How to project onto extended second order cones

The extended second order cones were introduced by S. Z. N\'emeth and G. Zhang in [S. Z. N\'emeth and G. Zhang. Extended Lorentz cones and variational inequalities on cylinders. J. Optim. Theory Appl., 168(3):756-768, 2016] for solving mixed complementarity problems and variational inequalities on cylinders. R. Sznajder in [R. Sznajder. The Lyapunov rank of extended second order cones. Journal of Global Optimization, 66(3):585-593, 2016] determined the automorphism groups and the Lyapunov or bilinearity ranks of these cones. S. Z. N\'emeth and G. Zhang in [S.Z. N\'emeth and G. Zhang. Positive operators of Extended Lorentz cones. arXiv:1608.07455v2, 2016] found both necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for a linear operator to be a positive operator of an extended second order cone. This note will give formulas for projecting onto the extended second order cones. In the most general case the formula will depend on a piecewise linear equation for one real variable which will be solved by using numerical methods

On the spherical convexity of quadratic functions

In this paper we study the spherical convexity of quadratic functions on spherically convex sets. In particular, conditions characterizing the spherical convexity of quadratic functions on spherical convex sets associated to the positive orthants and Lorentz cones are given

Faceted anomalous scaling in the epitaxial growth of semiconductor films

We apply the generic dynamical scaling theory (GDST) to the surfaces of CdTe polycrystalline films grown in glass substrates. The analysed data were obtained with a stylus profiler with an estimated resolution lateral resolution of $l_c=0.3 \mu$m. Both real two-point correlation function and power spectrum analyses were done. We found that the GDST applied to the surface power spectra foresees faceted morphology in contrast with the self-affine surface indicated by the local roughness exponent found via the height-height correlation function. This inconsistency is explained in terms of convolution effects resulting from the finite size of the probe tip used to scan the surfaces. High resolution AFM images corroborates the predictions of GDST.Comment: to appear in Europhysics Letter

Transition on the entropic elasticity of DNA induced by intercalating molecules

We use optical tweezers to perform stretching experiments on DNA molecules when interacting with the drugs daunomycin and ethidium bromide, which intercalate the DNA molecule. These experiments are performed in the low-force regime from zero up to 2 pN. Our results show that the persistence length of the DNA-drug complexes increases strongly as the drug concentration increases up to some critical value. Above this critical value, the persistence length decreases abruptly and remains practically constant for larger drug concentrations. The contour length of the molecules increases monotonically and saturates as drugs concentration increases. Measured in- tercalants critical concentrations for the persistence length transition coincide with reported values for the helix-coil transition of DNA-drug complexes, obtained from sedimentation experiments.Comment: This experimental article shows and discuss a transition observed in the persistence length of DNA molecules when studied as a function of some intercalating drug concentrations, like daunomycin and ethidium bromide. It has 15 pages and 4 figures. The article presented here is in preprint forma