Enhancing energy harvesting by coupling monostable oscillators

The performance of a ring of linearly coupled, monostable nonlinear oscillators is optimized towards its goal of acting as energy harvester – through piezoelectric transduction – of mesoscopic fluctuations, which are modeled as Ornstein-Uhlenbeck noises. For a single oscillator, the maximum output voltage and overall efficiency are attained for a soft piecewise-linear potential (providing a weak attractive constant force) but they are still fairly large for a harmonic potential. When several harmonic springs are linearly and bidirectionally coupled to form a ring, it is found that counter-phase coupling can largely improve the performance while in-phase coupling worsens it. Moreover, it turns out that few (two or three) coupled units perform better than more.     

Decoupling of supersymmetric particles

The possibility of a heavy supersymmetric spectrum at the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model is considered and the decoupling from the low energy electroweak scale is analyzed in detail. The formal proof of decoupling of supersymmetric particles from low energy physics is stated in terms of the effective action for the particles of the Standard Model that results by integrating out all the sparticles in the limit where their masses are larger than the electroweak scale. The computation of the effective action for the standard electroweak gauge bosons , Z and is performed by integrating out all the squarks, sleptons, charginos and neutralinos to one-loop. The Higgs sector is not considered in this paper. The large sparticle masses limit is also analyzed in detail. Explicit analytical formulae for the two-point functions of the electroweak gauge bosons to be valid in that limit are presented. Finally, the decoupling of sparticles in the S, T and U parameters is studied analitically. A discussion on how the decoupling takes place in terms of both the physical sparticle masses and the non-physical mass parameters as the -parameter and the soft-breaking parameters is included. Received: 27 March 1998 / Published online: 5 October 1998     

Observation of an excited charm baryon Omega c* decaying to Omega c0gamma

We report the first observation of an excited singly charmed baryon Omega c* (css) in the radiative decay Omega c0gamma, where the Omega c0 baryon is reconstructed in the decays to the final states Omega(-)pi+, Omega(-)pi+pi0, Omega(-)pi+pi(-)pi+, and Xi(-)K(-)pi+pi+. This analysis is performed using a data set of 230.7 fb(-1) collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B factory at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The mass difference between the Omega c* and the Omega c0 baryons is measured to be 70.8+/-1.0(stat)+/-1.1(syst) MeV/c2. We also measure the ratio of inclusive production cross sections of Omega c* and Omega c0 in e+e(-) annihilation.     

A Note on a Paper by P. Amodio and F. Mazzia

In 1999 Amodio and Mazzia presented a new backward error analysis for LU factorization and introduced a new growth factor _n . Their very interesting approach allowed them to obtain sharp error bounds. In particular, they derive nice results assuming that partial pivoting is used. However, the forward error bound for the solution of a linear system whose coefficient matrix A is an M-atrix given in Theorem 4.1 of that paper is not correct. They first obtain a bound for the condition number (U) assuming that one has the LU factorization of an M-matrix and then they apply the bounds obtained when partial pivoting is used. But if P is the permutation associated with partial pivoting then PA = LU can fail to be an M-atrix and the bound for (U) can be false, as shown in our Example 1.1. We also prove that, for a pivoting strategy presented in the paper, the growth factor of an M-matrix A is _n(A) = 1 and (U) (A), where U is the upper triangular matrix obtained after applying such a pivoting strategy.This revised version was published online in October 2005 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Riemann and Dirichlet Type Problems for Hyperanalytic Functions in Fractal Domains

In this paper we are interested in finding solvability conditions for Riemann and Dirichlet type boundary value problems with generalized Hölder-continuous boundary data in the case of hyperanalytic functions defined in a domain of the complex plane bounded by an h-summable closed curve.     

A Unified Treatment of Half-Discrete Hilbert-Type Inequalities with a Homogeneous Kernel

In this paper we provide a unified treatment of half-discrete Hilbert-type inequalities with a general homogeneous kernel. The main results are proved for the case of non-conjugate exponents. A special emphasis is given to determining conditions under which these inequalities include the best possible constants. As an application, we consider some operator expressions closely connected to established inequalities. Finally, we also provide improvements of derived half-discrete inequalities by virtue of the Hermite-Hadamard inequality.     

Bounds for Shannon and Zipf‐Mandelbrot entropies

Shannon and Zipf‐Mandelbrot entropies have many applications in many applied sciences, for example, in information theory, biology and economics, etc. In this paper, we consider two refinements of the well‐know Jensen inequality and obtain different bounds for Shannon and Zipf‐Mandelbrot entropies. First of all, we use some convex functions and manipulate the weights and domain of the functions and deduce results for Shannon entropy. We also discuss their particular cases. By using Zipf‐Mandelbrot laws for different parameters in Shannon entropies results, we obtain bounds for Zipf‐Mandelbrot entropy. The idea used in this paper for obtaining the results may stimulate further research in this area, particularly for Zipf‐Mandelbrot entropy.     

Excess magnitudes for the benzene + n-dodecane system at 298.15 and 323.15 K

The vapor pressures for benzene + n-dodecane mixtures have been measured using a static apparatus. Values for the excess Gibbs energy have been calculated using a modified form of Barker's method and fitted to a Padé approximant equation. Selection of the most adequate approximant is made according to objective criteria. The results are compared with those corresponding to other benzene + n-alkane systems. The values for the activity coefficient of benzene at infinite dilution calculated from these data agrees very well with the values obtained by gas-liquid chromatography.     

Determination of sulfametoxazole, sulfadiazine and associated compounds in pharmaceutical preparations by capillary zone electrophoresis

A capillary zone electrophoresis method is presented to separate sulfadiazine, sulfamethoxazole, trimethoprim, bromhexine and guaiacol by using a fused-silica capillary (60.2 cm x 75 microm I.D.). The separation was carried out at 30 kV and 25 degrees C in a 15 mM phosphate buffer adjusted to pH 6.2 as electrolyte. Under these conditions, the run time was 6 min and the limits of quantification were about 1 mg/l for every component. The method was applied to pharmaceutical preparations and the results provided recoveries close to 100%.