Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics Application to Vibrational Dynamics of Protein Folding

The vibrational dynamics of protein folding is analyzed in the framework of Tsallis statistics. We employ exact expressions for classical harmonic oscillators by considering the unnormalized constraints. As q→1, we show that these approximations agree with the result of Gaussian network model.     

Investigations of low- and high-spin states of <Superscript>132</Superscript>La

The fusion evaporation reaction ¹²²Sn(¹⁴N, 4n)¹³²La was used to populate the high-spin states of ¹³²La at the beam energy of 60 MeV. A new band consisting of mostly E2 transitions has been discovered. This band has the interesting links to the ground state 2^- and the isomeric state 6^-. A new transition of energy 351 keV connecting the low-spin states of the positive-parity band based on the πh _11/2 ⊗ νh _11/2 particle configuration, has been found. This has played a very important role in resolving the existing ambiguities and inconsistencies in the spin assignment of the band head. Received: 12 August 2002 / Accepted: 18 March 2003 / Published online: 7 May 2003     

Numerical study of the effects of the rupture process of a secondary diaphragm in expansion tubes

The results of a numerical study are described in which the interactions of a primary shock wave with a secondary diaphragm in expansion tubes are taken into account. The developing wave pattern in the interacting process of the shock with a secondary diaphragm are visualized by many kinds of figures (e.g., the time-distance diagrams of the wave phenomena on the axis, the acoustic impedance contours, and the time histories of the pitot pressure on the axis), and the influences of the shape and rupture process of the diaphragm on the quality of the test gas are explored.     

Diffusion Structural Analysis Study of Titania Films Deposited by Sol-Gel Technique on Silica Glass

The diffusion structural analysis (DSA) was used to characterize microstructure changes of hydrous titania gel films under in situ conditions of heating. TG and DTA were used in order to elucidate the processes controlling the formation of anatase film during heating of hydrous titania gel film. The annealing of porosity and near surface structure defects of the dehydrated titania films was indicated by DSA in the temperature range 255–700°C as the decrease of radon release rate. It was demonstrated that the annealing was enhanced on heating in oxygen in comparison with heating in argon. The DSA experimental results were compared with model curves describing the radon diffusion mobility and the annealing of radon diffusion paths.     

Investigating buyer and seller strategies in online auctions

The annual turnover of online auctions is already in tens of billions of dollars and this amount is predicted to grow substantially over the next few years. Hence, it is important to know how buyers and sellers can influence their chances of success. Therefore, data were collected from eBay auctions for three different categories of collectible items, namely those with a published guide price, those with a rough guide price and those having no easily obtainable guide price. The options available to buyers and sellers of items were then analysed. It was found that it was hard for the seller to influence an item's achieved price significantly, apart from items with no guide price where the starting price could have an effect. Most bidders bid close to the current value and so there were insufficient data to determine the consequences of timing on the placing of high bids. For low bids, delaying a bid was found to improve significantly the chances of winning for one of the data sets.     

Smoothing estimation of rate function for recurrent event data with informative censoring

This paper proposes kernel estimation of the occurrence rate function for recurrent event data with informative censoring. An informative censoring model is considered with assumptions made on the joint distribution of the recurrent event process and the censoring time without modeling the censoring distribution. Under the validity of the informative censoring model, we also show that an estimator based on the assumption of independent censoring becomes inappropriate and is generally asymptotically biased. To investigate the asymptotic properties of the proposed estimator, the explicit form of its asymptotic mean squared risk and the asymptotic normality are derived. Meanwhile, the empirical consistent smoothing estimator for the variance function of the estimator is suggested. The performance of the estimators are also studied through Monte Carlo simulations. An epidemiological example of intravenous drug user data is used to show the influence of informative censoring in the estimation of the occurrence rate functions for inpatient cares over time.     

An algorithm to locate perinatal facilities in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro

In order to reduce infant mortality in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro it is desired to encourage all mothers-to-be to attend the appropriate health care facilities. A 3-level hierarchical prenatal–neonatal health care system is described together with a basic model for optimising accessibility to facilities. A genetic algorithm to solve the basic model is developed and some numerical experience reported. Extensions to the basic model and planned future research are briefly indicated.     

Inversion of adjunction for non-degenerate hypersurfaces

 We prove a precise inversion of adjunction formula for the log variety (ℂ ^{d +1},X), where X is a non-degenerate hypersurface. As a corollary, the minimal log discrepancies of non-degenerate normal hypersurface singularities are bounded by dimension. Received: 17 September 2002 / Revised version: 22 November 2002 Published online: 14 February 2003 Current address: DPMMS, CMS, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WB, England. e-mail: f.ambro@dpmms.cam.ac.uk Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): Primary 14B05; Secondary 14M25, 52B20