1,262 research outputs found
Velocity selection problem for combined motion of melting and solidification fronts
We discuss a free boundary problem for two moving solid-liquid interfaces
that strongly interact via the diffusion field in the liquid layer between
them. This problem arises in the context of liquid film migration (LFM) during
the partial melting of solid alloys. In the LFM mechanism the system chooses a
more efficient kinetic path which is controlled by diffusion in the liquid
film, whereas the process with only one melting front would be controlled by
the very slow diffusion in the mother solid phase. The relatively weak
coherency strain energy is the effective driving force for LFM. As in the
classical dendritic growth problems, also in this case an exact family of
steady-state solutions with two parabolic fronts and an arbitrary velocity
exists if capillary effects are neglected. We develop a velocity selection
theory for this problem, including anisotropic surface tension effects. The
strong diffusion interaction and coherency strain effects in the solid near the
melting front lead to substantial changes compared to classical dendritic
growth.Comment: submitted to PR
Distributing the burdens of climate change
Global climate change raises many questions for environmental political theorists. This article focuses on the question of identifying the agents that should bear the financial burden of preventing dangerous climate change. Identifying in a fair way the agents that should take the lead in climate mitigation and adaptation, as well as the precise burdens that these parties must bear, will be a key aspect of the next generation of global climate policies. After a critical review of a number of rival approaches to burden sharing, the paper argues that only a principled and philosophically robust reconciliation of three approaches to burden sharing (‘contribution to problem’, ‘ability to pay’ and ‘beneficiary pays’) can generate a satisfactory mix of theoretical coherence and practical application
On the role of confinement on solidification in pure materials and binary alloys
We use a phase-field model to study the effect of confinement on dendritic
growth, in a pure material solidifying in an undercooled melt, and in the
directional solidification of a dilute binary alloy. Specifically, we observe
the effect of varying the vertical domain extent () on tip selection,
by quantifying the dendrite tip velocity and curvature as a function of
, and other process parameters. As decreases, we find that the
operating state of the dendrite tips becomes significantly affected by the
presence of finite boundaries. For particular boundary conditions, we observe a
switching of the growth state from 3-D to 2-D at very small , in both
the pure material and alloy. We demonstrate that results from the alloy model
compare favorably with those from an experimental study investigating this
effect.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, 3 table
Flux networks in metabolic graphs
A metabolic model can be represented as bipartite graph comprising linked
reaction and metabolite nodes. Here it is shown how a network of conserved
fluxes can be assigned to the edges of such a graph by combining the reaction
fluxes with a conserved metabolite property such as molecular weight. A similar
flux network can be constructed by combining the primal and dual solutions to
the linear programming problem that typically arises in constraint-based
modelling. Such constructions may help with the visualisation of flux
distributions in complex metabolic networks. The analysis also explains the
strong correlation observed between metabolite shadow prices (the dual linear
programming variables) and conserved metabolite properties. The methods were
applied to recent metabolic models for Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces
cerevisiae, and Methanosarcina barkeri. Detailed results are reported for E.
coli; similar results were found for the other organisms.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, RevTeX 4.0, supplementary data available (excel
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