Trace pollutants analysis in soil by a time-resolved laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy technique

The results of a joint experiment of IFAM-Pisa and ENEA-Frascati for the detection of traces of pollutants in soil by a time-resolved laser-induced spectroscopy technique are reported. Using samples of soil with known pollutants' concentration [Geochemical Exploration Reference (GXR) silicate from US Geological Survey], we were able to estimate the sensitivity of this Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) technique to be of the order of some parts per million for a vast class of metallic pollutants, including extremely dangerous soil pollutants such as copper, lead and chromium.ENEA guest with HC&M fellowship     

Allocation rules for hypergraph communication situations

This paper considers hypergraph communication situations, where for a group of agents the economic possibilities are described by a coalitional game and the communication possibilities are described by a hypergraph in which the nodes are the agents and the edges are the subgroups of agents who can effect communication. Axiomatic characterizations are provided for two allocation rules, the Myerson value and the position value.     

Mössbauer spectroscopic study of core and mantle of rattle stones

Mössbauer spectroscopy has been applied to two rattle stones found in the Netherlands, which have been formed under different pedoenvironment conditions in the past. Ultrafine particles of goethite are dominantly present in both core and mantle of these stones. The latter differs in both composition and mean particle size; this is related to the distinct manner of their formation.     

Many-neighbour interaction and non-locality in traffic models

The optimal-velocity model, as proposed by Bando et al. [1], shows unrealistic values of the acceleration for various optimal-velocity functions [2,3]. We discuss different approaches of how to correct this problem. Multiple look-ahead (many-neighbour interaction) models are the most promising candidates in reducing accelerations and decelerations to realistic values. We focus on two such models and, in particular, their linear stability and how these affect the vehicle dynamics and wave solutions. As found earlier [4], multiple look-ahead models reproduce many real flow features, and our results further support the necessity of this ansatz. However, the problem of non-locality arises when they are transformed into the corresponding continuum model. We discuss three methods of how to interpret many-neighbour interaction in macroscopic models.Received: 27 March 2004, Published online: 12 July 2004PACS: 45.70.Vn Granular models of complex systems; traffic flow - 89.90. + n Other topics in areas of applied and interdisciplinary physics - 47.50. + d Non-Newtonian fluid flows     

Tracking performance in LHCb

The European Physical Journal C - The tracking system of the LHCb detector has been re-optimised to reduce the amount of material which particles traverse. The different subcomponents involved in...     

Fully adaptive multiresolution finite volume schemes for conservation laws

The use of multiresolution decompositions in the context of finite volume schemes for conservation laws was first proposed by A. Harten for the purpose of accelerating the evaluation of numerical fluxes through an adaptive computation. In this approach the solution is still represented at each time step on the finest grid, resulting in an inherent limitation of the potential gain in memory space and computational time. The present paper is concerned with the development and the numerical analysis of fully adaptive multiresolution schemes, in which the solution is represented and computed in a dynamically evolved adaptive grid. A crucial problem is then the accurate computation of the flux without the full knowledge of fine grid cell averages. Several solutions to this problem are proposed, analyzed, and compared in terms of accuracy and complexity.

     

Highly edge‐connected detachments of graphs and digraphs

Let G = (V,E) be a graph or digraph and r : V → Z₊. An r‐detachment of G is a graph H obtained by ‘splitting’ each vertex ν ∈ V into r(ν) vertices. The vertices ν₁,…,ν_r(ν) obtained by splitting ν are called the pieces of ν in H. Every edge uν ∈ E corresponds to an edge of H connecting some piece of u to some piece of ν. Crispin Nash‐Williams 9 gave necessary and sufficient conditions for a graph to have a k‐edge‐connected r‐detachment. He also solved the version where the degrees of all the pieces are specified. In this paper, we solve the same problems for directed graphs. We also give a simple and self‐contained new proof for the undirected result. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 43: 67–77, 2003