Towards large eddy simulations of flame extinction and carbon monoxide emission in compartment fires

The general objective of this research is to adapt current combustion modeling capabilities used in computational fluid dynamics solvers to the treatment of under-ventilated compartment fires. More specifically, we consider in the present study two models proposed to describe: diffusion flame extinction due to air vitiation; and the emission of carbon monoxide (CO) and unburnt hydrocarbon (HC) mass in a compartment fire. The flame extinction model is based on a flammability diagram parametrized in terms of vitiated air properties. The CO/HC mass model is based on: a transport equation for fuel mass; a comparison of this fuel mass to a Burke–Schumann chemical-equilibrium expression; and an interpretation of the difference as a measure of incomplete combustion. Both models are implemented into a large eddy simulation solver developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA. The models performance is tested via detailed comparisons with an experimental database corresponding to reduced-scale compartment fires. The study considers two cases that correspond to different values of the fire room global equivalence ratio and are representative of strikingly different flame behaviors. The comparative tests serve to evaluate the general ability of the models to describe the transition from extinction-free conditions to conditions in which the flame experiences partial or total quenching, as well as the transition from fire regimes with no or little CO emission to regimes that emit hazardous levels.     

On Fractional Brownian Processes

We use Liouville spaces in order to prove the existence of some different fractional -Brownian motion ( 0 < 1 ), or fractional ( , )-Brownian sheets. There are also applications to the Wiener stochastic integral with respect to these -Brownian.     

In situ isobaric lipid mapping by MALDI–ion mobility separation–mass spectrometry imaging

The highly diverse chemical structures of lipids make their analysis directly from biological tissue sections extremely challenging. Here, we report the in situ mapping and identification of lipids in a freshwater crustacean Gammarus fossarum using matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) in combination with an additional separation dimension using ion mobility spectrometry (IMS). The high‐resolution trapped ion mobility spectrometry (TIMS) allowed efficient separation of isobaric/isomeric lipids showing distinct spatial distributions. The structures of the lipids were further characterized by MS/MS analysis. It is demonstrated that MALDI MSI with mobility separation is a powerful tool for distinguishing and localizing isobaric/isomeric lipids.     

High-harmonic generation from plasma mirrors at kilohertz repetition rate

We report the first demonstration of high-harmonic generation from plasma mirrors at a 1 kHz repetition rate. Harmonics up to nineteenth order are generated at peak intensities close to 101? W/cm2 by focusing 1 mJ, 25 fs laser pulses down to 1.7 μm FWHM spot size without any prior wavefront correction onto a moving target. We minimize target surface motion with respect to the laser focus using online interferometry to ensure reproducible interaction conditions for every shot and record data at 1 kHz with unprecedented statistics. This allows us to unambiguously identify coherent wake emission as the main generation mechanism.     

Metaheuristics for multiobjective optimisation

This is a summary of the author’s PhD thesis supervised by Laetitia Jourdan and El-Ghazali Talbi and defended on 8 December 2009 at the Université Lille 1. The thesis is written in French and is available from . This work deals with the design, implementation and experimental analysis of metaheuristics for solving multiobjective optimisation problems, with a particular interest on hard and large combinatorial problems from the field of logistics. After focusing on a unified view of multiobjective metaheuristics, we propose new cooperative, adaptive and parallel approaches. The performance of these methods are experimented on a scheduling and a routing problem involving two or three objective functions. We finally discuss how to adapt such metaheuristics during the search process in order to handle uncertainty that may occur from many different sources.     

1D quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation with white noise dispersion

In this article, we improve the Strichartz estimates obtained in A. de Bouard, A. Debussche (2010) [12] for the Schrödinger equation with white noise dispersion in one dimension. This allows us to prove global well posedness when a quintic critical nonlinearity is added to the equation. We finally show that the white noise dispersion is the limit of smooth random dispersion.     

Relatively compact Siegel disks with non-locally connected boundaries

We construct holomorphic maps f with a Siegel disk whose boundary is not locally connected (and is an indecomposable continuum), yet compactly contained in the domain of definition of the map. Our examples are injective and defined on a subset of \mathbb C{\mathbb C}.     

The stimulating adventure of KRN 7000

Associated with the CD1d protein, KRN 7000, a potent synthetic α-galactosylceramide, is known to activate the invariant NKT immune cells. This stimulation then leads to the production of different cytokines modulating a T(H)1/T(H)2 immune response balance involved in protection against several pathologies such as autoimmune diseases and cancers. Various efforts have been made toward the synthesis of simple and more functionalized analogues in order to selectively induce T(H)1 or T(H)2-type cytokine production. Since the discovery of KRN 7000, structure-activity relationships, crystallographic and modelling studies have pointed to the potential of several GalCer analogues in term of selective bioactivity, and have highlighted interesting elements in order to better understand the recognition and activation mechanisms of immune iNKT cells. By presenting an up-to-date library of analogues, collecting recent breakthroughs done in crystallography and molecular modelling, and relating them to the available biological results, we hope that this review will highlight and help the scientific community in their KRN research.     

A platinum Chugaev carbene complex as a potent anticancer agent

A platinum Chugaev complex was synthesised and fully characterized by multinuclear NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography. This cis bis acyclic diamino carbene complex acts as a cytotoxic compound and behaves as a cisplatin equivalent by interacting with supercoiled DNA and thiols. Stability of the ligand is also discussed.