Phase equilibrium measurements and the tuning behavior of new sII clathrate hydrates

We suggest two types of new amine-type sII formers: pyrrolidine and piperidine. These guest compounds fail to form clathrate hydrate structures with host water, but instead have to combine with light gaseous guest molecules (methane) for enclathration. First, two binary clathrate hydrates of (pyrrolidine + methane) and (piperidine + methane) were synthesized at various amine concentrations. ¹³C NMR and Raman analysis were done to identify the clathrate hydrate structure and guest distribution over sII-S and sII-L cages. XRD was also used to find the exact structure and corresponding cell parameters. At a dilute pyrrolidine concentration of less than 5.56 mol%, the tuning phenomenon is observed such that methane molecules surprisingly occupy sII-L cages. At the critical guest concentration of about 0.1 mol%, the cage occupancy ratio reaches the maximum of approximately 0.5. At very dilute guest concentration below 0.1 mol%, the methane molecules fail to occupy large cages on account of their rarefied distribution in the network. Direct-release experiments were performed to determine the actual guest compositions in the clathrate hydrate phases. Finally, we measured the clathrate hydrate phase equilibria of (pyrrolidine + methane) and (piperidine + methane).     

An Area Preserving Projection from the Regular Octahedron to the Sphere

In this paper, we propose an area preserving bijective map from the regular octahedron to the unit sphere ${\mathbb{S}^2}$ , both centered at the origin. The construction scheme consists of two steps. First, each face F _i of the octahedron is mapped to a curved planar triangle ${\mathcal{T}_i}$ of the same area. Afterwards, each ${\mathcal{T}_i}$ is mapped onto the sphere using the inverse Lambert azimuthal equal area projection with respect to a certain point of ${\mathbb{S}^2}$ . The proposed map is then used to construct uniform and refinable grids on a sphere, starting from any triangular uniform and refinable grid on the triangular faces of the octahedron.     

Vibration and stability of a constrained elastica with variable length

This paper studies the vibration and stability of an elastica constrained by a pair of symmetrically placed parallel plane walls. One end of the elastica is fully clamped, while the other end is allowed to slide through a rigid channel under edge thrust. In order to take into account the variation of the contact points between the elastica and the walls during vibration, an Eulerian version of the equations of motion is adopted. It is found that the lowest few natural frequencies approach and remain degenerately zero when point-contact deformations evolve to line-contact patterns. As a consequence, the stability of all line-contact deformations before secondary buckling cannot be determined from the linear vibration analysis. A load-controlled experiment was conducted to find that the elastica jumped from one-point to two-point, and then to three-point contact with the walls without going through any line-contact deformations. These experimental observations are different from the results reported previously by others with different set-ups, in which line-contact deformations did exist. Explanations based on experimental evidences and theoretical analyses are provided to confirm the validity of these previous investigations and clarify the cause of the difference.     

New excited superdeformed bands in heavy Pb nuclei: Clue for an octupole softness near the N = 118 gap at large deformation

We report the identification of six new superdeformed (SD) bands in ^197,198Pb observed with the EUROBALL IV spectrometer. The results are interpreted in the framework of cranked Hartree-Fock calculations with approximate projection on the particle number by means of the Lipkin-Nogami method. A mixing between quasi-particle excitations and an octupole vibration is suggested in the two SD isotopes. We have estimated the ordering of the neutron valence orbitals and confirm indirectly a N = 118 SD gap. Received: 20 December 2000 / Accepted: 24 January 2001     

Nonlinear local supersymmetric SU(5)-model

We construct a realistic nonlinear supersymmetric SU(5) model without superpartner particles in curved space and investigate the Higgs sector in the limit of flat space. We need at least an adjoint-, a quintuplet- and an antiquintuplet-Higgs multiplet. In order to obtain a realistic breakdown of SU(5) to SU(3) × U(1) at tree level we have to modify the vacuum structure of the adjoint representation in comparison to other SU(5)-models. This model requires an “elegant” fine-tuning. We determine the mass spectrum of the electroweak Higgs sector.