Optical and electrical methods of information recording on chalcogenide glassy semiconductors are compared. It is shown that techniques based on a reversible glass-crystal phase transition are similar for the optical and electrical cases and the main mechanism of phase transition is determined by thermal heating. It is supposed that the known advantages of optical and electrical information recording by short pulses are possibly related to the existence of a wide power range of pulses recording without damage, compared with the appreciably narrower range at longer pulse durations.

The electric field induced acoustic emission (AE) in ferroelectric ceramics under bipolar electric fields has been studied. From the AE event rate and the AE signal amplitude distribution, it is assumed that there are two origins of the field induced AE in the ferroelectric ceramics: domain reorientation related deformation and piezoelectric deformation without domain reorientation. The fractal dimension (m) in the field induced AE signal amplitude distribution of the ferroelectric ceramic is found to be m=1 for the domain reorientation related deformation. The fractal dimension of m=2.8 is observed for the piezoelectric deformation unrelated to domain reorientation after domain reorientation is completed. It is shown that the fractal dimension of the AE caused by the domain reorientation related deformation is lower than that of the AE generated by the piezoelectric deformation unrelated to domain reorientation at high electric fields.

Acoustic emission (AE) in multilayer ceramic actuators (MCA) has been studied. It was observed that AE signals could be concealed by sample's mechanical vibrations under usual MCA driving conditions. These vibrations were caused by an electrical coupling between the sample's piezoelectricity and the power supply's feedback. The AE was observed around the coercive field under bipolar driving. On the contrary, with unipolar driving, the AE was not present until the applied voltage reached a certain critical voltage. It was clarified that the AE generation in MCAs was strongly dependent on the maximum pre-applied stress (Kaiser effect), which corresponds to the applied voltage. The onset voltage of AE can be used to estimate the existing damages in the MCA. During the poling process, larger numbers of AE was observed in damaged MCA than that of un-damaged ones.

The gauge-links connecting the parton field operators in the hadronic matrix elements appearing in the transverse momentum dependent distribution functions give rise to T -odd effects. Due to the process-dependence of the gauge-links the T -odd distribution functions appear with different prefactors. A consequence is that in the description of single spin asymmetries the parton distribution and fragmentation functions are convoluted with gluonic pole cross sections rather than the basic partonic cross sections. In this paper we calculate the gluonic pole cross sections encountered in single spin asymmetries in hadronhadron scattering. The case of back-to-back pion production in polarized proton-proton scattering is worked out explicitly. It is shown how T -odd gluon distribution functions originating from gluonic pole matrix elements appear in twofold.

The destruction process of piezoelectric actuators under bipolar driving was studied using Acoustic Emission (AE) monitoring and induced-displacement measurement. The effect of floating electrode over the internal electrode's end was also investigated. Floating electrodes can suppress the field concentration and cracking in the actuator.