Flow-field in a vortex with breakdown above sharp edged delta wings

The behavior of vortex-flow, accompanied with breakdown, formed above sharp-edged delta wings, was studied experimentally as well as theoretically. Emphasis is placed particularly on the criterion for the breakdown at sufficiently large Reynolds number

Relation between microstructural heterogeneous surface layer and nitrogen pressure during sintering in Si3N4-Ml2O3 ceramics

The effects of N2 pressure (0.1 to 50 MPa) during sintering on the thickness of the microstructurally heterogeneous layer (MHL) formed near the surface of the compact, transverse-rupture strength, were investigated for Si3N4-(10 to 20) mol % MgO-5.5 mol % Al2O3 ceramics. The sintering temperature and time were 1973 K and 3.6 ks, respectively. The N2 gas was introduced into the furnace at about 1273 K. When the compacts were sintered under a certain N2 pressure, for example, about 20 and 7 MPa for 10 and 15 mol% MgO, respectively, the evolutions of N and Si were suppressed. The thickness of the MHL became very small and at the same time the strength of the surface layer of the compact (which was normally less than that of the inside in the case of 0.1 MPa) became nearly the same value as that of the inside. At higher pressure, the strength of both surface layer and the inside decreased considerably. Some discussion was made on these results

Asymmetric Evaluations of Erasure and Undetected Error Probabilities

The problem of channel coding with the erasure option is revisited for discrete memoryless channels. The interplay between the code rate, the undetected and total error probabilities is characterized. Using the information spectrum method, a sequence of codes of increasing blocklengths $n$ is designed to illustrate this tradeoff. Furthermore, for additive discrete memoryless channels with uniform input distribution, we establish that our analysis is tight with respect to the ensemble average. This is done by analysing the ensemble performance in terms of a tradeoff between the code rate, the undetected and the total errors. This tradeoff is parametrized by the threshold in a generalized likelihood ratio test. Two asymptotic regimes are studied. First, the code rate tends to the capacity of the channel at a rate slower than $n^{-1/2}$ corresponding to the moderate deviations regime. In this case, both error probabilities decay subexponentially and asymmetrically. The precise decay rates are characterized. Second, the code rate tends to capacity at a rate of $n^{-1/2}$. In this case, the total error probability is asymptotically a positive constant while the undetected error probability decays as $\exp(- b n^{ 1/2})$ for some $b>0$. The proof techniques involve applications of a modified (or "shifted") version of the G\"artner-Ellis theorem and the type class enumerator method to characterize the asymptotic behavior of a sequence of cumulant generating functions.Comment: 28 pages, no figures in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 201

Chromosome mapping of dragline silk genes in the genomes of widow spiders (araneae, theridiidae)

With its incredible strength and toughness, spider dragline silk is widely lauded for its impressive material properties. Dragline silk is composed of two structural proteins, MaSp1 and MaSp2, which are encoded by members of the spidroin gene family. While previous studies have characterized the genes that encode the constituent proteins of spider silks, nothing is known about the physical location of these genes. We determined karyotypes and sex chromosome organization for the widow spiders, Latrodectus hesperus and L. geometricus (Araneae, Theridiidae). We then used fluorescence in situ hybridization to map the genomic locations of the genes for the silk proteins that compose the remarkable spider dragline. These genes included three loci for the MaSp1 protein and the single locus for the MaSp2 protein. In addition, we mapped a MaSp1 pseudogene. All the MaSp1 gene copies and pseudogene localized to a single chromosomal region while MaSp2 was located on a different chromosome of L. hesperus. Using probes derived from L. hesperus, we comparatively mapped all three MaSp1 loci to a single region of a L. geometricus chromosome. As with L. hesperus, MaSp2 was found on a separate L. geometricus chromosome, thus again unlinked to the MaSp1 loci. These results indicate orthology of the corresponding chromosomal regions in the two widow genomes. Moreover, the occurrence of multiple MaSp1 loci in a conserved gene cluster across species suggests that MaSp1 proliferated by tandem duplication in a common ancestor of L. geometricus and L. hesperus. Unequal crossover events during recombination could have given rise to the gene copies and could also maintain sequence similarity among gene copies over time. Further comparative mapping with taxa of increasing divergence from Latrodectus will pinpoint when the MaSp1 duplication events occurred and the phylogenetic distribution of silk gene linkage patterns. © 2010 Zhao et al

Minimum Rates of Approximate Sufficient Statistics

Given a sufficient statistic for a parametric family of distributions, one can estimate the parameter without access to the data. However, the memory or code size for storing the sufficient statistic may nonetheless still be prohibitive. Indeed, for $n$ independent samples drawn from a $k$-nomial distribution with $d=k-1$ degrees of freedom, the length of the code scales as $d\log n+O(1)$. In many applications, we may not have a useful notion of sufficient statistics (e.g., when the parametric family is not an exponential family) and we also may not need to reconstruct the generating distribution exactly. By adopting a Shannon-theoretic approach in which we allow a small error in estimating the generating distribution, we construct various {\em approximate sufficient statistics} and show that the code length can be reduced to $\frac{d}{2}\log n+O(1)$. We consider errors measured according to the relative entropy and variational distance criteria. For the code constructions, we leverage Rissanen's minimum description length principle, which yields a non-vanishing error measured according to the relative entropy. For the converse parts, we use Clarke and Barron's formula for the relative entropy of a parametrized distribution and the corresponding mixture distribution. However, this method only yields a weak converse for the variational distance. We develop new techniques to achieve vanishing errors and we also prove strong converses. The latter means that even if the code is allowed to have a non-vanishing error, its length must still be at least $\frac{d}{2}\log n$.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Electrical pump-and-probe study of spin singlet-triplet relaxation in a quantum dot

Spin relaxation from a triplet excited state to a singlet ground state in a semiconductor quantum dot is studied by employing an electrical pump-and-probe method. Spin relaxation occurs via cotunneling when the tunneling rate is relatively large, confirmed by a characteristic square dependence of the relaxation rate on the tunneling rate. When cotunneling is suppressed by reducing the tunneling rate, the intrinsic spin relaxation is dominated by spin-orbit interaction. We discuss a selection rule of the spin-orbit interaction based on the observed double-exponential decay of the triplet state.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure