A demonstration of the diffusion of sodium in a glass-gas discharge system

A demonstration is proposed of the nonstationary diffusion of sodium from a melt of its salt in two-electrode light indicators of a discharge in the cases of electric fields accelerating and damping the motion of ions.Mordovinian Pedagogical Institute. Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 5, pp. 98–102, May, 1992.     

Intra-cavity spectroscopy with diode lasers

A multi-mode diode laser with an external cavity is studied experimentally and theoretically for its application to intra-cavity spectroscopy. One facet of a typical Ga_0.89Al_0.11As laser diode was antireflection-coated by deposition of HfO₂ such that 10^–3 residual reflectivity was left over. This diode was placed in an external optical cavity. The emission spectrum of this diode laser is highly sensitive to any frequency-dependent loss in the cavity, and the detectivity of such a loss grows with the pump rate. Even close to threshold, the absorption at 780 nm of Rb atoms with a density of 5×10¹⁰ cm^–3 has been detected. An adequate model for diode lasers based on rate equations and including frequency-dependent gain saturation is developed and applied to the calculations of output spectra. The sensitivity of these spectra to intra-cavity absorption is determined by the overall cavity loss — which is rather high — and the fraction of spontaneous emission in the total emission, in contrast with dye lasers where it is limited by nonlinear mode coupling. Various criteria for the sensitivity are suggested. The smallest detectable absorption with a perfectly antireflection-coated laser is 10^–6 cm^–1. Improvement of the characteristics of the laser diode would increase the sensitivity.     

Towards an Operational Model for Prevention and Treatment of Asthma Attacks

Asthma is one of the major chronic diseases in many countries. At present there is no cure for asthma, but medical advances can help to reduce the chances of attacks of the condition. Efficient care for asthma involves complexity, uncertainty, variability and the use of scarce resources, and these are the same conditions that indicate a possible use for the modelling approach of operational research. This paper is concerned with a pilot model that was developed through joint work by medical professionals and operational researchers. The development of the model is explained and illustrative results indicate the potential value of the modelling approach for the care of asthma in the community.     

Gain saturation in quantum-well heterostructures

The effect of radiation gain saturation in quantum-well heretostructures was investigated in the system GaAs—AlGaAs with regard to the spectral line broadening and the type of radiation polarization. Belarusian State University, 4, F. Skorina Ave., Minsk, 220050, Belarus. Translated from Zhurnal Prikladnoi Spektroskopii, Vol. 64, No. 6, pp. 797–800, November–December, 1997.     

Multicenter ligand transformations of thioureas on ruthenium clusters

The reaction of trirutheniumdodecacarbonyl with various thioureas was found to give, depending upon the substituents and the reaction conditions, a large variety of tri-, tetra-, penta-, and hexanuclear ruthenium clusters. The ligand systems observed in the products are derived from the thioureas employed; the fragmentation of the thiourea molecules involve N-H, C-S, C-H, and C-N activation processes.     

Electron microscopy study of aggregation of microclusters of sulphur

A study of aggregation of sulphur particles in colloidal suspension of sulphur in water-methanol mixture using TEM and electron diffraction is reported. From the micrographs the aggregates formed have been found to be random and tenuous indicating a fractal structure. The electron diffraction patterns of the aggregates are used to study the mechanism of diffusion and reaction limited aggregation.     

Synthesis of 1-(3-alkyl-2,3-dideoxy-D-pentofuranosyl)uracils with potential anti-HIV activity.

1-(3-Alkyl-2,3-dideoxy-alpha,beta-D-erythro-pentofuranosyl)uracils and 1-(3-alkyl-2,3-dideoxy-alpha,beta-D-threo-pentofuranosyl)uracils have been prepared from (E)-4,5-di-O-acetyl-2,3-dideoxy-aldehydo-D-glycero-pent-2-enose by a Michael addition reaction of the appropriate organocopper reagent followed in subsequent order by glycosidation of the resulting 3-alkyl-4,5-diacetoxypentanal with methanolic hydrogen chloride, protection with p-methoxybenzoyl chloride, and trimethylsilyl triflate catalyzed coupling with 2,4-di-O-(trimethylsilyl)uracil. The nucleosides were deprotected by treatment with 33% methylamine in absolute ethanol and separated by reversed-phase HPLC.     

XRD, conductivity and FTIR studies on LiI-Li2WO4-Li3PO4 prepared by low temperature sintering

Different amounts of Li₃PO₄ were mixed to a fixed ratio of LiI:Li₂WO₄, ground and pelletised before subjected to sintering at 70°C for 7 days. XRD shows that the product formed after sintering process is most likely Li₆P₄W₈O₃₂ due to peaks present at 10.6°, 22.4°, 24.0°, 24.4, 26.2°, 32.4° and 34.0°. Conductivity studies show that the sample with 25 wt.% Li₃PO₄ exhibits the highest room temperature conductivity of 3.42×10⁻³ Scm⁻¹. Conductivity is expected to occur through channel-like structures which could have formed due to corner or edge sharing of polyhedra. FTIR studies have shown the existence of WO₄ tetrahedra and WO₆ octahedral at 850 cm⁻¹ and 952 cm⁻¹, and phosphate tetrahedral at 564 cm⁻¹, 700 cm⁻¹, 890 cm⁻¹ and 1030 cm⁻¹.     

Stability of translating solutions to mean curvature flow

We prove stability of rotationally symmetric translating solutions to mean curvature flow. For initial data that converge spatially at infinity to such a soliton, we obtain convergence for large times to that soliton without imposing any decay rates. The authors are members of SFB 647/B3 “Raum – Zeit – Materie: Singularity Structure, Long-time Behaviour and Dynamics of Solutions of Non-linear Evolution Equations”.     

Problems, Models and Complexity. Part II: Application to the DLSP

In Part I of this study, we suggest to identify an operations research (OR) problem with the equivalence class of models describing the problem and enhance the standard computer-science theory of computational complexity to be applicable to this situation of an often model-based OR context. The Discrete Lot-sizing and Scheduling Problem (DLSP) is analysed here in detail to demonstrate the difficulties which can arise if these aspects are neglected and to illustrate the new theoretical concept. In addition, a new minimal model is introduced for the DLSP which makes this problem eventually amenable to a rigorous analysis of its computational complexity.