Low-energy reflectivity of electrons from single-and multi-layer graphene is examined both theoretically and experimentally. A series of minima in the reflectivity over the energy range of 0 -8 eV are found, with the number of minima depending on the number of graphene layers. Using first-principles computations, it is demonstrated that a free standing n-layer graphene slab produces 1  n reflectivity minima. This same result is also found experimentally for graphene supported on SiO 2 . For graphene bonded onto other substrates it is argued that a similar series of reflectivity minima is expected, although in certain cases an additional minimum occurs, at an energy that depends on the graphene-substrate separation and the effective potential in that space.

Training word alignment models on large corpora is a very time-consuming processes. This paper describes two parallel implementations of GIZA++ that accelerate this word alignment process. One of the implementations runs on computer clusters, the other runs on multi-processor system using multi-threading technology. Results show a near-linear speedup according to the number of CPUs used, and alignment quality is preserved.

The properties of materials change, sometimes catastrophically, as alloying elements and impurities accumulate preferentially at grain boundaries. Studies of bicrystals show that regular atomic patterns often arise as a result of this solute segregation at high-symmetry boundaries, but it is not known whether superstructures exist at general grain boundaries in polycrystals. In bismuth-doped polycrystalline nickel, we found that ordered, segregation-induced grain boundary superstructures occur at randomly selected general grain boundaries, and that these reconstructions are driven by the orientation of the terminating grain surfaces rather than by lattice matching between grains. This discovery shows that adsorbate-induced superstructures are not limited to special grain boundaries but may exist at a variety of general grain boundaries, and hence they can affect the performance of polycrystalline engineering alloys.

The reflectivity of low energy electrons from graphene on copper substrates is studied both experimentally and theoretically. Well-known oscillations in the reflectivity of electrons with energies 0 -8 eV above the vacuum level are observed in the experiment. These oscillations are reproduced in theory, based on a first-principles density functional description of interlayer states forming for various thicknesses of multilayer graphene. It is demonstrated that n layers of graphene produce a regular series of 1  n minima in the reflectance spectra, together with a possible additional minimum associated with an interlayer state forming between the graphene and the substrate. Both (111) and (001) orientations of the copper substrates are studied. Similarities in their reflectivity spectra arise from the interlayer states, whereas differences are found because of the different Cu band structures along those orientations. Results for graphene on other substrates, including Pt(111) and Ir(111), are also discussed.

Graphene-insulator-graphene vertical tunneling structures are discussed from a theoretical perspective. Momentum conservation in such devices leads to highly nonlinear current-voltage characteristics, which with gates on the tunnel junction form potentially useful transistor structures. Two prior theoretical treatments of such devices are discussed; the treatments are shown to be formally equivalent, although some differences in their implementations are identified. The limit of zero momentum conservation in the theory is explicitly considered, with a formula involving the density-of-states of the graphene electrodes recovered in this limit. Various predictions of the theory are compared to experiment.