Stress monitoring in a Guinness 10-day scuba dive

Nowadays, there is high demand for sensitive gas sensors both for human and environmental monitoring. This paper deals with a high-resolution (0.2 ppb) laser-based photoacoustic spectroscopic system realized at ENEA Frascati, Italy, applied for monitoring stress in scuba divers during sustained immersion by analyzing breath samples. Blood tests and psychometric tests for scuba divers were performed at Catholic University in Rome. Results will be reported and discussed.     

Electro-absorption and refraction in Fabry-Perot quantum well modulators: a general discussion

Fabry-Perot resonators have long been advocated to improve the limited contrast ratio of multiple quantum well optical modulators used in photonic switches based on self electrooptic effect devices (SEEDs) and in other array based optical interconnection schemes. Using data on field dependent GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well absorption and refraction, we have modelled the reflectivity, modulation depth and contrast ratio of resonant modulators. Our results are generally valid for any quantum well modulator and demonstrate 23the important role played by electro-refraction even in regions of strong absorption. Resonators give large contrast ratios but there are trade-offs in the maximum reflectivity change achievable with Fabry-Perot resonators compared to simple modulators. The model gives the optimum number of quantum wells and reflectivity values required to make a resonator at any wavelength for a given quantum well structure. Understanding the limits of Fabry-Perot quantum well modulator performance is important for their application in symmetric self electrooptic effectiveness for photonic switching where modulation and detection properties are both used and for optical interconnection systems.     

Supersymmetric Dirichlet operators

A canonical supersymmetric extension of classical Dirichlet forms and operators given by measures on linear spaces is considered. In the case of log-concave measures, the supersymmetric Dirichlet operator generates a hypercontractive semigroup. This setting is appropriate for infinite-dimensional geometry and quantum field theory.Dedicated to Yu. M. Berezanskii on the occasion of his seventieth birthdayPublished in Ukrainskii Matematicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 47, No. 5, pp. 583–592, May, 1995.The present work was supported by the DFG.     

Investigation of anode and cathode jets influence on electric arc properties with current up to 500 kA

A number of phenomena connected with the formation of electrode jets in discharges in hydrogen at a current of 10/sup 5/-10/sup 6/ A, a current growth rate of 10/sup 10/ A/s, an initial pressure 0.1-4.0 MPa, and a discharge gap length of 5-40 mm were studied. After the secondary breakdown, the jets are observed through a discharge semitransparent channel, widening with velocity (4-7) /spl middot/ 10/sup 2/ m/s. Shockwave formation was detected at the interaction of jets with the surrounding gas and the opposite electrode. Plasma vapor pressure of metal near the end of the tungsten cathode 70 /spl mu/s after initiation of a discharge was 180 MPa. Thus, magnitude of brightness temperature was 59 /spl middot/ 10/sup 3/ K, with an average charge of ions-m~=3.1, and a concentration of metal vapors n=5.3/spl middot/10/sup 19/ cm/sup -3/. While those at the end of the anode 90 /spl mu/s after initiation of discharge: m~=2.6, n=7.4/spl middot/10/sup 19/ cm/sup -3/. Probable reasons of high-voltage drops near the electrodes (the summarized magnitude of which is /spl sim/1 kV) are discussed on the basis of experimental data. For the first time, the shadow method registered symmetric ejection of material from the all-cathode surface the maximum discharge current was observed.     

Diffraction in a cylindrically orthotropic elastic solid containing a stress free crack

A cylindrically orthotropic elastic solid is excited by a point impulsive body force. The solid contains a semi-infinite stress free crack. The resulting anti-plane wave motion problem has been solved in the form of a finite series representing the incident and reflected pulses plus an integral representing the diffraction pulse. The series part of the solution has been previously treated. In the present investigation the diffraction integral is integrated when λ (which measures the anisotropy of the solid) is an odd integer number. The diffraction integral is also integrated when λ is half an odd integer, for the special case in which the source lies in the plane of the crack and parallel to the crack edge. The displacement jump across the circular diffraction wave front is given for unrestricted (positive) values of λ.     

A second order numerical scheme for the solution of the one-dimensional Boussinesq equation

A predictor–corrector (P-C) scheme is applied successfully to a nonlinear method arising from the use of rational approximants to the matrix-exponential term in a three-time level recurrence relation. The resulting nonlinear finite-difference scheme, which is analyzed for local truncation error and stability, is solved using a P-C scheme, in which the predictor and the corrector are explicit schemes of order 2. This scheme is accelerated by using a modification (MPC) in which the already evaluated values are used for the corrector. The behaviour of the P-C/MPC schemes is tested numerically on the Boussinesq equation already known from the bibliography free of boundary conditions. The numerical results are derived for both the bad and the good Boussinesq equation and conclusions from the relevant known results are derived.      

Smooth Frame-Path Termination for Higher Order Sigma-Delta Quantization

We study the performance of finite frames for the encoding of vectors by applying standard higher-order sigma-delta quantization to the frame coefficients. Our results are valid for any quantizer with accuracy ε > 0 operating in the no-overload regime. The frames under consideration are obtained from regular sampling of a path in a Hilbert space. In order to achieve error bounds that are comparable to results on higher-order sigma-delta for the quantization of oversampled bandlimited functions, we construct frame paths that terminate smoothly in the zero vector, that is, with an appropriate number of vanishing derivatives at the endpoint.     

Oscillation of certain partial difference equations

In this paper we consider a class of nonlinear delay partial difference equations and a class of linear delay partial difference equations with variable coefficients, which may change sign. We obtain oscillation criteria for these equations. There are no results for the oscillation of these equations up to now.