece faiz haramından ibaret olmayıp akde sürülecek pek çok fasit ve batıl şart akdi kerihlik ile iptal arasında bir yere konumlandırabilir. Öyleyse bir akitte faizi bertaraf etmek için İslâm iktisadının pek çok esasını çiğneyip dolaylı yollarla muğlak kabuller gören unsurlarla hareket etmenin o akdi faizsiz kılmakla birlikte kâmil anlamda meşru hale getirdiği söylenemez. Günümüzde pek çok faizsiz finans sistemi kendisinde faizin cereyan etmediği ancak diğer fasit şartlardan müteşekkil sistemlerden oluşmaktadır. Faizsiz ev sisteminin çözümünün aslında faizsiz yapı sistemine dayandığını bunun ise murâbaha değil mudârebe temelli, murâbaha destekli, modern ticaret ve yapı sistemlerini dikkate alan bir mekanizma ile mümkün olabileceği düşünülmektedir. Ev finansmanı sistemlerine alternatif olarak kurgulanan faizsiz yapı sistemi basitçe ifade etmek gerekirse konut, işyeri vb. yapıların oluşum ve edinimlerini her aşamasında faizli kredilerden uzak bir şekilde ve gerekli hukuki, teknik ve iktisadi şartnamelere dayalı olarak alma ve satmayı sağlayan kompleks bir modeldir. Diğer bir tabirle müteahhitlik sözleşmesi ile oluşan yap-sat modelinin modernize edilmiş şeklidir. Bir nevi kooperatifçiliğin çağa ayak uydurur şekilde yeniden teşekkül etmiş halidir. Faizsiz yapı sisteminin, faizsiz finansman sağlayan günümüz yöntemlerinin İslâm hukukunun asli ilkelerinden uzak ve dolambaçlı yolları yerine, asıllarla hareket eden, insanların aklına ve vicdanına sığan ve emek-sermaye dengesine dayalı bir çalışma prensibiyle hareket etmesi hedeflenmektedir. Alternatif finans kanallarının tamamı faizsiz ve helal yapıyı mudârebe yoluyla kullanmaya hem müsait ve hem de bu sistemin oturabilmesi için alt yapısı teşekkül etmiş bir güçtür. Bu sistem üretim esnasında alıcının ya da yatırımcının doğrudan işin içinde olduğu, aracı kurumların paranın işletilmesinden çok işletmenin yürütülmesinden, takibinden, emek ve üretimden kâr elde ettiği bir sistemdir. Faizsiz yapı temelleri helal yapıya dayanması kaçınılmaz olan ve bu sayede üretimin daha başlangıç aşamasında faize sebebiyet verecek şartları bertaraf eden bir sistemdir. Faizsiz yapı sistemi, yapıyı inşa edenin veya satıcının akdin bir tarafını alıcının ise diğer tarafını oluşturmalarına binaen akitlerin bağlayıcılığını zedeleyen sorunlara neden olmayacaktır. Bu sistem diğer bazı ev finansmanı sistemlerinden farklı olarak İslâm iktisadının temel meselelerinden, zahiren de bâtınen de akdi ifsat edecek niteliğe sahip olan sorunları ortadan kaldıracaktır. Diğer taraftan aktif mudârebe ile hareket eden faizsiz yapı sistemi saha tecrübesi ile fakihe doğru ictihadın oluşumunda katkıda bulunacak ve toplumda İslâm iktisadının temel esaslarına uyma bilinci oluşturacaktır.

Fitted modifications of Runge–Kutta–Nyström pairs of orders 7(5) for addressing oscillatory problems

Runge–Kutta–Nyström pair of orders 7(5) using six stages per step have been discovered very recently. Here we modify four of its weights. The resulting method integrates exactly the harmonic oscillator , which serves as model problem. The new weights are perturbations of the original ones. Order reduction which is usually present in such modifications is avoided. Numerical results over standard six stages pairs justify our efforts.

On dimension theory of supermodules, super-rings, and superschemes

We introduce the notion of Krull super-dimension of supermodules over certain super-commutative Noetherian super-rings. We investigate how this notion relates to the notion of odd regular sequence due T. Schmitt and how it behaves with respect to the transition to the graded and bigraded super-modules and super-rings associated with the original ones. We also apply these results to the super-dimension theory of superschemes of finite type and their morphisms.

Improvement in anti‐biofouling property of polyamide thin‐film composite membranes by using copper nanoparticles

AbstractMembrane biofouling is a major problem of the membrane process owing to microbial growth and biofilm on the membrane surface. In this work, a thin‐film composite polyamide membrane was modified with poly(ethylene glycol) and copper nanoparticles. Results demonstrated that surface modification induced changes in membrane‐surface characteristics and enhanced filtration property. The membrane surfaces became more hydrophilic (decreased water contact angle from around 48° to 28°) and had better antibacterial properties than the original ones. The separation property of modified membranes improved, increasing the membrane flux (up to 40%) and antifouling property simultaneously. In particular, the maintained flux ratio (anti‐biofouling property) significantly increased after 4 days of immersing the membranes in Escherichia coli bacterial solution. The membranes were then used for filtration tests with different foulants, such as humic acid and bovine serum albumin solutions.

Built Environment’s Sustainability: The Design of the Gypso|TechA of the University of Perugia

A multidisciplinary approach embedded with sustainability represents a pathway to design strategies applicable in different cultural contexts. Considering the emissions attributed to building processes, the design of conservation measures is evolving to create high performance both in terms of healthiness and safety. On this, heritage buildings in earthquake-prone cities proved their vulnerability during the recent seismic events. However, the most important aspect of restoration interventions is that the design process must respect the architectural peculiarities of the building. In this regard, the contribution presents the reuse of a heritage building, currently disused, in the novel role of University of Perugia’s plaster cast gallery, in line with the aims declared by the University with the adoption of the “Action Plan for University Sustainability 2021–2023”. Such architecture is part of Palazzo Murena, University of Perugia headquarters, a former monastery designed by Luigi Vanvitelli and completed in 1762 by Carlo Murena. A historical-iconographical investigation, together with a survey, revealed the building origin: a pre-existing architecture, anciently a hospice, included by Vanvitelli in their project. The purpose was the masonries’ reinforcement conceiving, at once, a flexible space according to the adaptive architecture principle: give to buildings configurations new, whole or in part, from the original ones in response to emerging threats. An integrated project was designed to restore the building in order to realize a contemporary museum in which full-height exhibition spaces alternate with the pre-existing ones. In this way, the new Gypso|TechA showcases the academic plasters, actually without a seat matching their cultural value, and through a peculiar layout encodes the collection’s message in a site-specific cognitive process.

Plant and Human Pathogenic Bacteria Exchanging their Primary Host Environments

Abstract Adaptation of plant and human pathogenic bacteria to niches of existence differing from their original ones is a sophisticated mechanism for survival. Research indicates that certain plant bacterial pathogens are capable of causing disease in humans, and some human bacterial pathogens can inhabit the plant environment and cause disease in plants. The infection of humans by plant bacteria may occur at direct physical contact with diseased plants and/or via the respiratory tract in mainly immunocompromised or otherwise stressed individuals. Indirect transmitters of plant and human microbes can be wind, rain, dust, insects, and animals. Human pathogenic bacteria may contaminate the soil and irrigation water, colonize the rhizosphere, more rarely also the phyllosphere, and can survive as epiphytes. Thus, the plant environment may become a reservoir of human pathogens. A source of foodborne human pathogenic bacteria can be unprocessed or unwashed fruits and vegetables. Especially during the last decade, the processes underlying the cross-kingdom performance of pathogenic bacteria are intensively researched. However, in reality, the risk for human health at infections by plant bacteria and by human bacterial pathogens surviving in the plant environment is still underestimated. The goal of the current review is to increase the interest in these issues in agricultural and general environments. Some basic strategies for infection and symptoms of diseases caused by the microorganisms under consideration are described. The potency of certain plant bacterial pathogens to surpass barriers towards humans and the interaction of human bacterial pathogens with the plant environment are addressed and the existing information is critically discussed.

Materials selection method using improved TOPSIS without rank reversal based on linear max-min normalization with absolute maximum and minimum values

Technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is a well-known multi attribute decision making (MADM) method and it has been widely used in materials selection. However, the main drawback of the traditional TOPSIS is that it has a rank reversal phenomenon. To overcome this drawback, we propose an improved TOPSIS without rank reversal based on linear max-min normalization with absolute maximum and minimum values by modifying normalization formula and ideal solutions. Moreover, to study the impacts of changing attribute weights on relative closeness values of alternatives, we propose a sensitivity analysis method to attribute weights on the relative closeness values of the alternatives. We applied the proposed method to select best absorbent layer material for thin film solar cells (TFSCs). As a result, copper indium gallium diselinide was selected as the best one and the next cadmium telluride from among five materials. When the alternative is added to or removed from the set of original alternatives, the elements of the normalized decision-matrix, PIS, NIS and the relative closeness values don’t change at all, they are always coincide with the corresponding elements of the original ones. The relative closeness values are absolute values irrelevant to the composition of the alternatives in the improved TOPSIS, while the relative closeness values are relative values relevant to the composition of the alternatives in the traditional TOPSIS. Therefore, the proposed TOPSIS overcomes the rank reversal phenomenon, perfectly. It could be actively applied to practical problems for materials selection.

Convolutional neural network-based retrieval of Raman signals from CARS spectra

We report the studies on the automatic extraction of the Raman signal from coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) spectra by using a convolutional neural network (CNN) model. The model architecture is adapted from literature and retrained with synthetic and semi-synthetic data. The synthesized CARS spectra better approximate the experimental CARS spectra. The retrained model accurately predicts spectral lines throughout the spectral range, even with minute intensities, which demonstrates the potential of the model. Further, the extracted Raman line-shapes are in good agreement with the original ones, with an RMS error of less than 7% on average and have shown correlation coefficients of more than 0.9. Finally, this approach has a strong potential in accurately estimating Raman signals from complex CARS data for various applications.

Comparison of Chemical and Mechanical Surface Treatments on Metallic Precision Spheres for Using as Optical Reference Artifacts.

The improvement of industrial manufacturing processes requires measurement procedures and part inspection tasks to be faster and faster while remaining effective. In this sense, the capabilities of noncontact measuring systems are of great help, not only because of the great amount of data they provide but also for the ease of the integration of these systems as well as their automation, minimising the impact on the industry. This work presents a comparative study on the influence of two surface treatments performed on low-cost, high-precision metallic spheres on the suitability of these spheres to be used as artefacts for the calibration of optical sensors, specifically laser triangulation sensors. The first surface treatment is sandblasting (a mechanical process), whose effect has been studied and presented in previous work. The second treatment focused on in this paper is acid etching (a chemical process). The comparison has been performed by evaluating the same metrological characteristics on two identical groups of spheres of similar type (diameter and accuracy), each of which was subjected to a different treatment. It was necessary to obtain the reference values of the metrological parameters with high accuracy, which involved measuring the spheres with a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) by contact probing. Likewise, spheres were scanned by a laser triangulation sensor mounted on the same CMM. The results derived from both the contact and laser measurements and before and after treating the surfaces were used to compare four parameters: point density, sphere diameter, sphere form deviation, and standard deviation of the best-fit sphere to the corresponding point cloud. This research has revealed that acid etching produces better optical qualities on the surfaces than the mirror-like original ones, thus enhancing the laser sensor capturing ability. However, such chemical etching has affected the metrological characteristics of the spheres to a greater extent than that produced by sandblasting. This difference is due to the variability of the chemical etching, caused by the high aggressiveness of the acid, which makes the process very sensitive to the time of exposure to the acid and the orientations of the spheres in the bath.

Genomics-Assisted Improvement of Super High-Yield Hybrid Rice Variety "Super 1000" for Resistance to Bacterial Blight and Blast Diseases.

The two-line rice hybrid “Super 1000” (GX24S × R900) represents a major landmark achievement of breeding for super-hybrid rice in China. However, both male parent R900 and hybrid “Super 1000” have an obvious defect of high susceptibility to rice bacterial blight (BB) and blast. Thus, improving disease resistance and maintaining the original high-yield capacity are essential for the sustainable application of “Super 1000.” In this study, the application of closely linked single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers for foreground selection of dominant resistance gene loci together with genome-wide SNP markers for the background selection rapidly improved the disease resistance of R900 without disturbing its high-yield capacity. A series of improved R900 lines (iR900, in BC2Fn and BC3Fn generations) were developed to stack resistance genes (Xa23+Pi9, Xa23+Pi1+Pi2/9) by marker-assisted backcrossing and field selection for phenotypes, and further crossed with the female line GX24S to obtain improved hybrid variety Super 1000 (iS1000). The genetic backgrounds of iS1000 and “Super 1000” were profiled by using a 56 K SNP-Chip, and results showed that they shared 98.76% of similarity. Meanwhile, evaluation of the field disease resistance showed that the iR900 lines and iS1000 hybrids possess significantly enhanced resistance to both BB and rice blast. Resistance spectrum assays revealed that the iR900 lines and their derived hybrids exhibited high-level resistance to 28 Xoo strains tested, and enhanced resistance to leaf blast at the seedling stage when infected with 38 Magnaporthe oryzae isolates. Between 2019 and 2020, the multi-location field trials across the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River were launched and showed that the iS1000 slightly out-yielded than the original variety. In a large-scale demonstration site (6.73 ha, Yunnan, China), the iS1000 achieved 17.06 t/hm2 of yield in 2019. Moreover, the high similarity was observed in main agronomic traits and grain quality when comparing the improved lines/hybrids to original ones (iR900 vs. R900, iS1000 vs. S1000). This work presented a typical genomics-assisted breeding strategy and practice, which involves in directional introgression and rapid stack of multiple disease resistance genes, endowing the super-high-yield hybrid rice variety with holistic disease resistance but without yield penalty.

Claus Guth and The Inverted Dioramas

This article focuses on the directorial aesthetics of Claus Guth, an artist that specialises in reinterpreting the lyric creations of the great opera houses worldwide. Disengaging or maybe understanding hidden meanings of the librettos and musical scores, speculating and reinventing the characters’ stories, the German director gives birth to new realities which mold to the original ones, transfiguring them in unexpected ways. The Messiah oratory by Georg Friedrich Händel is a good example, because the incoherent libretto that servs as foundation to the baroque composition is enriched by Claus Guth through a salutary intervention, in which the director questions matters such as religiosity and the intimate beliefs of the contemporary man. Similarly, other works I debate upon in this article test the limits of perception of the audience, not necesarrily because they are right or wrong interpretations, but rather because they tend to become possible points of view in understanding the characters, which are dislocated from their usual world and transported into another in which, with irony and humor, they are forced to reinvent themselves.

Morphological Transformation in Polymer Composite Materials Filled with Carbon Nanoparticles: Part 1-SEM and XRD Investigations.

HDPE-based nanocomposite fibers have been extruded from a melt and drawn up to draw ratio DR = 8. Two kinds of carbon nanodiscs (original ones and those exposed to additional annealing) have been used as fillers. Obtained nanocomposite fibers have been investigated with the help of different experimental methods: rheology, SEM and WAXS. It has been demonstrated that the annealed carbon nanodiscs possess a nucleation ability that finally leads to strong transformation of the material morphology.

A New Competitive Neural Architecture for Object Classification

In this paper, we propose a new neural architecture for object classification, made up from a set of competitive layers whose number and size are dynamically learned from training data using a two-step process that combines unsupervised and supervised learning modes. The first step consists in finding a set of one or more optimal prototypes for each of the c classes that form the training data. For this, it uses the unsupervised learning and prototype generator algorithm called fuzzy learning vector quantization (FLVQ). The second step aims to assess the quality of the learned prototypes in terms of classification results. For this, the c classes are reconstructed by assigning each object to the class represented by its nearest prototype, and the obtained results are compared to the original classes. If one or more constructed classes differ from the original ones, the corresponding prototypes are not validated and the whole process is repeated for all misclassified objects, using additional competitive layers, until no difference persists between the constructed and the original classes or a maximum number of layers is reached. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method on a variety of well-known benchmark data sets.

An EFQM-Based Self-Assessment Method for Railway Transportation Service Quality: An Application with Intuitionistic Fuzzy AHP

Service quality is one of the most important issues in railway transportation because it is a concept that positively affects customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, corporate image, and intention to repurchase. The European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model provides an opportunity to facilitate the service quality-focused self-assessment efforts of the railway companies. This is the first study that integrates intuitionistic fuzzy theory in the application of the EFQM Model of railway industry in Turkey. As the main contribution, it is aimed to find a dedicatedly special weighting schema for the application of EFQM model in railway transportation. For this purpose, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is utilized with an integration of intuitionistic fuzzy sets that can reveal the decision-makers’ opinions, preferences, and expertise more comprehensively than traditional fuzzy sets can do. Consequently, it is found that the original model should be modified for the railway industry since the weights of all the criteria included in the model are found different than the original ones. The study provides new insights into the long-term benefits of applying the EFQM model as a framework in railway transportation and understanding the associations between the EFQM criteria and railway transportation.

β-Cyclodextrin as the Key Issue in Production of Acceptable Low-Cholesterol Dairy Products.

The application of cyclodextrins in food technology is extensive due to their unique ability to form complexes with many bioactive substances. Consumption of dairy products is associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD) due to its high content of saturated fatty acids and cholesterol, so the production of low-cholesterol content products would be one of the critical steps in CVD prevention with regards to lowered total daily cholesterol intake. To maintain consumer acceptance, organoleptic profiles of such products should be, in the optimal case, the same with comparison to original ones. So, this study deals with the development of set low cholesterol foods (milk, cream, butter, soft cheese, cottage cheese) by β-cyclodextrin treatment and the characterization of their organoleptic profiles such as color and textural characteristics. During the experiments, high effectivity of cholesterol removal was reached as follows: milk–97.3%, cream–95.6%, butter–95.6%, cottage cheese–97.9%, soft cheese–97.7%, while color differences varied from 0.25 to 1.13 and textural characteristics were not influenced by cholesterol removal as well. So, it can be concluded that the proposed procedure is enabled to be substantial for the production of a new assortment of low-cholesterol dairy products with considerable health benefits toward the incidence of CVD.

An integrated optimization and machine learning approach to predict the admission status of emergency patients

This work proposes a framework for optimizing machine learning algorithms. The practicality of the framework is illustrated using an important case study from the healthcare domain, which is predicting the admission status of emergency department (ED) patients (e.g., admitted vs. discharged) using patient data at the time of triage. The proposed framework can mitigate the crowding problem by proactively planning the patient boarding process. A large retrospective dataset of patient records is obtained from the electronic health record database of all ED visits over three years from three major locations of a healthcare provider in the Midwest of the US. Three machine learning algorithms are proposed: T-XGB, T-ADAB, and T-MLP. T-XGB integrates extreme gradient boosting (XGB) and Tabu Search (TS), T-ADAB integrates Adaboost and TS, and T-MLP integrates multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and TS. The proposed algorithms are compared with the traditional algorithms: XGB, ADAB, and MLP, in which their parameters are tunned using grid search. The three proposed algorithms and the original ones are trained and tested using nine data groups that are obtained from different feature selection methods. In other words, 54 models are developed. Performance was evaluated using five measures: Area under the curve (AUC), sensitivity, specificity, F1, and accuracy. The results show that the newly proposed algorithms resulted in high AUC and outperformed the traditional algorithms. The T-ADAB performs the best among the newly developed algorithms. The AUC, sensitivity, specificity, F1, and accuracy of the best model are 95.4%, 99.3%, 91.4%, 95.2%, 97.2%, respectively.

An efficient approach for discriminant analysis based on adaptive feature augmentation

Effective discriminant analysis is of great practical importance, as demonstrated by economic and genetic applications. Feature augmentation via nonparametric and selection (FANS) is an efficient approach that has been widely used in classification. However, FANS may impair efficiency when a linear decision boundary separates data reasonably well. The available remedy is to use both the transformed features and original ones, which may increase computational cost and model complexity. Motivated by these concerns, this paper proposes an efficient nonparametric approach for binary discriminant analysis, called adaptive FANS, integrating augmentation and nonparametric tests. In this procedure, the original features or transformed ones are used selectively to keep the number of features constant. Thus, this procedure avoids the ergodic transformation and reduces error caused by nonparametric estimation and computational complexity. Simulation and real data analysis demonstrate its competitiveness and significant adaptability. Moreover, our approach can be easily extended to other linear frameworks.

New Fractional Derivative Expression of the Shifted Third-Kind Chebyshev Polynomials: Application to a Type of Nonlinear Fractional Pantograph Differential Equations

The main goal of this paper is to develop a new formula of the fractional derivatives of the shifted Chebyshev polynomials of the third kind. This new formula expresses approximately the fractional derivatives of these polynomials in the Caputo sense in terms of their original ones. The linking coefficients are given in terms of a certain 4 F 3 1 terminating hypergeometric function. The integer derivatives of the shifted third-kind Chebyshev polynomials can be calculated using this formula after performing some reductions. To solve a nonlinear fractional pantograph differential equation with quadratic nonlinearity, the fractional derivative formula is used in conjunction with the tau technique. The role of the tau method is to convert the pantograph differential equation with its governing initial/boundary conditions into a nonlinear system of algebraic equations that can be treated with the aid of Newton’s iterative scheme. To test the method’s convergence, certain estimations are included. The proposed numerical method is demonstrated by numerical results to ensure its applicability and efficiency.

Adversarial Multiscale Feature Learning Framework for Overlapping Chromosome Segmentation.

Chromosome karyotype analysis is of great clinical importance in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Since manual analysis is highly time and effort consuming, computer-assisted automatic chromosome karyotype analysis based on images is routinely used to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the analysis. However, the strip-shaped chromosomes easily overlap each other when imaged, significantly affecting the accuracy of the subsequent analysis and hindering the development of chromosome analysis instruments. In this paper, we present an adversarial, multiscale feature learning framework to improve the accuracy and adaptability of overlapping chromosome segmentation. We first adopt the nested U-shaped network with dense skip connections as the generator to explore the optimal representation of the chromosome images by exploiting multiscale features. Then we use the conditional generative adversarial network (cGAN) to generate images similar to the original ones; the training stability of the network is enhanced by applying the least-square GAN objective. Finally, we replace the common cross-entropy loss with the advanced Lovász-Softmax loss to improve the model’s optimization and accelerate the model’s convergence. Comparing with the established algorithms, the performance of our framework is proven superior by using public datasets in eight evaluation criteria, showing its great potential in overlapping chromosome segmentation.

Clathrate structure of polymerized fullerite C60

Investigations of clathrate structures have gained a new impetus with the recent discovery of room-temperature superconductivity in metal hydrides. Here we report the finding, through density functional theory calculations, of a clathrate phase in the fullerite C60 system. Intermolecular bonds of the type 5/5 2+3 cycloaddition are induced between each C60 molecule and its twelve nearest neighbors in the face centered cubic lattice. Remarkably, this bonding creates on octahedral sites new C60 cages, identical to the original ones, and on tetrahedral sites distorted sodalite-like cages. The resulting carbon clathrate has a Pm3¯ simple cubic structure with half of the original face centered lattice constant. Eighty percent of its atoms are sp3-hybridized, driving a narrow-gap semiconducting behavior, a moderate bulk modulus of 268 GPa and an estimated hardness of 21.6 GPa. This new phase is likely to be prepared by subjecting C60 to high pressure and high temperature conditions.