Comparison of GOME-2 UVA Satellite Data to Ground-Based UVA Measurements in South Africa

Satellite estimates of surface ultraviolet A (UVA) (315–400 nm) from the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment (GOME)-2 were compared to ground-based measurements at four stations in South Africa for 2015. The comparison of daily exposure and daily maximum irradiance was completed for all-sky and clear-sky conditions. There is a strong linear correlation between the satellite and ground-based data with a correlation coefficient (r) between 0.86 and 0.97 for all-sky conditions. However, at three of the stations the satellite data are underestimated compared to ground-based data with a mean bias error (MBE) between −8.7% and −20.6%. A seasonal analysis indicated that there is a link between the bias in ground-based and GOME-2 UVA and cloud fraction. Factors such as aerosols, surface albedo, altitude and data resolution may contribute to the underestimations found at the three sites. These results indicate that satellite estimates of surface UVA over South Africa do not exhibit the same behavior as other stations around the world and therefore require further validation.     

Gravitational Collapse in Quantum Einstein Gravity

The existence of spacetime singularities is one of the biggest problems of nowadays physics. According to Penrose, each physical singularity should be covered by a “cosmic censor” which prevents any external observer from perceiving their existence. However, classical models describing the gravitational collapse usually results in strong curvature singularities, which can also remain “naked” for a finite amount of advanced time. This proceedings studies the modifications induced by asymptotically safe gravity on the gravitational collapse of generic Vaidya spacetimes. It will be shown that, for any possible choice of the mass function, quantum gravity makes the internal singularity gravitationally weak, thus allowing a continuous extension of the spacetime beyond the singularity.     

Thiocyanation of amino-2-methylbenzothiazoles

Thiocyanation of the four amino-2-methylbenzothiazole isomers has been studied: in three of these the thiocyano group is oriented ortho to the amino group and consequently three new angular benzobisthiazoles have been obtained. The 7-thiocyano derivative was obtained from 4 - amino - 2 - methylbenzothiazole. The structure of the benzobis-heterocycles has been confirmed by NMR spectroscopy.     

Solution of lambda-omega systems: Theta-schemes and multigrid methods

Summary. The numerical solution of a time-dependent reaction diffusion lambda-omega system discretized by theta-schemes and finite differences is considered. Stability and accuracy of finite difference theta-schemes for this system are established. To solve the time-implicit evolution equations a nonlinear multigrid method is applied. The convergence properties of this solver are investigated considering a linearized lambda-omega model.Mathematics Subject Classification (1991): 35K57, 65M06, 65M12, 65M55, 65P20, 65P40Revised version received February 3, 2004     

On the modeling and simulation of boundary flow through partially open pipe ends

The determination of boundary conditions for the Euler equations of gas dynamics in a pipe with partially open pipe ends is considered. The boundary problem is formulated in terms of the exact solution of the Riemann problem and of the St. Venant equation for quasi-steady flow so that a pressure-driven calculation of boundary conditions is defined. The resulting set of equations is solved by a Newton scheme. The proposed algorithm is able to solve for all inflow and outflow situations including choked and supersonic flow.Received: August 7, 2002; revised: November 11, 2002     

Laser-generated ns plasma pulses characterized using SiC Schottky diode

The nonequilibrium plasma generated by nanosecond laser pulse is characterized using a SiC detector connected in time-of-flight configuration to measure the radiations emitted from the plasma. Different metallic targets were irradiated by the pulsed laser at an intensity of 10¹⁰ W/cm² and 200 mJ pulse energy. The SiC allows detecting ultraviolet radiations and soft X-rays, electrons, and ions. The obtained plasma has a temperature of the order of tens to hundreds eV depending on the atomic number of the irradiated target and ion accelerations of the order of 100 eV per charge state.     

Coupling Biot and Navier–Stokes equations for modelling fluid–poroelastic media interaction

The interaction between a fluid and a poroelastic structure is a complex problem that couples the Navier–Stokes equations with the Biot system. The finite element approximation of this problem is involved due to the fact that both subproblems are indefinite. In this work, we first design residual-based stabilization techniques for the Biot system, motivated by the variational multiscale approach. Then, we state the monolithic Navier–Stokes/Biot system with the appropriate transmission conditions at the interface. For the solution of the coupled system, we adopt both monolithic solvers and heterogeneous domain decomposition strategies. Different domain decomposition methods are considered and their convergence is analyzed for a simplified problem. We compare the efficiency of all the methods on a test problem that exhibits a large added-mass effect, as it happens in hemodynamics applications.     

Optimal robust estimates using the Hellinger distance

Optimal robust M-estimates of a multidimensional parameter are described using Hampel’s infinitesimal approach. The optimal estimates are derived by minimizing a measure of efficiency under the model, subject to a bounded measure of infinitesimal robustness. To this purpose we define measures of efficiency and infinitesimal sensitivity based on the Hellinger distance. We show that these two measures coincide with similar ones defined by Yohai using the Kullback–Leibler divergence, and therefore the corresponding optimal estimates coincide too. We also give an example where we fit a negative binomial distribution to a real dataset of “days of stay in hospital” using the optimal robust estimates.     

Spectroscopic measurement of the refractive index of ion-implanted diamond

We present the results of variable-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry and transmittance measurements to determine the variation of the complex refractive index of ion-implanted single-crystal diamond. An increase is found in both real and imaginary parts at increasing damage densities. The index depth variation is determined in the whole wavelength range between 250 and 1690 nm. The dependence from the vacancy density is evaluated, highlighting a deviation from linearity in the high-damage-density regime. A considerable increase (up to 5%) in the real part of the index is observed, attributed to an increase in polarizability, thus offering new microfabrication possibilities for waveguides and other photonic structures in diamond.