Buckling analysis of stringer-stiffened laminated cylindrical shells with nonuniform eccentricity

In this study, the influence of nonuniformity of eccentricity of stringers on the general axial buckling load of stiffened laminated cylindrical shells with simply supported end conditions is investigated. The critical loads are calculated using Love’s First-order Shear Deformation Theory and solved using the Rayleigh-Ritz procedure. The effects of the shell length-to-radius ratio, shell thickness-to-radius ratio, number of stringers, and stringers depth-to-width ratio on the buckling load of nonuniformly eccentric shells, are examined. The research demonstrates that an appropriate nonuniform distribution of eccentricity of stringers leads the buckling load to increase significantly.     

Catalytic study of the copper-based magnetic nanocatalyst on the aerobic oxidation of alcohols in water

A copper-based magnetic nanocatalyst has been prepared by co-precipitation method and characterized by FESEM, EDS, TEM, XRD, XRF, ICP–OES, FTIR, and BET analysis. This new nanocatalyst displays a good activity toward the aerobic oxidation of a wide range of alcohols in water. Moreover, it is recyclable up to five following runs by simple filtration without any significant loss of its catalytic activity.

     

1H NMR Metabolomics of Chinese Human Milk at Different Stages of Lactation among Secretors and Non-Secretors

Human milk is an intricate, bioactive food promoting infant health. We studied the composition of human milk samples collected over an 8-month lactation using ¹H NMR metabolomics. A total of 72 human breast milk samples were collected from ten Chinese mothers at eight different time points. The concentrations of ten human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), fucose and lactose were quantified. Six of the mothers were classified as Lewis-positive secretors (Se⁺Le⁺) and four as Lewis-positive non-secretors (Se⁻Le⁺) based on the levels of 2′-fucosyllactose (2′-FL), lacto-N-fucopentaose (LNFP) II, lactodifucotetraose (LDFT) and lacto-N-neotetraose (LNnT). Acetate, citrate, short/medium-chain fatty acids, glutamine and urea showed a time-dependent trend in relation to the stage of lactation. The concentrations of 2′-FL, 3-FL (3-fucosyllactose), 3′-SL (3′-sialyllactose), LDFT, LNFP I, LNFP II, LNFP III, LNnT, LNT (lacto-N-tetraose), and fucose were statistically different between secretors and non-secretors. A temporal difference of approximately 1–2 months between the development of non-secretor and secretor HMO profiles was shown. The results highlighted the importance of long-term breastfeeding, especially among non-secretors.     

Electron energy spectrum in the field-ionized plasma

In this article, the effect of ionization on the energy spectrum of electrons within the interaction of a laser pulse with hydrogen atoms is investigated using particle-in-cell simulation codes. The results show that the behaviour of electrons' energy distribution function in the field-ionized plasma, which occurred due to the field ionization, compared with that in the pre-plasma strongly depends on the pulse shape. For short rise-time pulses (here 30 fs), due to the rapid enhancement of laser electric field, ionization occurs quickly, and as a result, there is not much difference in the electron energy in both the media. However, for pulses with rise time of 40 fs, in the pre-plasma state, the electron population reaches higher energies compared with the field-ionized plasma state. The main reason for this difference is the nonlinear wave breaking that happens earlier due to density inhomogeneity in the field-ionized plasma. On the other hand, at longer rise-time pulses (here 60 and 70 fs), electrons achieve higher energies in the field-ionized plasma than those in the case of pre-plasma. In this case, because of density fluctuations in the field-ionized plasma, the Raman backscattered radiations are seeded by a strong initial noise at the earlier times and the Mendonca condition for chaos threshold is met sooner. Therefore, the electrons gain more energy through the stochastic mechanism that is in agreement with chaotic nature of the motion.     

A Langevin equation for the rates of currency exchange based on the Markov analysis

We propose a method for analyzing the data for the rates of exchange of various currencies versus the U.S. dollar. The method analyzes the return time series of the data as a Markov process, and develops an effective equation which reconstructs it. We find that the Markov time scale, i.e., the time scale over which the data are Markov-correlated, is one day for the majority of the daily exchange rates that we analyze. We derive an effective Langevin equation to describe the fluctuations in the rates. The equation contains two quantities, D⁽¹⁾ and D⁽²⁾, representing the drift and diffusion coefficients, respectively. We demonstrate how the two coefficients are estimated directly from the data, without using any assumptions or models for the underlying stochastic time series that represent the daily rates of exchange of various currencies versus the U.S. dollar.     

Interactive effects of local smoothing window size and fundamental frequency on shimmer calculation

Slow amplitude modulation of human voice was approximated by a sinusoidal wave. The theoretical effects of smoothing window size, F₀, and modulation frequency on window amplitude average as well as calculated shimmer were mathematically derived. Subsequently, the theoretical predictions were tested using idealized and real voice signals from normal speakers. The theoretical and experimental results suggest that shimmer (when calculated using a smoothing window) is a function of window duration and modulation frequency. Window duration when defined as a constant number of pitch periods varies from speaker to speaker depending on their F₀. It may not be desirable to use local smoothing windows with a constant number of cycles for shimmer computation, especially if voices with known low-frequency amplitude modulations but notably different fundamental frequencies are compared.     

Bounding the performance of tandem queues with finite buffer spaces

We consider a queueing system with three single servers in tandem with two intermediate buffer storages of finite capacity. The processing times are exponentially distributed and the first server has unlimited number of customers in front of it. Using a negative dependence property between the number of customers at the first and second buffer storages we show that a popular form of decomposition approach applied to this model, indeed, provides a lower bound for its performance. The approach used here to establish the bound is new and could be extended to establish bounds for other types of tandem queues with finite buffer spaces.     

On the Apéry sets of monomial curves

In this paper, we use the Apéry table of the numerical semigroup associated to an affine monomial curve in order to characterize arithmetic properties and invariants of its tangent cone. In particular, we precise the shape of the Apéry table of a numerical semigroup of embedding dimension 3, when the tangent cone of its monomial curve is Buchsbaum or 2-Buchsbaum, and give new proofs for two conjectures raised by Sapko (Commun. Algebra 29:4759–4773, 2001) and Shen (Commun. Algebra 39:1922–1940, 2001). We also provide a new simple proof in the case of monomial curves for Sally’s conjecture (Numbers of Generators of Ideals in Local Rings, 1978) that the Hilbert function of a one-dimensional Cohen-Macaulay ring with embedding dimension three is non-decreasing. Finally, we obtain that monomial curves of embedding dimension 4 whose tangent cones are Buchsbaum, and also monomial curves of any embedding dimensions whose numerical semigroups are balanced, have non-decreasing Hilbert functions. Numerous examples are provided to illustrate the results, most of them computed by using the NumericalSgps package of GAP (Delgado et al., NumericalSgps-a GAP package, 2006).     

Homotopy analysis method for solving Abel differential equation of fractional order

In this study, the homotopy analysis method is used for solving the Abel differential equation with fractional order within the Caputo sense. Stabilityand convergence of the proposed approach is investigated. The numerical results demonstrate that the homotopy analysis method is accurate and readily implemented.