Spectral estimates for saddle point matrices arising in weak constraint four‐dimensional variational data assimilation

We consider the large sparse symmetric linear systems of equations that arise in the solution of weak constraint four‐dimensional variational data assimilation, a method of high interest for numerical weather prediction. These systems can be written as saddle point systems with a 3 × 3 block structure but block eliminations can be performed to reduce them to saddle point systems with a 2 × 2 block structure, or further to symmetric positive definite systems. In this article, we analyse how sensitive the spectra of these matrices are to the number of observations of the underlying dynamical system. We also obtain bounds on the eigenvalues of the matrices. Numerical experiments are used to confirm the theoretical analysis and bounds.     

A Switch in the Hydrophobic/Hydrophilic Gas-Adsorption Character of Prussian Blue Analogues: An Affinity Control for Smart Gas Sorption

Porous coordination polymers are molecule-based materials presenting a high degree of tunability, which offer many advantages for targeted applications over conventional inorganic materials. This work demonstrates that the hydrophilic/hydrophobic character of Prussian blue analogues having a lipophilic feature may be tuned to optimize the gas adsorption properties. The role of the coordinatively unsaturated metal sites is emphasized through a combination of theoretical and experimental study of water, ethanol, and n-hexane adsorption.     

Supramolecular Tuning Enables Selective Oxygen Reduction Catalyzed by Cobalt Porphyrins for Direct Electrosynthesis of Hydrogen Peroxide

We report a supramolecular strategy for promoting the selective reduction of O₂ for direct electrosynthesis of H₂O₂. We utilized cobalt tetraphenylporphyrin (Co-TPP), an oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) catalyst with highly variable product selectivity, as a building block to assemble the permanently porous supramolecular cage Co-PB-1(6) bearing six Co-TPP subunits connected through twenty-four imine bonds. Reduction of these imine linkers to amines yields the more flexible cage Co-rPB-1(6). Both Co-PB-1(6) and Co-rPB-1(6) cages produce 90–100 % H₂O₂ from electrochemical ORR catalysis in neutral pH water, whereas the Co-TPP monomer gives a 50 % mixture of H₂O₂ and H₂O. Bimolecular pathways have been implicated in facilitating H₂O formation, therefore, we attribute this high H₂O₂ selectivity to site isolation of the discrete molecular units in each supramolecule. The ability to control reaction selectivity in supramolecular structures beyond traditional host–guest interactions offers new opportunities for designing such architectures for a broader range of catalytic applications.     

Enlargement of the Wiener filtration by an absolutely continuous random variable via Malliavin’s calculus

Summary. The analytic treatment of problems related to the asymptotic behaviour of random dynamical systems generated by stochastic differential equations suffers from the presence of non-adapted random invariant measures. Semimartingale theory becomes accessible if the underlying Wiener filtration is enlarged by the information carried by the orthogonal projectors on the Oseledets spaces of the (linearized) system. We study the corresponding problem of preservation of the semimartingale property and the validity of a priori inequalities between the norms of stochastic integrals in the enlarged filtration and norms of their quadratic variations in case the random element F enlarging the filtration is real valued and possesses an absolutely continuous law. Applying the tools of Malliavin’s calculus, we give smoothness conditions on F under which the semimartingale property is preserved and a priori martingale inequalities are valid. Received: 12 April 1995 / In revised form: 7 March 1996     

Searching for losers

We investigate the following process: N people select b losers by flipping coins. The 0-party continues until there are less than b losers; then the 1-party has to find the other losers by the same process. The average time for this process is about long₂ N, but this result requires rather advanced methods. Furthermore, the average size of a binary tree associated to this process and the average number of coin flippings are computed. The method used in this article can be used to give asympotical solutions of a special type of bivariate recurrences. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Electromagnetic field singularities

An integral transform based method is given for determining information about the locating and properties of singularities of electromagnetic fields associated with axially symmetric radiating sources.