ARBITRARY ORDER FINITE VOLUME WELL-BALANCED SCHEMES FOR THE EULER EQUATIONS WITH GRAVITY

This work presents arbitrary high order well balanced finite volume schemes for the Euler equations with a prescribed gravitational field. It is assumed that the desired equilibrium solution is known, and we construct a scheme which is exactly well balanced for that particular equilibrium. The scheme is based on high order reconstructions of the fluctuations from equilibrium of density, velocity, and pressure, and on a well-balanced integration of the source terms, while no assumptions are needed on the numerical flux, beside consistency. This technique also allows one to construct well-balanced methods for a class of moving equilibria. Several numerical tests demonstrate the performance of the scheme on different scenarios, from equilibrium solutions to nonsteady problems involving shocks. The numerical tests are carried out with methods up to fifth order in one dimension, and third order accuracy in two dimensions

One- and Multi-dimensional CWENOZ Reconstructions for Implementing Boundary Conditions Without Ghost Cells

We address the issue of point value reconstructions from cell averages in the context of third-order finite volume schemes, focusing in particular on the cells close to the boundaries of the domain. In fact, most techniques in the literature rely on the creation of ghost cells outside the boundary and on some form of extrapolation from the inside that, taking into account the boundary conditions, fills the ghost cells with appropriate values, so that a standard reconstruction can be applied also in the boundary cells. In Naumann et al. (Appl. Math. Comput. 325: 252-270. https://doi.org110.1016/j.amc.2017.12.041, 2018), motivated by the difficulty of choosing appropriate boundary conditions at the internal nodes of a network, a different technique was explored that avoids the use of ghost cells, but instead employs for the boundary cells a different stencil, biased towards the interior of the domain. In this paper, extending that approach, which does not make use of ghost cells, we propose a more accurate reconstruction for the one-dimensional case and a two-dimensional one for Cartesian grids. In several numerical tests, we compare the novel reconstruction with the standard approach using ghost cells

Quinpi: Integrating Conservation Laws with CWENO Implicit Methods

Many interesting applications of hyperbolic systems of equations are stiff, and require the time step to satisfy restrictive stability conditions. One way to avoid small time steps is to use implicit time integration. Implicit integration is quite straightforward for first-order schemes. High order schemes instead also need to control spurious oscillations, which requires limiting in space and time also in the linear case. We propose a framework to simplify considerably the application of high order non-oscillatory schemes through the introduction of a low order implicit predictor, which is used both to set up the nonlinear weights of a standard high order space reconstruction, and to achieve limiting in time. In this preliminary work, we concentrate on the case of a third-order scheme, based on diagonally implicit Runge Kutta (DIRK) integration in time and central weighted essentially non-oscillatory (CWENO) reconstruction in space. The numerical tests involve linear and nonlinear scalar conservation laws

One- and multi-dimensional CWENOZ reconstructions for implementing boundary conditions without ghost cells

We address the issue of point value reconstructions from cell averages in the context of third order finite volume schemes, focusing in particular on the cells close to the boundaries of the domain. In fact, most techniques known in the literature rely on the creation of ghost cells outside the boundary and on some form of extrapolation from the inside that, taking into account the boundary conditions, fills the ghost cells with appropriate values, so that a standard reconstruction can be applied also in boundary cells. In (Naumann, Kolb, Semplice, 2018), motivated by the difficulty of choosing appropriate boundary conditions at the internal nodes of a network, a different technique was explored that avoids the use of ghost cells, but instead employs for the boundary cells a different stencil, biased towards the interior of the domain. In this paper, extending that approach, which does not make use of ghost cells, we propose a more accurate reconstruction for the one-dimensional case and a two-dimensional one for Cartesian grids. In several numerical tests we compare the novel reconstruction with the standard approach using ghost cells

The use of stable and radioactive sterol tracers as a tool to investigate cholesterol degradation to bile acids in humans in vivo

Alterations of cholesterol homeostasis represent important risk factors for atherosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. Different clinical-experimental approaches have been devised to study the metabolism of cholesterol and particularly the synthesis of bile acids, its main catabolic products. Most evidence in humans has derived from studies utilizing the administration of labeled sterols; these have several advantages over in vitro assay of enzyme activity and expression, requiring an invasive procedure such as a liver biopsy, or the determination of fecal sterols, which is cumbersome and not commonly available. Pioneering evidence with administration of radioactive sterol derivatives has allowed to characterize the alterations of cholesterol metabolism and degradation in different situations, including spontaneous disease conditions, aging, and drug treatment. Along with the classical isotope dilution methodology, other approaches were proposed, among which isotope release following radioactive substrate administration. More recently, stable isotope studies have allowed to overcome radioactivity exposure. Isotope enrichment studies during tracer infusion has allowed to characterize changes in the degradation of cholesterol via the “classical” and the “alternative” pathways of bile acid synthesis. Evidence brought by tracer studies in vivo, summarized here, provides an exceptional tool for the investigation of sterol metabolism, and integrate the studies in vitro on human tissue

Central Schemes for Nonconservative Hyperbolic Systems

In this work we present a new approach to the construction of high order finite volume central schemes on staggered grids for general hyperbolic systems, including those not admitting a conservation form. The method is based on finite volume space discretization on staggered cells, central Runge-Kutta time discretization, and integration over a family of paths, associated to the system itself, for the generalization of the method to nonconservative systems. Applications to the one and the two layers shallow water models as prototypes of systems of balance laws and systems with source terms and nonconservative products respectively, will be illustrated

Non‐coding RNAs in bone remodelling and bone metastasis : mechanisms of action and translational relevance

Bone metastases are frequent complications in patients with advanced cancer, which can be fatal or may rapidly impede the quality of life of patients. Current treatments for patients with bone metastases are palliative. Therefore, a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms that precede the overt development of skeletal lesions could lead to better therapeutic interventions. In this review, we present evidence that non‐coding RNAs (ncRNAs) such as long non‐coding RNAs (lncRNAs), microRNAs (miRNAs), and circular RNAs (circRNAs) are emerging as master regulators of bone metastasis formation. We highlight potential opportunities for the therapeutic targeting of ncRNAs. Furthermore, we discuss the possibility that ncRNAs may be used as biomarkers in the context of bone metastases, which might provide insight for improving the response to current bone‐targeting therapies

Fundamental diagrams in traffic flow: the case of heterogeneous kinetic models

Experimental studies on vehicular traffic provide data on quantities like density, flux, and mean speed of the vehicles. However, the diagrams relating these variables (the fundamental and speed diagrams) show some peculiarities not yet fully reproduced nor explained by mathematical models. In this paper, resting on the methods of kinetic theory, we introduce a new traffic model which takes into account the heterogeneous nature of the flow of vehicles along a road. In more detail, the model considers traffic as a mixture of two or more populations of vehicles (e.g., cars and trucks) with different microscopic characteristics, in particular different lengths and/or maximum speeds. With this approach we gain some insights into the scattering of the data in the regime of congested traffic clearly shown by actual measurements

AnAll Speed SecondOrder IMEXRelaxation Scheme for the Euler Equations

We present an implicit-explicit finite volume scheme for the Euler equations. We start from the non-dimensionalised Euler equations where we split the pressure in a slow and a fast acoustic part. We use a Suliciu type relaxation model which we split in an explicit part, solved using a Godunov-type scheme based on an approximate Riemann solver, and an implicit part where we solve an elliptic equation for the fast pressure. The relaxation source terms are treated projecting the solution on the equilibrium manifold. The proposed scheme is positivity preserving with respect to the density and internal energy and asymptotic preserving towards the incompressible Euler equations. For this first order scheme we give a second order extension which maintains the positivity property. We perform numerical experiments in 1D and 2D to show the applicability of the proposed splitting and give convergence results for the second order extension