Iterative fixed point theorems in E-metric spaces

We present a multivalued nonlinear fixed point theorem in an E-metric space introducing the concept of strict positivity in a Riesz space. Our result extends some well-known fixed point theorems obtained by J. Matkowski, R. W?grzyk, R. Cristescu, and C. Çevik, I. Altun.     

Study of mineral water resources from the Eastern Carpathians using stable isotopes

The Eastern Carpathians contain many mineral water springs that feed famous Romanian health resorts such as Borsec, Biborteni and Vatra Dornei. These waters have been used for their different therapeutic effects. In this work, mineral and spring waters from these Romanian regions were investigated by means of chemical and isotopic (δD and δ¹⁸O) analyses in order to understand the recharge mechanisms and also to determine their origins. Most of the investigated springs are of meteoric origin, having the average deuterium content of the local meteoric water. The higher ¹⁸O content with respect to the Meteoric Water Line (MWL) indicated an exchange reaction with crystalline igneous rocks at depth and with other rocks that the water encounters on its journey back to the surface. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Schäffer spaces and exponential dichotomy for evolutionary processes

A very general characterization of exponential dichotomy for evolutionary processes in terms of the admissibility of some pair of spaces which are translation invariant (the so-called Schäffer spaces) is given. It includes, as particular cases, many interesting situations among which we note the results obtained by N. van Minh, F. Räbiger and R. Schnaubelt and the authors concerning the connections between admissibility and dichotomy.     

Brownian motion near an absorbing sphere

The spherically symmetric solution of the Fokker-Planck equation with absorbing boundary is given in terms of a solution of an equivalent integral equation whose explicit form is found.     

Surface treatment with linearly polarized laser beam at oblique incidence

An effective method for surface heat treatment with 10.6 μm linear polarized laser beam at oblique incidence is reported. A circular focused laser spot on the workpiece surface, simultaneously with 2.2–4 times increasing of the absorption are obtained in the 70–80° range of the incidence angle. The main element of the experimental setup is the astigmatic focusing head which focalize the laser beam into an elliptical spot of ellipticity >3 at normal incidence. At a proper incidence angle (obtained by the focusing head tilting) the focused laser spot on the work piece surface gets a circular form and p-state of polarization is achieved.We performed laser heat treatment (transformation hardening, surface remelting) of the uncoated surface, as well as the alloying and cladding processes by powder injection. An enhancement of the processing efficiency was obtained; in this way the investment and operation costs for surface treatment with CO₂ laser can be significantly reduced. Several technical advantages concerning the pollution of the focusing optical components, powder jet flowing and reflected radiation by the work piece surface are obtained.     

Thermal behaviour and spectroscopic investigation of some methyl 2-pyridyl ketone complexes

Pyridine derivative complexes are widely employed as biological active materials especially as antibacterial agents. Five transition metal(II) mpk complexes (mpk = methyl 2-pyridyl ketone) were synthesized and investigated using elemental analysis, spectroscopic techniques (IR and UV–Vis–NIR) and conductometric measurements. The general formulae established from experimental data were found to be [M(mpk)₂(NO₃)₂]·xH₂O (x = 0 for M = Cd(II), Zn(II), x = 2 for M = Cu(II)) and [M(mpk)₂(H₂O)₂](NO₃)₂ (M = Co(II), Ni(II)). These compositions were further confirmed by thermal analysis and their thermal stability in dynamic air atmosphere investigated.     

Temperature measurements of magnesium- and aluminum-based flares

Experimental researches were performed in order to determine the combustion temperatures and the visible and infrared screening performances of two pyrotechnic compositions used in decoy flare systems. Morphostructural and morphochemical analyses of the combustion solid products have been correlated with the combustion temperature. For the experimental studies, visible and infrared thermography have been employed, together with dedicated software. The comparative measurements indicated that the thermovision camera enables the acquisition of more accurate results versus the optical pyrometer in terms of data processing, and that the aluminum/polyhalogenated compounds–compositions present visible and infrared screening performances superior to those based on magnesium/polyhalogenated compounds.     

Minerals from Macedonia XXIII. Spectroscopic and structural characterization of schorl and beryl cyclosilicates

IR and Raman spectroscopy study on two collected cyclosilicate species: schorl (from tourmaline group), Na(Fe,Mg)(3)Al(6)(BO(3))(3)Si(6)O(18)(OH,F)(4) and beryl (Be,Mg,Fe)(3)Al(2)Si(6)O(18) were carried out. Although beryl is nominally anhydrous mineral, vibrational results strongly indicate that H(2)O molecules exist in the structural channels. The number of vibrational bands and their frequencies revealed the presence of H(2)O type II, in which C(2) symmetry axis of the water molecule is parallel to the structural channel (and to the c-axis of beryl). On the other hand, it was found that observed bands in the IR and Raman OH stretching region of the other tourmaline varieties appear as a result of the cation combinations involving dominant presence of Mg and Fe cations in the Y structural sites. The strong indication derived from the vibrational spectroscopic results that the studied mineral represents a schorl variety, coincide very well with the results obtained by powder X-ray diffraction and X-ray microprobe analysis. Both minerals show IR spectral similarities in the region below 1500 cm(-1), whereas the resemblance between the Raman spectra (1500-100 cm(-1)) is less expressed confirming that these spectra are more sensitive to compositional changes and to structural disorder. The identification of both minerals was additionally supported by studying the powder X-ray diffraction diagrams.     

A covariance fitting approach for correlated acoustic source mapping

Microphone arrays are commonly used for noise source localization and power estimation in aeroacoustic measurements. The delay-and-sum (DAS) beamformer, which is the most widely used beamforming algorithm in practice, suffers from low resolution and high sidelobe level problems. Therefore, deconvolution approaches, such as the deconvolution approach for the mapping of acoustic sources (DAMAS), are often used for extracting the actual source powers from the contaminated DAS results. However, most deconvolution approaches assume that the sources are uncorrelated. Although deconvolution algorithms that can deal with correlated sources, such as DAMAS for correlated sources, do exist, these algorithms are computationally impractical even for small scanning grid sizes. This paper presents a covariance fitting approach for the mapping of acoustic correlated sources (MACS), which can work with uncorrelated, partially correlated or even coherent sources with a reasonably low computational complexity. MACS minimizes a quadratic cost function in a cyclic manner by making use of convex optimization and sparsity, and is guaranteed to converge at least locally. Simulations and experimental data acquired at the University of Florida Aeroacoustic Flow Facility with a 63-element logarithmic spiral microphone array in the absence of flow are used to demonstrate the performance of MACS.     

Area-selective signal parameter estimation for two-dimensional MR spectroscopy data

We consider the problem of parametric spectral analysis of two-dimensional (2D) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) data. Estimating the signal components from 2D MRS data is becoming common practice in many clinical MR applications. The most frequently used signal processing tool for this estimation problem is the non-parametric 2D-FFT. There are several alternative parametric methods available to perform this analysis, yet their computational complexity is generally rather high and it becomes prohibitive when the number of points in the measured data matrix is large. In this paper, we propose a novel signal parameter estimation technique which operates on a pre-specified sub-area of the 2D spectrum. This area-selective approach can be used either to estimate only the signal components of main interest in the data, or to compute signal parameter estimates of all present signal components as the computational burden for each sub-area is low. In the numerical example section we consider both simulated data and in vitro 1H data acquired from a 1.5 T MR scanner.