The measurement of lubricant-film thickness using ultrasound

Ultrasound is reflected from a liquid layer between two solid bodies. This reflection depends on the ultrasonic frequency, the acoustic properties of the liquid and solid, and the layer thickness. If the wavelength is much greater than the liquid-layer thickness, then the response is governed by the stiffness of the layer. If the wavelength and layer thickness are similar, then the interaction of ultrasound with the layer is controlled by its resonant behaviour. This stiffness governed response and resonant response can be used to determine the thickness of the liquid layer, if the other parameters are known. In this paper, ultrasound has been developed as a method to determine the thickness of lubricating films in bearing systems. An ultrasonic transducer is positioned on the outside of a bearing shell such that the wave is focused on the lubricant-film layer. The transducer is used to both emit and receive wide-band ultrasonic pulses. For a particular lubricant film, the reflected pulse is processed to give a reflection-coefficient spectrum. The lubricant-film thickness is then obtained from either the layer stiffness or the resonant frequency. The method has been validated using fluid wedges at ambient pressure between flat and curved surfaces. Experiments on the elastohydrodynamic film formed between a sliding ball and a flat surface were performed. Film-thickness values in the range 50-500 nm were recorded, which agreed well with theoretical film-formation predictions. Similar measurements have been made on the oil film between the balls and outer raceway of a deep-groove ball bearing

The shape of jamming arches in two-dimensional deposits of granular materials

We present experimental results on the shape of arches that block the outlet of a two dimensional silo. For a range of outlet sizes, we measure some properties of the arches such as the number of particles involved, the span, the aspect ratio, and the angles between mutually stabilizing particles. These measurements shed light on the role of frictional tangential forces in arching. In addition, we find that arches tend to adopt an aspect ratio (the quotient between height and half the span) close to one, suggesting an isotropic load. The comparison of the experimental results with data from numerical models of the arches formed in the bulk of a granular column reveals the similarities of both, as well as some limitations in the few existing models.Comment: 8 pages; submitted to Physical Review

A supercritical series analysis for the generalized contact process with diffusion

We study a model that generalizes the CP with diffusion. An additional transition is included in the model so that at a particular point of its phase diagram a crossover from the directed percolation to the compact directed percolation class will happen. We are particularly interested in the effect of diffusion on the properties of the crossover between the universality classes. To address this point, we develop a supercritical series expansion for the ultimate survival probability and analyse this series using d-log Pad\'e and partial differential approximants. We also obtain approximate solutions in the one- and two-site dynamical mean-field approximations. We find evidences that, at variance to what happens in mean-field approximations, the crossover exponent remains close to $\phi=2$ even for quite high diffusion rates, and therefore the critical line in the neighborhood of the multicritical point apparently does not reproduce the mean-field result (which leads to $\phi=0$) as the diffusion rate grows without bound

Strong Approximation of Empirical Copula Processes by Gaussian Processes

We provide the strong approximation of empirical copula processes by a Gaussian process. In addition we establish a strong approximation of the smoothed empirical copula processes and a law of iterated logarithm

Patient-specific Conditional Joint Models of Shape, Image Features and Clinical Indicators

We propose and demonstrate a joint model of anatomical shapes, image features and clinical indicators for statistical shape modeling and medical image analysis. The key idea is to employ a copula model to separate the joint dependency structure from the marginal distributions of variables of interest. This separation provides flexibility on the assumptions made during the modeling process. The proposed method can handle binary, discrete, ordinal and continuous variables. We demonstrate a simple and efficient way to include binary, discrete and ordinal variables into the modeling. We build Bayesian conditional models based on observed partial clinical indicators, features or shape based on Gaussian processes capturing the dependency structure. We apply the proposed method on a stroke dataset to jointly model the shape of the lateral ventricles, the spatial distribution of the white matter hyperintensity associated with periventricular white matter disease, and clinical indicators. The proposed method yields interpretable joint models for data exploration and patient-specific statistical shape models for medical image analysis.Comment: Supplementary material: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPoHP_iFQI

2022 Proposed base case model for eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna assessment using stock synthesis.

This document presents the proposed base case for the assessment of Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean population of bluefin tuna using Stock Synthesis in 2022. The model runs from 1950 to 2020 and was fitted to length composition data, conditional age-at-length (otolith and spines–length-age pairs), 16 fishing fleets and 11 indices of abundance. Growth is modeled by a Richards function with Linf fixed at 271 cm, K fixed at 0.23387, and the shape parameter is estimated by the model. A Beverton-Holt stock recruitment relationship was estimated in the model with the steepness and sigmaR fixed at 0.9 and 0.6, respectively. R0 is freely estimated. Although the diagnostics indicate an acceptable stability of the model, there are important conflicts between the catch information, length composition and index data. The model fits to length compositions were not good, but the model followed most of the indices fairly fine. The model results showed that the SSB decreased since 1950 until 1970s, remaining relatively stable at low values during the 1980-2009 period, and showing a sharp and steady increased since 2010. Model diagnostics indicated that the different source of data provides contradicting information about the stock, resulting in biases in the results

Successful transplantation and in vitro expansion of human retinal pigment epithelium and its characterization; a step towards cell-based therapy for age-related macular degeneration.

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Spin-Atomic Vibration Interaction and Spin-Flip Hamiltonian of a Single Atomic Spin in a Crystal Field

We derive the spin-atomic vibration interaction $V_{\rm SA}$ and the spin-flip Hamiltonian $V_{\rm SF}$ of a single atomic spin in a crystal field. We here apply the perturbation theory to a model with the spin-orbit interaction and the kinetic and potential energies of electrons. The model also takes into account the difference in vibration displacement between an effective nucleus and electrons, \Delta {{\boldmath r}}. Examining the coefficients of $V_{\rm SA}$ and $V_{\rm SF}$, we first show that $V_{\rm SA}$ appears for \Delta {{\boldmath r}}$\ne$0, while $V_{\rm SF}$ is present independently of \Delta {{\boldmath r}}. As an application, we next obtain $V_{\rm SA}$ and $V_{\rm SF}$ of an Fe ion in a crystal field of tetragonal symmetry. It is found that the magnitudes of the coefficients of $V_{\rm SA}$ can be larger than those of the conventional spin-phonon interaction depending on vibration frequency. In addition, transition probabilities per unit time due to $V_{\rm SA}$ and $V_{\rm SF}$ are investigated for the Fe ion with an anisotropy energy of $-|D|S_Z^2$, where $D$ is an anisotropy constant and $S_Z$ is the $Z$ component of a spin operator.Comment: 55 pages, 17 figures, to be published in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 79 (2010) No. 11, typos correcte