High-order perturbation theory for the hydrogen atom in a magnetic field

The states of a hydrogen atom with principal quantum numbers n⩽3 in a constant uniform magnetic field ℋ are studied. Coefficients in the expansion of the energy of these states in powers of ℋ² up to the 75th order are obtained. Series for the energies of the states and the wave functions are summed to values of ℋ on the order of the atomic magnetic field. A generalization of the moment method upon which these calculations are based can be used in other cases in which a hydrogen atom is perturbed by a potential with a polynomial dependence on the coordinates. Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 113, 550–562 (February 1998)     

Electro-elastic interactions and second order anisotropic constitutive equations

Piezoelectricity is usually expressed as an interaction between mechanical and electrical variables. The physics involved is hence governed by a coupling between Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism and the equations of elasticity. Such a coupling takes us through the piezoelectric constitutive relations. In this work, the second order anisotropic constitutive equations are treated, and in particular, the number of independent material constants is computed for all the 32 crystallographic classes.Paper presented, in reduced version, at the 12th Italian National Congress of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics (AIMETA '95), October 1995, Naples, Italy.     

Transition to Chaos in the Floating Half Zone Convection

The transition process from steady convection to chaos is experimentally studied in thermocapillary convections of floating half zone. The onset of temperature oscillations in the liquid bridge of floating half zone and further transitions of the temporal convective behaviour are detected by measuring the temperature in the liquid bridge. The fast Fourier transform reveals the frequency and amplitude characteristics of the flow transition. The experimental results indicate the existence of a sequence of period-doubling bifurcations that culminate in chaos. The measured Feigenbaum numbers are δ2 =4.69 and δ4 = 4.6, which are comparable with the theoretical asymptotic value δ=4.669.     

Identification and Quantification of Hydrocarbon Functional Groups in Gasoline Using 1H-NMR Spectroscopy for Property Prediction

Gasoline is one of the most important distillate fuels obtained from crude refining; it is mainly used as an automotive fuel to propel spark-ignited (SI) engines. It is a complex hydrocarbon fuel that is known to possess several hundred individual molecules of varying sizes and chemical classes. These large numbers of individual molecules can be assembled into a finite set of molecular moieties or functional groups that can independently represent the chemical composition. Identification and quantification of groups enables the prediction of many fuel properties that otherwise may be difficult and expensive to measure experimentally. In the present work, high resolution ¹H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, an advanced structure elucidation technique, was employed for the molecular characterization of a gasoline sample in order to analyze the functional groups. The chemical composition of the gasoline sample was then expressed using six hydrocarbon functional groups, as follows: paraffinic groups (CH, CH₂ and CH₃), naphthenic CH-CH₂ groups and aromatic C-CH groups. The obtained functional groups were then used to predict a number of fuel properties, including research octane number (RON), motor octane number (MON), derived cetane number (DCN), threshold sooting index (TSI) and yield sooting index (YSI).     

Impulsive Reaction-Diffusion Delayed Models in Biology: Integral Manifolds Approach

In this paper we study an impulsive delayed reaction-diffusion model applied in biology. The introduced model generalizes existing reaction-diffusion delayed epidemic models to the impulsive case. The integral manifolds notion has been introduced to the model under consideration. This notion extends the single state notion and has important applications in the study of multi-stable systems. By means of an extension of the Lyapunov method integral manifolds’ existence, results are established. Based on the Lyapunov functions technique combined with a Poincarè-type inequality qualitative criteria related to boundedness, permanence, and stability of the integral manifolds are also presented. The application of the proposed impulsive control model is closely related to a most important problems in the mathematical biology—the problem of optimal control of epidemic models. The considered impulsive effects can be used by epidemiologists as a very effective therapy control strategy. In addition, since the integral manifolds approach is relevant in various contexts, our results can be applied in the qualitative investigations of many problems in the epidemiology of diverse interest.     

On Patterns in Sequences of Random Events

 This paper considers patterns of particular events in sequences of trials, some independent and others Markovian. Matrix recursions are found for the number of sequences of length n avoiding a specific pattern, and the associated probability of this event is evaluated. A Markov chain method for the study of such problems is outlined, and is illustrated in various cases. Finally, configurations of length 3 in Bernoulli trials are examined as an example. Received 12 January 1998 in revised form 26 June 1998     

Impulsive control on global asymptotic stability for a class of impulsive bidirectional associative memory neural networks with distributed delays

In this paper, we study the problem of global asymptotic stability for a class of bidirectional associative memory neural networks with distributed delays and nonlinear impulsive operators. We establish stability criteria by employing Lyapunov functions and the Razumikhin technique. These results can easily be used to design and verify globally stable networks. An illustrative example is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the obtained results.