Stability of Travelling Waves for a Cross-Diffusion Model

AbstractA cross-diffusion model of mono-species forest with two age classes is considered in this paper. ByC0-semigroup theory and a detailed spectral analysis, the asymptotic stability of travelling waves is proved

Numerical analysis of direct-chill casting of aluminum ingot

Direct chill (DC) semi-continuous casting is the most efficient way to produce large aluminum ingots. This process consists of three main stages; transient stage, steady-state stage, and post-drop stage. During transient stage, the ingot is subjected to rapid cooling rate and thus resulted in the build-up of high thermal stresses that can often lead to ingot cracking failure.;Based on a fully coupled heat-transfer and thermal-stress analysis model, which has been developed using a commercial finite element (FE) package ABAQUS(TM) with a user subroutine developed in-house, the temperature and stress fields were obtained for various casting conditions. Three post-processing programs were developed to analyze and present the FE simulation results. The first program, CONVERT, processes data files from ABAQUS(TM) and then determines the normalized stresses in the ingot. The magnitude, location of maximum stress level, and the directions of maximum principal stresses are determined to assess the mechanism of ingot cracking. The second program, REGRESS, is used for statistical regression analysis, which involves casting parameters such as casting speed, water flow rate, ingot aspect ratio, and comer radius. Results of REGRESS are input to a program, PREDICTION, which provides visualization of the temperature and stress fields on a PC monitor. Further, the user can choose desired casting parameters in PREDICTION to predict temperature and stress fields at selected ingot lengths during casting. Validity of the program PREDICTION is checked with additional simulation results from ABAQUS(TM) and good agreement is noted

A Physical-Constraint-Preserving Finite Volume WENO Method for Special Relativistic Hydrodynamics on Unstructured Meshes

This paper presents a highly robust third-order accurate finite volume weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) method for special relativistic hydrodynamics on unstructured triangular meshes. We rigorously prove that the proposed method is physical-constraint-preserving (PCP), namely, always preserves the positivity of the pressure and the rest-mass density as well as the subluminal constraint on the fluid velocity. The method is built on a highly efficient compact WENO reconstruction on unstructured meshes, a simple PCP limiter, the provably PCP property of the Harten--Lax--van Leer flux, and third-order strong-stability-preserving time discretization. Due to the relativistic effects, the primitive variables (namely, the rest-mass density, velocity, and pressure) are highly nonlinear implicit functions in terms of the conservative variables, making the design and analysis of our method nontrivial. To address the difficulties arising from the strong nonlinearity, we adopt a novel quasilinear technique for the theoretical proof of the PCP property. Three provable convergence-guaranteed iterative algorithms are also introduced for the robust recovery of primitive quantities from admissible conservative variables. We also propose a slight modification to an existing WENO reconstruction to ensure the scaling invariance of the nonlinear weights and thus to accommodate the homogeneity of the evolution operator, leading to the advantages of the modified WENO reconstruction in resolving multi-scale wave structures. Extensive numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the robustness, expected accuracy, and high resolution of the proposed method.Comment: 56 pages, 18 figure

Dendrimers as Dopant Atom Carriers

Properties of modern semiconducting transistors and future electron or quantum devices are essentially determined by single dopant atoms. How to precisely control the individual dopant position is one of the key factors to advance these technologies. In this chapter, we first briefly introduce the research progress in single dopant devices. To fabricate single dopant devices at large scale, we then overview our previous propose to control the locations of single dopants by self-assembly of large molecules (polyglycerols) with each carrying one dopant atom. The synthesis process, doping properties, and challenges of the molecular doping technique will be thoroughly elaborated before we conclude this chapter

Migration, Consumption Smoothing and Household Income: Evidence from Thailand

The main argument of this paper is that migration does not necessarily reduce informal risk sharing in the village. We model migration as a kind of storage technology with uncertain payments for a household. Theoretical conditions, under which the “technology” can improve risk sharing in a dynamic limited commitment framework, are provided. Our empirical findings also show positive impacts of migration on risk sharing, in particular, when children migrate for education opportunities. The data are from the Townsend Thai Annual Surveys (1999-2010). The impacts of migration on income and on consumption smoothing are jointly estimated in a simultaneously determined system.DFI

Small-molecule PROTAC mediates targeted protein degradation to treat STAT3-dependent epithelial cancer

The aberrant activation of STAT3 is associated with the etiology and progression in a variety of malignant epithelial-derived tumors, including head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and colorectal cancer (CRC). Due to the lack of an enzymatic catalytic site or a ligand-binding pocket, there are no small-molecule inhibitors directly targeting STAT3 that have been approved for clinical translation. Emerging proteolysis targeting chimeric (PROTAC) technology-based approach represents a potential strategy to overcome the limitations of conventional inhibitors and inhibit activation of STAT3 and downstream genes. In this study, the heterobifunctional small-molecule-based PROTACs are successfully prepared from toosendanin (TSN), with 1 portion binding to STAT3 and the other portion binding to an E3 ubiquitin ligase. The optimized lead PROTAC (TSM-1) exhibits superior selectivity, potency, and robust antitumor effects in STAT3-dependent HNSCC and CRC - especially in clinically relevant patient-derived xenografts (PDX) and patient-derived organoids (PDO). The following mechanistic investigation identifies the reduced expression of critical downstream STAT3 effectors, through which TSM-1 promotes cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in tumor cells. These findings provide the first demonstration to our knowledge of a successful PROTAC-targeting strategy in STAT3-dependent epithelial cancer

Health Care Insurance Payment Policy when the Physician and Patient May Collude

This paper analyzes the three-party contracting problem among the payer, the patient and the physician when the patient and the physician may collude to exploit mutually beneficial opportunities. Under the hypothesis that side transfer is ruled out, we analyze the mechanism design problem when the physician and the patient submit the claim to the payer through a reporting game. To induce truth telling by the two agents, the weak collusion-proof insurance payment mechanism is such that it is sufficient that one of them tells the truth. Moreover, we identify trade-offs of a different nature faced by the payer according to whether incentives are placed on the patient or the physician. We also derive the optimal insurance scheme for the patient and the optimal payment for the physician. Moreover, we show that if the payer is able to ask the two parties to report the diagnosis sequentially, the advantage of the veto power of the second agent allows the payer to achieve the first-best outcome

The effects of evidence type on online health headline selection – A moderation of thinking style

The acquisition of health information is conducive to promoting the public's health literacy and improving citizens' health. The display of online health information features an entering page that lists headlines hyperlinked to health article pages. Among the various techniques that help increase headline effectiveness, this study was particularly interested in evidence type (anecdotal type/numerical) and investigated how it influenced headline selection in the form of fixation and clicking and considered thinking styles as a possible moderator. Based on an eyetracking experiment, this study found that participants were more likely to click on numerical headline than anecdotal headline. In addition, message credibility had moderating effects on the relationship between evidence type and fixation and that between evidence type and clicking count. The findings provide useful implications for creating effective online headlines in the health domain and enrich our understanding of how information characteristics affect information selection

Health Care Insurance Payment Policy when the Physician and Patient May Collude

This paper analyzes the three-party contracting problem among the payer, the patient and the physician when the patient and the physician may collude to exploit mutually beneficial opportunities. Under the hypothesis that side transfer is ruled out, we analyze the mechanism design problem when the physician and the patient submit the claim to the payer through a reporting game. To induce truth telling by the two agents, the weak collusion-proof insurance payment mechanism is such that it is sufficient that one of them tells the truth. Moreover, we identify trade-offs of a different nature faced by the payer according to whether incentives are placed on the patient or the physician. We also derive the optimal insurance scheme for the patient and the optimal payment for the physician. Moreover, we show that if the payer is able to ask the two parties to report the diagnosis sequentially, the advantage of the veto power of the second agent allows the payer to achieve the first-best outcome