Local Rules and Fitness Landscapes: A Catastrophe Model

This paper examines the imposition of local rules in five mail delivery centres of Australia Post. Local rules are patterns of behaviour used by subunits of an organization to optimise their payoff. These local rules may ultimately benefit the total organization. Fitness landscapes are used to examine the emergence of local rules in this workplace. This research examined the relationship between the time taken to sort the mail and the volume of this mail. Work rates show a clear catastrophe shift; that is, work rates suddenly drop when the volume of mail exceeds a certain level, as Postal Delivery Officers apply local rules to maximise gains inherent in the pay structures. Such behaviour is close to that predicted by Kauffman (1995) in computer simulations of lattices and may be indicative of the application of local rules in organizations. The implications of the use of local rules are that behaviour in social systems may be dictated by systemic and emergent processes which are outside immediate management control. A further implication is that organizations may be structured to a significant extent by such local rules.     

Realistic rotating convection in a DNA suspension

In this work we report theoretical and numerical results on convection in a viscoelastic binary mixture under rotation for realistic rigid-rigid boundary conditions. We focus our analysis in the DNA aqueous suspensions. Instability thresholds for oscillatory convection are calculated. Finally, we analyze the stabilizing effect for the onset of convection.     

Ferroelectric behaviour of 30nm BaTiO3 ceramics prepared by high pressure assisted sintering

Dense nanocrystalline BaTiO3 ceramics with a homogeneous grain size of 30 nm was obtained by pressure assisted sintering. The ferroelectric behaviour of the ceramics was characterized by the dielectric peak at around 120 ℃, the P-E hysteresis loop and some ferroelectric domains. These experimental results indicate that the critical grain size for the disappearance of ferroelectricity in nanocrystalline BaTiO3 ceramics fabricated by pressure assisted sintering is below 30 nm. The ferroelectric property decreasing with decreasing grain size can be explained by the lowered tetragonality and the ＇dilution＇ effect of grain boundaries.     

Review on contact simulation of beveloid and cycloid gears and application of a modern approach to treat deformations

Gear drives are key components for all kinds of machines as well as of industrial equipment. Therein, beveloid gears and cycloid gears are increasingly used in industry. Gaining a more comprehensive understanding of those types of gears is essential. However, the measurement of the dynamic response of these gears is not an option due to the high cost of the required experiments. Along with the development of computer technology, several numerical tools and methods to study gears with standard and non-standard flank profiles have been introduced. Various works related to standard gears or beveloid and cycloid gears have been published. In this study, a contemporary review about the modelling and contact simulation of beveloid and cycloid gear drives will be given. Some studies will also be introduced to present an efficient approach to simulate contact forces and contact characteristics of gear wheels with standard and non-standard tooth profiles considering deformations too.     

Three-dimensional flow over a stretching surface in a viscoelastic fluid

This article looks at the hydrodynamic elastico-viscous fluid over a stretching surface. The equations governing the flow are reduced to ordinary differential equations, which are analytically solved by applying an efficient technique namely the homotopy analysis method (HAM). The solutions for the velocity components are computed. The numerical values of wall skin friction coefficients are also tabulated. The present HAM solution is compared with the known exact solution for the two-dimensional flow and an excellent agreement is found.     

Models for the active site in galactose oxidase: Structure, spectra and redox of copper(II) complexes of certain phenolate ligands

Galactose oxidase (GOase) is a fungal enzyme which is unusual among metalloenzymes in appearing to catalyse the two electron oxidation of primary alcohols to aldehydes and H₂O₂. The crystal structure of the enzyme reveals that the coordination geometry of mononuclear copper(II) ion is square pyramidal, with two histidine imidazoles, a tyrosinate, and either H₂O (pH 7.0) or acetate (from buffer,pH 4-5) in the equatorial sites and a tyrosinate ligand weakly bound in the axial position. This paper summarizes the results of our studies on the structure, spectral and redox properties of certain novel models for the active site of the inactive form of GOase. The monophenolato Cu(II) complexes of the type [Cu(L1)X][H(L1) = 2-(bis(pyrid-2-ylmethyl)aminomethyl)-4-nitrophenol and X⁻ = Cl⁻ 1, NCS⁻ 2, CH₃COO⁻ 3, ClO₄ ⁻ 4] reveal a distorted square pyramidal geometry around Cu(II) with an unusual axial coordination of phenolate moiety. The coordination geometry of 3 is reminiscent of the active site of GOase with an axial phenolate and equatorial CH₃COO⁻ ligands. All the present complexes exhibit several electronic and EPR spectral features which are also similar to the enzyme. Further, to establish the structural and spectroscopic consequences of the coordination of two tyrosinates in GOase enzyme, we studied the monomeric copper(II) complexes containing two phenolates and imidazole/pyridine donors as closer structural models for GOase. N,N-dimethylethylenediamine and N,N’-dimethylethylenediamine have been used as starting materials to obtain a variety of 2,4-disubstituted phenolate ligands. The X-ray crystal structures of the complexes [Cu(L5)(py)], (8) [H₂(L5) = N,N-dimethyl-N’,N’-bis(2-hydroxy-4-nitrobenzyl) ethylenediamine, py = pyridine] and [Cu(L8)(H₂O)] (11), [H₂(L8) = N,N’-dimethyl-N,N’-bis(2-hydroxy-4-nitrobenzyl)ethylenediamine] reveal distorted square pyramidal geometries around Cu(II) with the axial tertiary amine nitrogen and water coordination respectively. Interestingly, for the latter complex there are two different molecules present in the same unit cell containing the methyl groups of the ethylenediamine fragmentcis to each other in one molecule andtrans to each other in the other. The ligand field and EPR spectra of the model complexes reveal square-based geometries even in solution. The electrochemical and chemical means of generating novel radical species of the model complexes, analogous to the active form of the enzyme is presently under investigation.     

Spectral Semi-discretisations of Weakly Non-linear Wave Equations over Long Times

The long-time behaviour of spectral semi-discretisations of weakly non-linear wave equations is analysed. It is shown that the harmonic actions are approximately conserved for the semi-discretised system as well. This permits to prove that the energy of the wave equation along the interpolated semi-discrete solution remains well conserved over long times and close to the Hamiltonian of the semi-discrete equation. Although the momentum is no longer an exact invariant of the semi-discretisation, it is shown to be approximately conserved. All these results are obtained with the technique of modulated Fourier expansions. Dedicated to Professor Arieh Iserles on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday.     

On the asymptotic behaviour for an electromagnetic system with a dissipative boundary condition

In this work we study some properties of solutions for the systemdescribing a three-dimensional non-homogeneous non-conductingdielectric with a general boundary condition with memory. Wefirst show the existence of the inverse of this boundary condition,which allows us to introduce a boundary free energy, similarto the one considered by Fabrizio & Morro (1996, Arch. Rat.Mech. Anal., 136, 359–381). Then, we prove existence anduniqueness theorems for weak and strong solutions of the evolutiveproblem in a finite time interval. Moreover, following Rivera& Olivera (1997, Boll. U.M.I., 11-A, 115–127), weexamine some dissipative properties of the boundary conditionand of its inverse and we give a useful energy estimate. Finally,when there is no memory in the boundary condition the exponentialdecay of the solution is proved.     

Analysis of polymer drag reduction mechanisms from energy budgets

The transfer of energy in drag reducing viscoelastic flows is analyzed through a sequence of energetic budgets that include the mean and turbulent kinetic energy, and the mean polymeric energy and mean elastic potential energy. Within the context of single-point statistics, this provides a complete picture of the energy exchange between the mean, turbulent and polymeric fields. The analysis utilizes direct simulation data of a fully developed channel flow at a moderately high friction Reynolds number of 1000 and at medium (30%) and high (58%) drag reduction levels using a FENE-P polymeric model.Results show that the primary effect of the interaction between the turbulent and polymeric fields is to transfer energy from the turbulence to the polymer, and that the magnitude of this transfer does not change between the low and high drag reduction flows. This one-way transfer, with an amplitude independent of the drag reduction regime, comes in contradiction with the purely elastic coupling which is implicit within the elastic theory of the polymer drag reduction phenomenon by Tabor and De Gennes (Europhys. Lett. 2, pp. 519–522, 1986).     

On the lubrication approximation for a class of viscoelastic fluids

We present a rigorous derivation of a dimensionally reduced Reynolds type equation for thin film flow lubrication of a class of viscoelastic fluids by employing a perturbation analysis on the upper-convected Maxwell model in natural orthogonal coordinates. This approximation accounts for the viscoelastic and curvature corrections to the classical Reynolds lubrication approximation. Comparison of our approximation with the classical Reynolds approximation suggests that viscoelasticity can have a significant influence on the lubrication characteristics, at least for certain values of the film thickness and of the eccentricity ratios of the journal bearing.