Operational Research and Regulation: Theory and Practice

In this Blackett Lecture, Professor Littlechild, Director General of Electricity Supply in the UK's Office of Electricity Regulation, renews acquaintance with some models he has developed over the years, introduces some models he has recently met, and discusses models that it would seem to be worthwhile developing. He concludes that for all concerned in the electricity industry, success depends on ever improving decision-making, in which OR has a vital role.     

Experimental study of acoustic probing of electrical space charge in solid insulators

Experimental results are presented on acoustic probing of electric fields in solid insulators. An experimental apparatus and methods are described for acoustic measurements of the bulk space charge density and electric field strength in solid insulators. The sensitivity and spatial resolution of the acoustic probe technique are determined.Institute of Introscopy Research, Polytechnical University, Tomsk. Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 9, pp. 62–67, September, 1993.     

Optical absorption bistability in quasi-one-dimensional peierls semiconductors

The optical absorption coefficient γ of a thin film of a Peierls semiconductor has been calculated in the dipole approximation for direct interband transitions as a function of intensity I and central frequency ω₀ of a quasi-monochromatic frequency spectrum near the lower optical transition edge. It is shown that the γ(I, ω₀) dependence is strongly nonlinear, and within a certain region of I and ω₀ variation, not single-valued, which indicates the onset of resonator-free optical bistability with increasing absorption.     

Spectra and Transport in Almost Periodic Dimers

We study spectral properties of discrete Schrödinger operators with potentials obtained via dimerization of a class of aperiodic sequences. It is shown that both the nature of the autocorrelation measure of a regular sequence and the presence of generic (full probability) singular continuous spectrum in the hull of primitive and palindromic (four block substitution) potentials are robust under dimerization. Generic results also hold for circle potentials. We illustrate these results with numerical studies of the quantum mean square displacement as a function of time. The numerical techniques provide a very fast algorithm for the time evolution of wave packets.     

Temperature and field dependences of photo-induced changes in the magnetization in yttrium iron garnet

The changes in the magnetization of yttrium iron garnet (YIG) when irradiated by a pulsed neodymium laser beam with wavelength λ=1.06 μm are investigated. Measurements are performed in the temperature range from 100 K to 600 K in various external magnetic fields. YIG single crystals grown along the crystallographic (100), (110), and (111) directions are chosen so that the external anisotropy of the indicated processes can be determined. Characteristic temperature intervals dominated by different mechanisms of variation of the magnetization under the influence of a laser pulse are discussed. Fiz. Tverd. Tela (St. Petersburg) 39, 1263–1266 (July 1997)     

2-Carbethoxymethyl-4H-3,1-benzoxazin-4-one. 4. Reaction with anilines

In a solution of DMF, 2-carbethoxymethyl-4H-3,1-benzoxazin-4-one reacts with primarily aromatic amines basically with the formation of the corresponding 2-carbethoxymetlzyl-3-arylquinazolin-4(3H)-ones. Possible mechanisms of these chemical transformations are reported and discussed.Translated from Khimiya Geterotsiklicheskikh Soedinenii, No. 2, pp. 225–228, February, 1994. Original article submitted June 28, 1993.     

Influence of the chemical composition of plant oils on cytochrome P-450

The influence of sunflowerseed and cottonseed oils and also of fractions of normal and oxidized triacylglycerols isolated from them on cytochrome P-450 from rat liver microsomes has been investigated.