732 research outputs found
Ronchi test applied to measurement of surface roughness
Ronchi test is applied to measure microscopic variations in surface roughness or flatness of metallized test specimens. Light is projected through a diffraction grating onto the test specimen, and the light reflected from the specimen is viewed or photographed through the grating
Three-dimensional stability of Burgers vortices
Burgers vortices are explicit stationary solutions of the Navier-Stokes
equations which are often used to describe the vortex tubes observed in
numerical simulations of three-dimensional turbulence. In this model, the
velocity field is a two-dimensional perturbation of a linear straining flow
with axial symmetry. The only free parameter is the Reynolds number , where is the total circulation of the vortex and is
the kinematic viscosity. The purpose of this paper is to show that Burgers
vortex is asymptotically stable with respect to general three-dimensional
perturbations, for all values of the Reynolds number. This definitive result
subsumes earlier studies by various authors, which were either restricted to
small Reynolds numbers or to two-dimensional perturbations. Our proof relies on
the crucial observation that the linearized operator at Burgers vortex has a
simple and very specific dependence upon the axial variable. This allows to
reduce the full linearized equations to a vectorial two-dimensional problem,
which can be treated using an extension of the techniques developped in earlier
works. Although Burgers vortices are found to be stable for all Reynolds
numbers, the proof indicates that perturbations may undergo an important
transient amplification if is large, a phenomenon that was indeed observed
in numerical simulations.Comment: 31 pages, no figur
The Insula of Reil Revisited: Multiarchitectonic Organization in Macaque Monkeys
The insula of Reil represents a large cortical territory buried in the depth of the lateral sulcus and subdivided into 3 major cytoarchitectonic domains: agranular, dysgranular, and granular. The present study aimed at reinvestigating the architectonic organization of the monkey's insula using multiple immunohistochemical stainings (parvalbumin, PV; nonphosphorylated neurofilament protein, with SMI-32; acetylcholinesterase, AChE) in addition to Nissl and myelin. According to changes in density and laminar distributions of the neurochemical markers, several zones were defined and related to 8 cytoarchitectonic subdivisions (Ia1-Ia2/Id1-Id3/Ig1-Ig2/G). Comparison of the different patterns of staining on unfolded maps of the insula revealed: 1) parallel ventral to dorsal gradients of increasing myelin, PV- and AChE-containing fibers in middle layers, and of SMI-32 pyramidal neurons in supragranular layers, with merging of dorsal and ventral high-density bands in posterior insula, 2) definition of an insula "proper” restricted to two-thirds of the "morphological” insula (as bounded by the limiting sulcus) and characterized most notably by lower PV, and 3) the insula proper is bordered along its dorsal, posterodorsal, and posteroventral margin by a strip of cortex extending beyond the limits of the morphological insula and continuous architectonically with frontoparietal and temporal opercular areas related to gustatory, somatosensory, and auditory modalitie
Global exponential convergence to variational traveling waves in cylinders
We prove, under generic assumptions, that the special variational traveling
wave that minimizes the exponentially weighted Ginzburg-Landau functional
associated with scalar reaction-diffusion equations in infinite cylinders is
the long-time attractor for the solutions of the initial value problems with
front-like initial data. The convergence to this traveling wave is
exponentially fast. The obtained result is mainly a consequence of the gradient
flow structure of the considered equation in the exponentially weighted spaces
and does not depend on the precise details of the problem. It strengthens our
earlier generic propagation and selection result for "pushed" fronts.Comment: 23 page
Analysis of enhanced diffusion in Taylor dispersion via a model problem
We consider a simple model of the evolution of the concentration of a tracer,
subject to a background shear flow by a fluid with viscosity in an
infinite channel. Taylor observed in the 1950's that, in such a setting, the
tracer diffuses at a rate proportional to , rather than the expected
rate proportional to . We provide a mathematical explanation for this
enhanced diffusion using a combination of Fourier analysis and center manifold
theory. More precisely, we show that, while the high modes of the concentration
decay exponentially, the low modes decay algebraically, but at an enhanced
rate. Moreover, the behavior of the low modes is governed by finite-dimensional
dynamics on an appropriate center manifold, which corresponds exactly to
diffusion by a fluid with viscosity proportional to
Orbital stability of periodic waves for the nonlinear Schroedinger equation
The nonlinear Schroedinger equation has several families of quasi-periodic
travelling waves, each of which can be parametrized up to symmetries by two
real numbers: the period of the modulus of the wave profile, and the variation
of its phase over a period (Floquet exponent). In the defocusing case, we show
that these travelling waves are orbitally stable within the class of solutions
having the same period and the same Floquet exponent. This generalizes a
previous work where only small amplitude solutions were considered. A similar
result is obtained in the focusing case, under a non-degeneracy condition which
can be checked numerically. The proof relies on the general approach to orbital
stability as developed by Grillakis, Shatah, and Strauss, and requires a
detailed analysis of the Hamiltonian system satisfied by the wave profile.Comment: 34 pages, 7 figure
Carbon based double layer capacitors with aprotic electrolyte solutions: the possible role of intercalation/insertion processes
The extraordinary stability and cycle life performance of today's electrochemical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) are generally ascribed to the fact that charge storage in activated carbon (AC) is based on pure double-layer charging. In contrast, Faradaic charge-transfer reactions like those occurring in batteries are often connected with dimensional changes, which can affect the cycle life of these storage devices. Here we report the charge-induced height change of an AC electrode in an aprotic electrolyte solution, 1mol/l (C2H5)4NBF4 (TEABF4) in acetonitrile. The results are compared with those obtained for a graphite electrode in the same electrolyte. For both electrodes, we observe an expansion/contraction of several percent for a potential window of ±2V vs. the immersion potential (ip). For the EDLC electrode, significant expansion starts at about 1V remote from the ip and hence is well within the normal EDLC operation range. For the graphite electrode, the height changes are unambiguously caused by intercalation/deintercalation of both anions and cations. The close analogies between the graphite and the EDLC electrode suggest that ion intercalation or insertion processes might play a major role for charge storage, self discharge, cyclability, and the voltage limitation of EDLC
Phase Slips and the Eckhaus Instability
We consider the Ginzburg-Landau equation, , with complex amplitude . We first analyze the phenomenon of
phase slips as a consequence of the {\it local} shape of . We next prove a
{\it global} theorem about evolution from an Eckhaus unstable state, all the
way to the limiting stable finite state, for periodic perturbations of Eckhaus
unstable periodic initial data. Equipped with these results, we proceed to
prove the corresponding phenomena for the fourth order Swift-Hohenberg
equation, of which the Ginzburg-Landau equation is the amplitude approximation.
This sheds light on how one should deal with local and global aspects of phase
slips for this and many other similar systems.Comment: 22 pages, Postscript, A
Review of the twelfth West Coast retrovirus meeting
Every year the Cancer Research Institute from University of California at Irvine organizes the West Coast Retrovirus Meeting where participants have a chance to discuss the latest progress in understanding the pathology of retroviruses. The 12(th )meeting was held at the Hyatt Regency Suites in Palm Springs, California from October 6(th )to October 9(th )2005, with the major focus on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pathogenesis. Philippe Gallay from The Scripps Research Institute and Thomas J. Hope from Northwestern University organized the meeting, which covered all the steps involved in the lifecycle of retroviruses with an emphasis on virus:host interactions. The trend in research appeared to be on the restriction of viral infection, both by the endogenous, cellular restriction factors, as well as by the potential antimicrobial compounds of known or unknown mechanisms. Additionally, new stories on the inevitable feedback from the host immune system were presented as well. HIV still represents a challenge that an army of motivated people has been working on for over 20 years. And yet, the field has not reached the plateau in knowledge nor enthusiasm, which was proven again in October 2005 in Palm Springs
Interaction of vortices in viscous planar flows
We consider the inviscid limit for the two-dimensional incompressible
Navier-Stokes equation in the particular case where the initial flow is a
finite collection of point vortices. We suppose that the initial positions and
the circulations of the vortices do not depend on the viscosity parameter \nu,
and we choose a time T > 0 such that the Helmholtz-Kirchhoff point vortex
system is well-posed on the interval [0,T]. Under these assumptions, we prove
that the solution of the Navier-Stokes equation converges, as \nu -> 0, to a
superposition of Lamb-Oseen vortices whose centers evolve according to a
viscous regularization of the point vortex system. Convergence holds uniformly
in time, in a strong topology which allows to give an accurate description of
the asymptotic profile of each individual vortex. In particular, we compute to
leading order the deformations of the vortices due to mutual interactions. This
allows to estimate the self-interactions, which play an important role in the
convergence proof.Comment: 39 pages, 1 figur
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