Numerical study of the effects of the rupture process of a secondary diaphragm in expansion tubes

The results of a numerical study are described in which the interactions of a primary shock wave with a secondary diaphragm in expansion tubes are taken into account. The developing wave pattern in the interacting process of the shock with a secondary diaphragm are visualized by many kinds of figures (e.g., the time-distance diagrams of the wave phenomena on the axis, the acoustic impedance contours, and the time histories of the pitot pressure on the axis), and the influences of the shape and rupture process of the diaphragm on the quality of the test gas are explored.     

An algorithm to locate perinatal facilities in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro

In order to reduce infant mortality in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro it is desired to encourage all mothers-to-be to attend the appropriate health care facilities. A 3-level hierarchical prenatal–neonatal health care system is described together with a basic model for optimising accessibility to facilities. A genetic algorithm to solve the basic model is developed and some numerical experience reported. Extensions to the basic model and planned future research are briefly indicated.     

Inversion of adjunction for non-degenerate hypersurfaces

 We prove a precise inversion of adjunction formula for the log variety (ℂ ^{d +1},X), where X is a non-degenerate hypersurface. As a corollary, the minimal log discrepancies of non-degenerate normal hypersurface singularities are bounded by dimension. Received: 17 September 2002 / Revised version: 22 November 2002 Published online: 14 February 2003 Current address: DPMMS, CMS, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WB, England. e-mail: f.ambro@dpmms.cam.ac.uk Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): Primary 14B05; Secondary 14M25, 52B20     

Structural hierarchy of rock masses and the mechanisms of its formation

The formation mechanisms for the structural hierarchy in geological media are discussed. It is shown that the formation of such a hierarchy is caused by certain external and internal circumstances. The first ones consist in the fact that, because of external actions, the Earth’s poles continuously execute the translational and rotational motions responsible for a regular structure of rock fracture and for the appearance of the scale factor √2. The second ones consist in the fact that, under the action of many random factors and because of external actions, during the formation of geological media there appear dissipative structures and, hence, some self-similar fractal structures are formed.     

Thermodynamic parameters of urethane formation reactions and concomitant processes

Thermodynamic parameters of reactions of methyl and phenyl isocyanates with a series of compounds were determined by quantum-chemical calculations. The products of these reactions model for various functional groups present in commercial polyurethanes. The thermodynamic stability series for compounds formed from aliphatic and aromatic isocyanates were constructed.     

Effect of rare-earth oxides on the magnetic properties of anisotropic barium ferrites

The effect of rare-earth oxides on the properties of anisotropic barium ferrites has been studied by x-ray structural and Mössbauer methods. Additions of SrCO₃, as well as SrCO₃ and La₂O₃, SrCO₃ and Pr₆O₁₁, SrCO₃ and Nd₂O₃, SrCO₃ and Sm₂O₃ in amounts of 7.5 mole % Sr and 10 mole % rare-earth element to grade-A barium powder results in the substitution of barium ions by Sr and rare-earth ions; consequently, the energy of magnetic anisotropy changes and the technically important parameters B_r and (BH)_max increase.Translated from Izvestiya Vysshikh Uchebnykh Zavedenii, Fizika, No. 1, pp. 34–39, January, 1989.     

Loading aircraft for military operations

In this paper, we describe an aircraft loading problem submitted by the French military agency (DGA) as part of a more general military airlift planning problem. It can be viewed as a kind of bi-dimensional bin-packing problem, with heterogeneous bins and several additional constraints. We introduce two-phase methods for solving this NP-hard problem. The first phase consists in building good initial solutions, thanks to two fast algorithms: a list-based heuristic and a loading pattern generation method. Both algorithms call a constraint-based subroutine, able to determine quickly if the items already loaded can be reshuffled to accommodate a new object. The second phase improves these preliminary solutions using local search techniques. Results obtained on real data sets are presented.     

ON THE RATE OF WEIGHTED Lp CONVERGENCE BY THE GRUENWALD INTERPOLATORY OPERATORS

This paper gives the weighted Lp convergence rate estimations of the Gruenwald interpolatory polynomials based on the zeros of Chebyshev polymomials of the first kind,and proves that the order of the estimations is optimal for p≥1.