Analytical solution of a generalized Penna model

In 1995 T.J.Penna introduced a simple model of biological aging. A modified Penna model has been demonstrated to exhibit behaviour of real-life systems including catastrophic senescence in salmon and a mortality plateau at advanced ages. We present a general steady-state, analytic solution to the Penna model, able to deal with arbitrary birth and survivability functions. This solution is employed to solve standard variant Penna models studied by simulation. Different Verhulst factors regulating both the birth rate and external death rate are considered.Comment: 6 figure

Damage Spreading in ±J\pm J Asymmetric Ising Spin Glasses

Spin glasses in dimensions 2, 3, 4 and mean field are studied numerically as a function of the degree of asymmetry of the interactions between spins. Damage spreading data are used to assess the effects on the spin glass ordering of introducing asymmetry in the couplings. In all dimensions the critical temperature for damage spreading is rather insensitive to the asymmetry, but the spin glass ordering is strongly suppressed by any finite degree of asymmetry. We discuss the physical significance of the damage spreading parameter

Thermal growth of silicon oxynitride films on Si: A reaction-diffusion approach

We present some experimental results and propose a reaction-diffusion model to describe thermal growth of silicon oxynitride films on Si in NO and N2O, as well as annealing in NO of thermally grown silicon oxide films on Si. We obtain growth kinetics and N and O depth distributions for the different growth routes by changing only initial and boundary conditions of a set of nonlinear differential equations. The results suggest that the puzzling differences in film growth rate and N incorporation originate from dynamical effects, rather than in differences in chemical reactions