Numerical simulation of soft palate movement and airflow in human upper airway by fluid-structure interaction method

In this paper, the authors present airflow field characteristics of human upper airway and soft palate movement attitude during breathing. On the basis of the data taken from the spiral computerized tomography images of a healthy person and a patient with Obstructive Sleep Apnea-Hypopnea Syndrome (OSAHS), three-dimensional models of upper airway cavity and soft palate are reconstructed by the method of surface rendering. Numerical simulation is performed for airflow in the upper airway and displacement of soft palate by fluid-structure interaction analysis. The reconstructed three-dimensional models precisely preserve the original configuration of upper airways and soft palate. The results of the pressure and velocity distributions in the airflow field are quantitatively determined, and the displacement of soft palate is presented. Pressure gradients of airway are lower for the healthy person and the airflow distribution is quite uniform in the case of free breathing. However, the OSAHS patient remarkably escalates both the pressure and velocity in the upper airway, and causes higher displacement of the soft palate. The present study is useful in revealing pathogenesis and quantitative mutual relationship between configuration and function of the upper airway as well as in diagnosing diseases related to anatomical structure and function of the upper airway. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10672036, 10472025 and 10421002), the Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (20032109). English text was polished by Yunming Chen.     

On Donaldson’s flow of surfaces in a hyperkähler four-manifold

We prove some basic properties of Donaldson’s flow of surfaces in a hyperkähler 4-manifold. When the initial submanifold is symplectic with respect to one Kähler form and Lagrangian with respect to another, we show that certain kinds of singularities cannot form, and we prove a convergence result under a condition related to one considered by M.-T. Wang for the mean curvature flow.     

Completely Simple Semigroups,Lie Algebras,and the Road Coloring Problem

Consider a semigroup generated by matrices associated with an edge-coloring of a strongly connected, aperiodic digraph. We call the semigroup Lie-solvable if the Lie algebra generated by its elements is solvable. We show that if the semigroup is Lie-solvable then its kernel is a right group. Next, we study the Lie algebra generated by the kernel. Lie algebras generated by two idempotents are analyzed in detail. We find that these have homomorphic images that are generalized quaternion algebras. We show that if the kernel is not a direct product, then the Lie algebra generated by the kernel is not solvable by describing the structure of these algebras. Finally, we discuss an infinite class of examples that are shown to always produce strongly connected aperiodic digraphs having kernels that are not right groups.     

Evaluation of gap length fluctuation with harmonic analysis method

Gap length (GL) of reading head is one of the most critical parameters for high-density magnetic recording systems. A novel method is proposed for quantitative evaluation of the GL fluctuation among a batch of magneto-resistive/giant magneto-resistive heads with same structure design. The method works at head-gimbal assembly level and the evaluation can be done with any read/write analysis equipment. The testing process is based on harmonic analysis of the readback signal. The testing system consists of a selected reference head and sample heads for evaluation. A GL variation function is introduced for the evaluation of GL deviation between the reference head and sample head. This method proved to be easy for implementation and results suggest that variation of GL is considerable and has obvious effect on recording performance in high recording density systems.     

Micromagnetic analysis of transition noise for high-density perpendicular recording

In this paper, specific issues related to high-density perpendicular magnetic recording processes, such as transition noise properties and cross-track correlation lengths, were investigated with the help of micromagnetic analysis. The effects of media parameters were taken into consideration, including intergranular exchange coupling, and exchange distribution, irregular grain shapes, magnetization saturation distribution, and anisotropy distribution. The micromagnetic simulation results showed that the effect of anisotropy distribution on transition noise is more significant than magnetization saturation distribution, and it is crucial to reduce this effect to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio. Additionally, a new method to further estimate the partial erasure threshold was proposed to approximate the partial erasure effects, and the relation between the microtrack jitter and total track jitter was investigated.     

On uniqueness of an entire function and its derivatives

In this paper, we study the growth of solutions of a first order linear differential equation. From this we verify that a conjecture given by Brück is true under the restriction of the hyper order less than 1/2, and obtain some uniqueness theorems of a nonconstant entire function and its first derivative sharing a nonzero constant CM. The results in this paper also improve some known results. Some examples show that the results in this paper are best possible. Project supported by the NSFC (NO. A0324617) and the RFDP (NO. 20060422049). Received: 20 April 2006 Revised: 4 February 2007     

利用富铈混合稀土改善工业纯铝中富铁相形貌的研究

利用金相分析方法研究了富Ce混合稀土变质对含不同Fe量的工业纯铝的组织和其中富铁相形貌的影响。试验结果表明,随着Fe含量的增加,富铁相由弥散细小的颗粒状向短棒状、长针状转变;富Ce混合稀土变质使铝中的富铁相由长针状变为弥散细小的颗粒状。随着稀土含量的增加,-αAl晶粒逐渐细化,富铁相尺寸及数量逐渐减小。添加0.5%稀土时,-αAl晶粒细化效果最佳,而且富铁相呈细小颗粒状均匀分布在-αAl基体的晶界处。本文还对稀土改善富铁相的机制进行了分析。