Dynamical study of femtosecond-laser-ablated liquid-aluminum nanoparticles using spatiotemporally resolved x-ray-absorption fine-structure spectroscopy

We study the temperature evolution of aluminum nanoparticles generated by femtosecond laser ablation with spatiotemporally resolved x-ray-absorption fine-structure spectroscopy. We successfully identify the nanoparticles based on the L-edge absorption fine structure of the ablation plume in combination with the dependence of the edge structure on the irradiation intensity and the expansion velocity of the plume. In particular, we show that the lattice temperature of the nanoparticles is estimated from the L-edge slope, and that its spatial dependence reflects the cooling of the nanoparticles during plume expansion. The results reveal that the emitted nanoparticles travel in a vacuum as a condensed liquid phase with a lattice temperature of about 2500 to 4200 K in the early stage of plume expansion.     

Fuzzy network technique for technological forecasting

The stochastic network technique is known to be a powerful tool carrying out a technological forecast of complex systems. A network dealt with is characterized by a tetrad of essential elements: logical nodes with some inputs and outputs, probabilistics activity branches, feedback loops, and multiple sources and sinks. A set of network parameters is defined for each element and their values are estimated for practical analysis of the network. In the case where the system to be treated is very large and/or complex, it cannot always be represented by a definite network and therefore forecasted values of parameters are inevitably indefinite themselves. A conventional probabilistic approach is sometimes inadequate in such a case. In the light of these facts, the paper proposes a fuzzy network technique, in which among activity branches emanating from a node, a branch to be undertaken once the node is realized belongs to a fuzzy set; and the time required to complete an activity branch belongs to a fuzzy set. Operations of maximum and minimum for sum and product of fuzzy sets take the place of manipulations of addition and multiplication for probabilities, respectively. Although the operations are somewhat formal, the obtained results seem interesting. A numerical example is attached to show a comparison of the proposed technique with the conventional one.     

Recent work at Hiroshima on drift wave turbulence and associated transport

Recent developments in the theory of drift wave turbulence and associated transport phenomena are reviewed within the framework of the weak turbulence theory. Basic physical effects leading to anomalous cross-field transport of particles and energies are discussed in detail for the case of collisionless electrostatic drift waves in a uniform magnetic field. Effects of electro-magnetic perturbations (finite-β effect), magnetic shear and toroidal geometry are also discussed.     

Synthesis of bulgecinine: a new amino acid in bulgecins

Bulgecinine, a new proline type amino acid in bulgecins, was synthesized stereospecifically by use of D-glucose as a chiral precursor.     

A first-order system approach for diffusion equation. II: Unification of advection and diffusion

In this paper, we unify advection and diffusion into a single hyperbolic system by extending the first-order system approach introduced for the diffusion equation [J. Comput. Phys., 227 (2007) 315–352] to the advection–diffusion equation. Specifically, we construct a unified hyperbolic advection–diffusion system by expressing the diffusion term as a first-order hyperbolic system and simply adding the advection term to it. Naturally then, we develop upwind schemes for this entire   system; there is thus no need to develop two different schemes, i.e., advection and diffusion schemes. We show that numerical schemes constructed in this way can be automatically uniformly accurate, allow O(h)$O(h)$ time step, and compute the solution gradients (viscous stresses/heat fluxes for the Navier–Stokes equations) simultaneously to the same order of accuracy as the main variable, for all Reynolds numbers. We present numerical results for boundary-layer type problems on non-uniform grids in one dimension and irregular triangular grids in two dimensions to demonstrate various remarkable advantages of the proposed approach. In particular, we show that the schemes solving the first-order advection–diffusion system give a tremendous speed-up in CPU time over traditional scalar schemes despite the additional cost of carrying extra variables and solving equations for them. We conclude the paper with discussions on further developments to come.     

Propagation of solitary ion acoustic waves in inhomogeneous plasmas

A WKB solution for the propagation of a solitary ion acoustic wave in a plasma with a density gradient is obtained.