Polydispersity Effects in the Dynamics and Stability of Bubbling Flows

The occurrence of swarms of small bubbles in a variety of industrial systems enhances their performance. However, the effects that size polydispersity may produce on the stability of kinematic waves, the gain factor, mean bubble velocity, kinematic and dynamic wave velocities is, to our knowledge, not yet well established. We found that size polydispersity enhances the stability of a bubble column by a factor of about 23% as a function of frequency and for a particular type of bubble column. In this way our model predicts effects that might be verified experimentally but this, however, remain to be assessed. Our results reinforce the point of view advocated in this work in the sense that a description of a bubble column based on the concept of randomness of a bubble cloud and average properties of the fluid motion, may be a useful approach that has not been exploited in engineering systems.Comment: 11 pages, 2 figures, presented at the 3rd NEXT-SigmaPhi International Conference, 13-18 August, 2005, Kolymbari, Cret

Electron bifurcation mechanism and homoacetogenesis explain products yields in mixed culture anaerobic fermentations

Anaerobic fermentation of organic wastes using microbial mixed cultures is a promising avenue to treat residues and obtain added-value products. However, the process has some important limitations that prevented so far any industrial application. One of the main issues is that we are not able to predict reliably the product spectrum (i.e. the stoichiometry of the process) because the complex microbial community behaviour is not completely understood. To address this issue, in this work we propose a new metabolic network of glucose fermentation by microbial mixed cultures that incorporates electron bifurcation and homoacetogenesis. Our methodology uses NADH balances to analyse published experimental data and evaluate the new stoichiometry proposed. Our results prove for the first time the inclusion of electron bifurcation in the metabolic network as a better description of the experimental results. Homoacetogenesis has been used to explain the discrepancies between observed and theoretically predicted yields of gaseous H2 and CO2 and it appears as the best solution among other options studied. Overall, this work supports the consideration of electron bifurcation as an important biochemical mechanism in microbial mixed cultures fermentations and underlines the importance of considering homoacetogenesis when analysing anaerobic fermentations

Triaxial Angular Momentum Projection and Configuration Mixing calculations with the Gogny force

We present the first implementation in the $(\beta,\gamma)$ plane of the generator coordinate method with full triaxial angular momentum and particle number projected wave functions using the Gogny force. Technical details about the performance of the method and the convergence of the results both in the symmetry restoration and the configuration mixing parts are discussed in detail. We apply the method to the study of $^{24}$Mg, the calculated energies of excited states as well as the transition probabilities are compared to the available experimental data showing a good overall agreement. In addition, we present the RVAMPIR approach which provides a good description of the ground and gamma bands in the absence of strong mixing.Comment: 40 pages,14 figure

The continuum description with pseudo-state wave functions

Benchmark calculations are performed aiming to test the use of two different pseudo-state bases on the the Multiple Scattering expansion of the total Transition amplitude (MST) scattering framework. Calculated differential cross sections for p-6He inelastic scattering at 717 MeV/u show a good agreement between the observables calculated in the two bases. This result gives extra confidence on the pseudo-state representation of continuum states to describe inelastic/breakup scattering.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Published in Physical Review

Anomalous Roughening of Viscous Fluid Fronts in Spontaneous Imbibition

We report experiments on spontaneous imbibition of a viscous fluid by a model porous medium in the absence of gravity. The average position of the interface satisfies Washburn's law. Scaling of the interface fluctuations provides a dynamic exponent z \simeq 3, indicative of global dynamics driven by capillary forces. The complete set of exponents clearly shows that interfaces are not self-affine, exhibiting distinct local and global scaling, both for time (b=0.64\pm 0.02, b* =0.33 \pm 0.03) and space (a=1.94 \pm 0.20, a_loc=0.94 \pm 0.10). These values are compatible with an intrinsic anomalous scaling scenario.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure

Analysis and test of the central-blue-spot infall hallmark

The infall of material onto a protostar, in the case of optically thick line emission, produces an asymmetry in the blue- and red-wing line emission. For an angularly resolved emission, this translates in a blue central spot in the first-order moment (intensity weighted velocity) map. An analytical expression for the first-order moment intensity as a function of the projected distance was derived, for the cases of infinite and finite infall radius. The effect of a finite angular resolution, which requires the numerical convolution with the beam, was also studied. This method was applied to existing data of several star-forming regions, namely G31.41+0.31 HMC, B335, and LDN 1287, obtaining good fits to the first-order moment intensity maps, and deriving values of the central masses onto which the infall is taking place (G31.41+0.31 HMC: 70-120 $M_\odot$; B335: 0.1 $M_\odot$; Guitar Core of LDN 1287: 4.8 $M_\odot$). The central-blue-spot infall hallmark appears to be a robust and reliable indicator of infall.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&

Quark pseudoscalar vertex and quark mass function with clover fermions : spontaneous symmetry breaking, OPE, symmetry restoration at small volume

We study the quark mass function on hypercubic lattices, in a large range of physical volumes and cutoffs. To avoid the very large Wilson term artefact, we exploit the relation between the quark mass function and the pseudoscalar vertex in the continuum. We extrapolate to the chiral limit. In function of the physical volume, we observe a striking discontinuity in the properties of chiral extrapolation around a physical volume L_c 6 (GeV}^{-1}=1.2 fm. It is present in the quark mass function, which collapses to zero, as well as in the pion mass and the quark condensate as directly calculated from the pseudoscalar correlator. It is strongly reminiscent of the phenomenon of chiral symmetry restoration observed by Neuberger and Narayanan at $N_C=\infty$ around the same physical length. In the case of spontaneous symmetry breaking, we confirm that the OPE of the quark mass function, involving the quark condensate, is not operative at the available momenta, even taking into account the unusually large high order corrections to the Wilson coefficient calculated by Chetyrkin and Maier ; the gap remains large, around a factor 2, even at the largest momenta available to us (p \simeg GeV)Comment: 31 pages, 8 figures Comments added, one figure suppressed, various typos correcte