From Development To Evolution: The Re-Establishment Of The Alexander Kowalevsky Medal

The Saint Petersburg Society of Naturalists has reinstated the Alexander O. Kowalevsky Medal. This article announces the winners of the first medals and briefly reviews the achievements of A.O. Kowalevsky,the Russian comparative embryologist whose studies on amphioxus, tunicates and germ layer homologies pioneered evolutionary embryology and confirmed the evolutionary continuity between invertebrates and vertebrates. In re-establishing this international award, the Society is pleased to recognize both the present awardees and the memory of Kowalevsky, whose work pointed to that we now call evolutionary developmental biology

Nonlinear gyrofluid computation of edge localised ideal ballooning modes

Three dimensional electromagnetic gyrofluid simulations of the ideal ballooning mode blowout scenario for tokamak edge localized modes (ELMs) are presented. Special emphasis is placed on energetic diagnosis, examining changes in the growth rate in the linear, overshoot, and decay phases. The saturation process is energy transfer to self generated edge turbulence which exhibits an ion temperature gradient (ITG) mode structure. Convergence in the decay phase is found only if the spectrum reaches the ion gyroradius. The equilibrium is a self consistent background whose evolution is taken into account. Approximately two thirds of the total energy in the edge layer is liberated in the blowout. Parameter dependence with respect to plasma pressure and the ion gyroradius is studied. Despite the violent nature of the short-lived process, the transition to nonlinearity is very similar to that found in generic tokamak edge turbulence.Comment: The following article has been submitted to Physics of Plasmas. After it is published, it will be found at http://pop.aip.org

Dilations and constrained algebras

It is well known that unital contractive representations of the disk algebra are completely contractive. Let A denote the subalgebra of the disk algebra consisting of those functions f whose first derivative vanishes at 0. We prove that there are unital contractive representations of A which are not completely contractive, and furthermore provide a Kaiser and Varopoulos inspired example for A and present a characterization of those contractive representations of A which are completely contractive. In the positive direction, for the algebra of rational functions with poles off the distinguished variety V in the bidisk determined by (z-w)(z+w)=0, unital contractive representations are completely contractive.Comment: New to version 2 is a proof of rational dilation for the distinguished variety in the bidisk determined by (z-w)(z+w)=

Shape optimization of damping layers

Shape optimization of unconstrained and constrained damping layers is completed. The specific problem analyzed is a cantilever beam loaded at its tip by a harmonic force. Finite element modeling and mathematical programming techniques are used to obtain the solution. Performance measures are taken to be reduction of maximum diplacement and increase in fatigue lifetime. Results include the improvement, over the uniform treatment case, of these measures when the profile of the damping layer is optimized

Simulated X-ray Cluster Temperature Maps

Temperature maps are presented of the 9 largest clusters in the mock catalogues of Muanwong et al. for both the Preheating and Radiative models. The maps show that clusters are not smooth, featureless systems, but contain a variety of substructure which should be observable. The surface brightness contours are generally elliptical and features that are seen include cold clumps, hot spiral features, and cold fronts. Profiles of emission-weighted temperature, surface brightness and emission-weighted pressure across the surface brightness discontinuities seen in one of the bimodal clusters are consistent with the cold front in Abell 2142 observed by Markevitch et al.Comment: Submitted to Monthly Notices Royal Astronomical Societ

Quantifying Finite Temperature Effects in Atom Chip Interferometry of Bose-Einstein Condensates

We quantify the effect of phase fluctuations on atom chip interferometry of Bose-Einstein condensates. At very low temperatures, we observe small phase fluctuations, created by mean-field depletion, and a resonant production of vortices when the two clouds are initially in anti-phase. At higher temperatures, we show that the thermal occupation of Bogoliubov modes makes vortex production vary smoothly with the initial relative phase difference between the two atom clouds. We also propose a technique to observe vortex formation directly by creating a weak link between the two clouds. The position and direction of circulation of the vortices is subsequently revealed by kinks in the interference fringes produced when the two clouds expand into one another. This procedure may be exploited for precise force measurement or motion detection.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Nonlinear surface impurity in a semi-infinite 2D square lattice

We examine the formation of localized states on a generalized nonlinear impurity located at, or near the surface of a semi-infinite 2D square lattice. Using the formalism of lattice Green functions, we obtain in closed form the number of bound states as well as their energies and probability profiles, for different nonlinearity parameter values and nonlinearity exponents, at different distances from the surface. We specialize to two cases: impurity close to an "edge" and impurity close to a "corner". We find that, unlike the case of a 1D semi-infinite lattice, in 2D, the presence of the surface helps the formation of a localized state.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures, submitted to PR