Optical spectroscopy of rare earth ions in glasses

The relationships between host glass composition and optical properties of rare earth ions were studied by means of absorption and emission spectroscopy. Eu³⁺ and Tb³⁺ were found to be appropriate indicator ions for determining the properties of the local environment around rare earth ions. Er³⁺ and Nd³⁺ ions are widely used in lasers and amplifiers. The knowledge of the compositional influence on the spectroscopic parameters of rare earth ions enabled the modeling of the emission properties of important Er³⁺ and Nd³⁺ transitions in order to figure out the Optimum host glasses. Fluoride phosphate and phosphate glasses are attractive candidates for lasers and amplifiers. In these glasses, the degree of covalency between the rare earth ions and surrounding ligands mainly affects the spectroscopic parameters of rare earth ions such as Judd-Ofelt parameters and electron-phonon coupling strength. The increase of the electron-phonon coupling strength with the phosphate content is responsible for the decrease of the Er³⁺ emission intensity at 540 nm. Otherwise, it increases the Er³⁺ emission intensity at 1.5 µm in the fluoride phosphate glasses. The lower microparameters of Nd³⁺ cross relaxation in phosphate glasses cause the higher lifetimes of the Nd³⁺ ⁴F₃/₂ laser State at higher Nd³⁺ concentrations with respect to fluoride phosphate glasses. The energy transfer to OH groups in phosphate glasses decreases the hfetime and emission intensity of the laser State of both Er³⁺ and Nd³⁺ ions

A dual modelling of evolving political opinion networks

We present the result of a dual modeling of opinion network. The model complements the agent-based opinion models by attaching to the social agent (voters) network a political opinion (party) network having its own intrinsic mechanisms of evolution. These two sub-networks form a global network which can be either isolated from or dependent on the external influence. Basically, the evolution of the agent network includes link adding and deleting, the opinion changes influenced by social validation, the political climate, the attractivity of the parties and the interaction between them. The opinion network is initially composed of numerous nodes representing opinions or parties which are located on a one dimensional axis according to their political positions. The mechanism of evolution includes union, splitting, change of position and of attractivity, taken into account the pairwise node interaction decaying with node distance in power law. The global evolution ends in a stable distribution of the social agents over a quasi-stable and fluctuating stationary number of remaining parties. Empirical study on the lifetime distribution of numerous parties and vote results is carried out to verify numerical results

Fatigue evaluation in maintenance and assembly operations by digital human simulation

Virtual human techniques have been used a lot in industrial design in order to consider human factors and ergonomics as early as possible. The physical status (the physical capacity of virtual human) has been mostly treated as invariable in the current available human simulation tools, while indeed the physical capacity varies along time in an operation and the change of the physical capacity depends on the history of the work as well. Virtual Human Status is proposed in this paper in order to assess the difficulty of manual handling operations, especially from the physical perspective. The decrease of the physical capacity before and after an operation is used as an index to indicate the work difficulty. The reduction of physical strength is simulated in a theoretical approach on the basis of a fatigue model in which fatigue resistances of different muscle groups were regressed from 24 existing maximum endurance time (MET) models. A framework based on digital human modeling technique is established to realize the comparison of physical status. An assembly case in airplane assembly is simulated and analyzed under the framework. The endurance time and the decrease of the joint moment strengths are simulated. The experimental result in simulated operations under laboratory conditions confirms the feasibility of the theoretical approach

Wave energy localization by self-focusing in large molecular structures: a damped stochastic discrete nonlinear Schroedinger equation model

Wave self-focusing in molecular systems subject to thermal effects, such as thin molecular films and long biomolecules, can be modeled by stochastic versions of the Discrete Self-Trapping equation of Eilbeck, Lomdahl and Scott, and this can be approximated by continuum limits in the form of stochastic nonlinear Schroedinger equations. Previous studies directed at the SNLS approximations have indicated that the self-focusing of wave energy to highly localized states can be inhibited by phase noise (modeling thermal effects) and can be restored by phase damping (modeling heat radiation). We show that the continuum limit is probably ill-posed in the presence of spatially uncorrelated noise, at least with little or no damping, so that discrete models need to be addressed directly. Also, as has been noted by other authors, omission of damping produces highly unphysical results. Numerical results are presented for the first time for the discrete models including the highly nonlinear damping term, and new numerical methods are introduced for this purpose. Previous conjectures are in general confirmed, and the damping is shown to strongly stabilize the highly localized states of the discrete models. It appears that the previously noted inhibition of nonlinear wave phenomena by noise is an artifact of modeling that includes the effects of heat, but not of heat loss.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures, revision of talk at FPU+50 conference in Rouen, June 200

Overview of mathematical approaches used to model bacterial chemotaxis I: the single cell

Mathematical modeling of bacterial chemotaxis systems has been influential and insightful in helping to understand experimental observations. We provide here a comprehensive overview of the range of mathematical approaches used for modeling, within a single bacterium, chemotactic processes caused by changes to external gradients in its environment. Specific areas of the bacterial system which have been studied and modeled are discussed in detail, including the modeling of adaptation in response to attractant gradients, the intracellular phosphorylation cascade, membrane receptor clustering, and spatial modeling of intracellular protein signal transduction. The importance of producing robust models that address adaptation, gain, and sensitivity are also discussed. This review highlights that while mathematical modeling has aided in understanding bacterial chemotaxis on the individual cell scale and guiding experimental design, no single model succeeds in robustly describing all of the basic elements of the cell. We conclude by discussing the importance of this and the future of modeling in this area