Heavy flags undergo spontaneous oscillations in flowing water

By immersing a compliant yet self-supporting sheet into flowing water, we study a heavy, streamlined, and elastic body interacting with a fluid. We find that above a critical flow velocity a sheet aligned with the flow begins to flap with a Strouhal frequency consistent with animal locomotion. This transition is subcritical. Our results agree qualitatively with a simple fluid dynamical model that predicts linear instability at a critical flow speed. Both experiment and theory emphasize the importance of body inertia in overcoming the stabilizing effects of finite rigidity and fluid drag.     

Investigation in thorium phosphate by NMR II-phosphorus dipolar networks

With through space and through bond experiments in two-dimensional NMR we analyze the transformation from the thorium phosphate-hydrogen phosphate hydrate (TPHPH) to the β form of the thorium phosphate diphosphate (β-TPD) in relation with the phosphorus networks. These techniques are complementary: the through space coupling gives an insight on the dipolar phosphorus networks while the through bond coupling is particularly efficient in the detection of the P₂O₇ groups. With these experiments we show that in a first step, by heating the precursor TPHPH above 250 °C, it transforms into an form of TPD. This transformation is due to the complete condensation of hydrogen phosphate groups HPO₄ into P₂O₇ entities. By heating -TPD above 950 °C it transforms into its well-known β form. The form is characterized by a hygroscopic behavior: some water molecules are present near the P₂O₇ groups that makes non-equivalent their phosphorus nuclei. PO₄ dipolar networks are always present in the form. The main effect of these PO₄ and P₂O₇ units is to give the system a channel structure and the water enters in them.     

The pyrolysis of propane

The pyrolysis of propane plays an important role in determining the combustion properties of natural gas mixtures and offers insight into the cracking patterns of larger fuels. This work investigates propane pyrolysis behind reflected shock waves with a multiwavelength laser-absorption speciation technique. Nine laser wavelengths, sensitive to key pyrolysis species, were used to measure absorbance time histories during the decomposition of 2% propane in argon between 1022 and 1467 K, 3.7-4.3 atm. Absorbance models were developed at each diagnostic wavelength to interrogate common initial conditions, and time histories of all major species are reported at 1250, 1290, 1330, 1370, and 1410 K. Nearly complete carbon recovery observed at lower temperatures enabled the inference of hydrogen formation from atomic conservation, while decaying carbon recovery at high temperatures suggests the formation of allene and 1-butene. The results show systematically faster pyrolysis than predicted by kinetic modeling and motivate further study into the kinetics of propane pyrolysis.     

Adaptive estimation of the stationary density of a stochastic differential equation driven by a fractional Brownian motion

Statistical Inference for Stochastic Processes - We build and study a data-driven procedure for the estimation of the stationary density f of an additive fractional SDE. To this end, we also prove...     

Operando Isotopic Exchange in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells: Oxygen-Transport Dependency on Applied Potential

The oxygen isotopic exchange technique is a powerful tool to investigate the oxygen transport kinetics in an oxide solid. In a solid oxide fuel cell, isotopic surface exchange and diffusion coefficients are classically determined by using the Isotopic Exchange Depth Profiling method followed by ex situ SIMS characterizations. Despite its relevance, the utilization of in situ or operando techniques to measure the isotopic exchange under an electrical bias remains marginal. We developed here a set-up which enables operando monitoring of oxygen exchange in SOFC type cells under polarization. The system has been used for studying the oxygen mobility dependency upon polarization on a symmetrical Pt/YSZ/Pt cell (YSZ: yttria-stabilized zirconia). Homomolecular and heterolytic exchange reactions were undertaken to investigate the oxygen activation step and discriminate the limiting step among the sequence of elementary steps which constitute the oxygen transport process in the SOFC system. Oxygen ions incorporation into the dense ionic conductor was identified to be the rate determining step, and its first order rate constant dependency on applied potential was established.     

Optimization by ant algorithms: possible roles for an individual ant

In most ant algorithms, the role of each ant is to build a solution in a constructive way, basing each decision on the greedy force and the trails. However, different roles are possible for each individual ant, ranging from a negligible help in the decision process to a refined local search heuristic. In this paper, the importance of the role assigned to each ant is discussed. Three general ant methodologies are presented. Comparative results are analyzed for the well-known graph coloring problem.     

基于耦合道Gamow壳模型计算17O和17F的能谱以及16O(p,p)反应的微分散射截面

利用耦合道Gamow壳模型计算了17O和17F的低激发能谱以及16O(p,p)反应的低能弹性散射截面。结果表明,17O和17F中非束缚共振态能级的核子发射宽度的计算需要合理地考虑连续态耦合效应。计算得到的17O和17F的低激发能谱以及16O(p,p)反应的低能弹性散射激发函数都与实验数据吻合较好。这说明基于现实核力的计算可更好地描述16O(p,p)反应的低能弹性散射截面。     

Critical reflexivity in financial markets: a Hawkes process analysis

We model the arrival of mid-price changes in the E-mini S&P futures contract as a self-exciting Hawkes process. Using several estimation methods, we find that the Hawkes kernel is power-law with a decay exponent close to ?1.15 at short times, less than ≈ 10³ s, and crosses over to a second power-law regime with a larger decay exponent ≈–1.45 for longer times scales in the range [10³ ,10⁶ ] seconds. More importantly, we find that the Hawkes kernel integrates to unity independently of the analysed period, from 1998 to 2011. This suggests that markets are and have always been close to criticality, challenging a recent study which indicates that reflexivity (endogeneity) has increased in recent years as a result of increased automation of trading. However, we note that the scale over which market events are correlated has decreased steadily over time with the emergence of higher frequency trading.