Junctions of three quantum wires and the dissipative Hofstadter model

We study a junction of three quantum wires enclosing a magnetic flux. This is the simplest problem of a quantum junction between Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids in which Fermi statistics enter in a nontrivial way. We present a direct connection between this problem and the dissipative Hofstadter problem, or quantum Brownian motion in two dimensions in a periodic potential and an external magnetic field, which in turn is connected to open string theory in a background electromagnetic field. We find nontrivial fixed points corresponding to a chiral conductance tensor leading to an asymmetric flow of the current.     

Anticipating the response of excitable systems driven by random forcing

We study the regime of anticipated synchronization in unidirectionally coupled model neurons subject to a common external aperiodic forcing that makes their behavior unpredictable. We show numerically and by analog hardware electronic circuits that, under appropriate coupling conditions, the pulses fired by the slave neuron anticipate (i.e., predict) the pulses fired by the master neuron. This anticipated synchronization occurs even when the common external forcing is white noise.     

X waves generated at the second harmonic

The process of optical frequency doubling in the undepleted regime can lead to the generation of an X-wave envelope with group velocity locked to the pump beam. Its parameters and its angular spectrum are directly related to the zeroth- and first-order dispersive features of the nonlinear process. This constitutes a novel mechanism for spatiotemporal localization of light.     

Alternating isotactic ethylene-cyclopentene copolymer: a crystalline engineering plastomer including high amounts of structural disorder

Crystals of alternating isotactic ethylene-cyclopentene copolymer include conformational disorder of cyclopentene rings and packing disorder of chains.     

pH variation as the switch for chiral recognition in a biomembrane model

Chiral recognition was observed in a biomembrane model. Micellar aggregates formed by N-dodecyl-l-proline were, in fact, able to convert the racemic mixture of a biphenyl derivative into an enantiomerically enriched mixture. The extent of deracemization was established by HPLC on a chiral stationary phase and, in some conditions, resulted in the highest ever observed in these systems. The configuration of the exceeding enantiomer and the extent of enantiomeric enrichment depend on the medium pH. In fact, the exceeding enantiomer has the same configuration at pH 1 and 7, being more abundant at pH 7, whereas it has the opposite configuration at pH 13. The changes in the stereochemical bias are reversible.     

Determination of aflatoxins in peanuts, maize feed and whole milk by HPLC-MS2 and MS3 tandem mass spectrometry

A method is presented for the detection of six toxins of fungal origin in various foods: peanuts, a sample of maize feed and whole milk. Extraction and HPLC-APCI-MS detection were discussed. The performances of MS/MS, MS3 and SRM detection modes were checked and best conditions of sensitivity were obtained in MS/MS mode.     

Singular perturbation problems for time-reversible systems

In this paper singularly perturbed reversible vector fields defined in without normal hyperbolicity conditions are discussed. The main results give conditions for the existence of infinitely many periodic orbits and heteroclinic cycles converging to singular orbits with respect to the Hausdorff distance.

     

Strong pseudo-contractions perturbed by compact operators in Banach spaces

Let be a (real) Banach space, let be an open subset of , and let denote the collection of all nonempty bounded and closed subsets of . Suppose is continuous from into with respect to the Hausdorff metric and strongly pseudo-contractive, while is compact from into . Then has a fixed point if it satisfies the classical Leray-Schauder condition on the boundary of .

     

Nonlinear acoustic scattering by a partially closed surface-breaking crack

A theoretical model describing the nonlinear scattering of acoustic waves by surface-breaking cracks with faces in partial contact is presented. The nonlinear properties of the crack are accounted for by suitable boundary conditions that are derived from micromechanical models of the dynamics of elastic rough surfaces in contact. Both linear and nonlinear responses of the crack are shown to be largest for a shear vertical wave incident on the surface containing the crack at an angle just above the critical angle for longitudinal waves. These findings question the fitness for the purpose of a conventional inspection method, which utilizes shear vertical waves at 45 degrees of incidence to search for surface-breaking cracks in many engineering components. For angles of incidence proximal to the critical angle of longitudinal waves, the efficiency of the second harmonic's generation appears to be the highest. Thanks to the increased sensitivity to surface-breaking cracks, this configuration seems to offer a solution to the localization problem, a task that has eluded nonlinear techniques operating under other circumstances. Finally, this model suggests a simple interpretation of the highly localized nonlinear response of delaminations in composite materials.