On the wave equation with semilinear porous acoustic boundary conditions

The goal of this work is to study a model of the wave equation with semilinear porous acoustic boundary conditions with nonlinear boundary/interior sources and a nonlinear boundary/interior damping. First, applying the nonlinear semigroup theory, we show the existence and uniqueness of local in time solutions. The main difficulty in proving the local existence result is that the Neumann boundary conditions experience loss of regularity due to boundary sources. Using an approximation method involving truncated sources and adapting the ideas in Lasiecka and Tataru (1993) [28], we show that the existence of solutions can still be obtained. Second, we prove that under some restrictions on the source terms, then the local solution can be extended to be global in time. In addition, it has been shown that the decay rates of the solution are given implicitly as solutions to a first order ODE and depends on the behavior of the damping terms. In several situations, the obtained ODE can be easily solved and the decay rates can be given explicitly. Third, we show that under some restrictions on the initial data and if the interior source dominates the interior damping term and if the boundary source dominates the boundary damping, then the solution ceases to exists and blows up in finite time. Moreover, in either the absence of the interior source or the boundary source, then we prove that the solution is unbounded and grows as an exponential function.     

Permeation of nanocrystals across lipid membranes

Biological membranes are one of the major structural elements of cells, and play a key role as a selective barrier and substrate for many proteins that facilitate transport and signaling processes. Understanding the structural and mechanical properties of lipid membranes during permeation of nanomaterials is of prime importance in determining the toxicity of nanomaterials to living cells. It has been shown that the interaction between lipid membranes and nanomaterials and the disruption of lipid membranes are often determined by physicochemical properties of nanomaterials, such as size, shape and surface composition. In this work, molecular dynamic simulations were carried out using various sizes of nanocrystals as a probe to explore the transport of nanomaterials across dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) bilayers and the changes in the structural and mechanical properties of DPPC bilayers during the permeation. A coarse-grained model was used to provide insight at large time and length scales. In this work, an external driving force helps the nanocrystals across the lipid bilayer. The minimum forces needed to penetrate the model membrane and the interaction of nanocrystals and lipid bilayers were investigated in simulations. The elastic and dynamic properties of lipid bilayers, including the local and bulk properties during the permeation of the nanocrystals, which are of considerable fundamental interest, were also studied. The findings described will lead to better understanding of nanomaterial–lipid membrane interactions and the mechanical and dynamic properties of lipid membranes under permeation.     

Role of surface ligands in nanoparticle permeation through a model membrane: a coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations study

How nanoparticles interact with biological membranes is of significant importance in determining the toxicity of nanoparticles as well as their potential applications in phototherapy, imaging and gene/drug delivery. It has been shown that such interactions are often determined by nanoparticle physicochemical factors such as size, shape, hydrophobicity and surface charge density. Surface modification of the nanoparticle offers the possibility of creating site-specific carriers for both drug delivery and diagnostic purposes. In this work, we use coarse-grained molecular dynamic simulations to explore the permeation characteristics of ligand-coated nanoparticles through a model membrane. We compare permeation behaviors of ligand-coated nanoparticles with bare nanoparticles to provide insights into how the ligands affect the permeation process. A series of simulations is carried out to validate a coarse-grained model for nanoparticles and a lipid membrane system. The minimum driving force for nanoparticles to penetrate the membrane and the mechanism of nanoparticle–membrane interaction were investigated. The potential of the mean force profile, nanoparticle velocity profile, force profile and density profiles (planar and radial) were obtained to explore the nanoparticle permeation process. The structural properties of both nanoparticles and lipid membrane during the permeation, which are of considerable fundamental interest, are also studied in our work. The findings described in our work will lead to a better understanding of nanoparticle–lipid membrane interactions and cell cytotoxicity and help develop more efficient nanocarrier systems for intracellular delivery of therapeutics.     

Experimental results of DPIS with a new RFQ

We have developed a new heavy ion production system which uses a combination of an RFQ and a laser ion source. Induced plasma by a laser shot is delivered to the RFQ without an extraction electrode. We named this new idea ‘direct plasma injection scheme (DPIS)’. In 2004, a new RFQ was built for demonstrating the capability of the DPIS. After a few months of commissioning period, we could obtain more than 60 mA of carbon beam from the RFQ. This new scheme could be applied to cancer therapy facilities and high energy nuclear physics accelerator complexes.     

Hybrid Impulsive Control of Stochastic Systems with Multiplicative Noise Under Markovian Switching

A problem of state output feedback stabilization of discrete-time stochastic systems with multiplicative noise under Markovian switching is considered. Under some appropriate assumptions, the stability of this system under pure impulsive control is given. Further under hybrid impulsive control, the output feedback stabilization problem is investigated. The hybrid control action is formulated as a combination of the regular control along with an impulsive control action. The jump Markovian switching is modeled by a discrete-time Markov chain. The control input is simultaneously applied to both the stochastic and the deterministic terms. Sufficient conditions based on stochastic semi-definite programming and linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) for both stochastic stability and stabilization are obtained. Such a nonconvex problem is solved using the existing optimization algorithms and the nonconvex CVX package. The robustness of the stability and stabilization concepts against all admissible uncertainties are also investigated. The parameter uncertainties we consider here are norm bounded. Two examples are given to demonstrate the obtained results.     

Full Spark Frames

Finite frame theory has a number of real-world applications. In applications like sparse signal processing, data transmission with robustness to erasures, and reconstruction without phase, there is a pressing need for deterministic constructions of frames with the following property: every size-M subcollection of the M-dimensional frame elements is a spanning set. Such frames are called full spark frames, and this paper provides new constructions using the discrete Fourier transform. Later, we prove that full spark Parseval frames are dense in the entire set of Parseval frames, meaning full spark frames are abundant, even if one imposes an additional tightness constraint. Finally, we prove that testing whether a given matrix is full spark is hard for NP under randomized polynomial-time reductions, indicating that deterministic full spark constructions are particularly significant because they guarantee a property which is otherwise difficult to check.     

Dimension invariance of finite frames of translates and Gabor frames

A dimension invariance property for finite frames of translates and Gabor frames is discussed. Under appropriate support conditions among the frame and dual frame generating functions, we show that a pair of dual frames evaluated in a given space remains a valid dual set if they are naturally embedded in the underlying space of almost arbitrarily enlarged dimension. Consequently, the evaluation of duals in a very large dimensional space is now easily accessible by merely working in a space of some much smaller dimension. A number of uniform and non-uniform schemes are studied. To satisfy the support conditions, a method of finding valid alternate dual functions with small support via a known parametric dual frame formula is discussed. Oftentimes it is convenient to have truncated approximate duals that satisfy the support conditions. Stability studies of the dimension invariance principle via such approximate duals are also presented.     

Strong stability and uniform decay of solutions to a wave equation with semilinear porous acoustic boundary conditions

We consider a wave equation with semilinear porous acoustic boundary conditions. This is a coupled system of second and first order in time partial differential equations, with possibly semilinear boundary conditions on the interface. The results obtained are (i) strong stability for the linear model, (ii) exponential decay rates for the energy of the linear model, and (iii) local exponential decay rates for the energy of the semilinear model. This work builds on a previous result showing generation of a well-posed dynamical system. The main tools used in the proofs are (i) the Stability Theorem of Arendt-Batty, (ii) energy methods used in the study of a wave equation with boundary damping, and (iii) an abstract result of I. Lasiecka applicable to hyperbolic-like systems with nonlinearly perturbed boundary conditions.