Strong interactions at low energies

The lectures review some of the basic concepts relevant for an understanding of the low energy properties of the strong interactions: chiral symmetry, spontaneous symmetry breakdown, Goldstone bosons, quark condensate. The effective field theory used to analyze the low energy structure is briefly sketched. As an illustration, I discuss the implications of the recent data on the decay K→ππeν for the magnitude of the quark condensate.     

Oblique reflection of shock waves from rigid porous materials

A study to determine the general gas dynamic behaviour associated with the impact of a shock wave on a porous wedge has been undertaken. A number of interesting features are noted. The pattern of wave reflection is shown to be significantly affected by the inflow of gas into the wedge. This has the effect of reducing the triple point trajectory angle for cases of Mach reflection and for strongly reducing the reflection angle in regular reflection. The permeability of the wedge has a significant effect on the strength of the reflected wave and in some cases this wave can be attenuated to the extent that it is almost eradicated. Pressure measurements taken under the wedge are characterized by oscillations which are of similar shape, for a given wedge, over a range of shock wave Mach numbers. It is shown that the wave transmitted into the wedge is attenuated to varying degrees depending on the material properties, and that for weak incident waves the mean propagation velocity can be less than the sound speed in the pore fluid. Photographs taken using a specially constructed wedge which allows the transmitted wave to be visualised, show that the transmitted wave is nearly plane.This article was processed using Springer-Verlag T_EX Shock Waves macro package 1.0 and the AMS fonts, developed by the American Mathematical Society.     

Weather Risk in Offshore Projects

Risk analysis tools have been used to help manage various projects. This paper describes a case study in which an extension to the stochastic project network model was developed for a risk analysis of an oil platform installation, quantifying the possible impact of the weather on the project's schedule. Examination of the weather data suggested the use of a Markov weather model combined with a separate residence time distribution for key states. The weather model was incorporated into the stochastic project network allowing the interactions of the various project uncertainties to be examined. While the weather introduced a significant additional risk to the project, analysis of management's options indicated that much of the risk might be avoided. In particular, the analysis quantified the benefits of scheduling the project start to take advantage of the seasonal variations and hiring heavy duty equipment to operate in more arduous conditions.     

Optimal Server Acquisition in Open Queueing Networks

Several production and flexible manufacturing systems can naturally be modelled using queueing networks. In this paper, we consider the problem of acquiring servers for the nodes of an open queueing network, so as to optimize the steady-state mean virtual system parameters subject to a budget constraint. A partial enumeration scheme and a heuristic method have been proposed to solve this problem. Empirical results based on randomly generated test problems are used to identify a class of problems for which the heuristic performs well.     

Inertia-preserving secant updates

Corrections to the last two equations of Ref. 1 are given.     

New synthesis of 2',3'-didehydro-2',3'-dideoxynucleosides.

The 3'-iodonucleoside 4 and the 3'-O-methylsulfonylthymidine 9 have been synthesized by condensation of silylated uracils 2 with methyl 5-O-tert-butyldiphensilyl-2,3-dideoxy-3-iodo-D-threo-pentofuran oside (3) and methyl 5-O-tert-butyldiphenylsilyl-2-deoxy-3-methylsulfonyl-D-erythro- pentofuranoside (8), respectively. The nucleoside 4 and 9 produced the corresponding 2',3'-didehydro-2',3'-dideoxynucleosides 5 in an elimination reaction on treatment with sodium methoxide. The compounds 5b showed no antiviral activity against HIV-1.     

Density Correlations in the Two-Dimensional Coulomb Gas

We consider a two-dimensional Coulomb gas of positive and negative pointlike unit charges interacting via a logarithmic potential. The density (rather than the charge) correlation functions are studied. In the bulk, the form-factor theory of an equivalent sine-Gordon model is used to determine the density correlation length. At the surface of a rectilinear plain wall, the universality of the asymptotic behavior of the density correlations is suggested. A scaling analysis implies a local form of the compressibility sum rule near a hard wall. A symmetry of the Coulomb system with respect to the Möbius conformal transformation, which induces a gravitational source acting on the particle density, is established. Among the consequences, a universal term of the finite-size expansion of the grand potential is derived exactly for a disk geometry of the confining domain.     

On the reconstruction index of permutation groups: semiregular groups

Summary. The reconstruction index of all semiregular permutation groups is determined. We show that this index satisfies 3 ￡ r(G, W) ￡ 5 3 \leq \rho(G, \Omega) \leq 5 and we classify the groups in each case.     

Unified Interactive Multiple Objective Programming: An Open Architecture For Accommodating New Procedures

It has previously been shown that nine of the most prominent procedures of interactive multiple objective programming can be considered as special cases of a common procedure called the unified algorithm. In this paper, we show how four additional procedures can be similarly included in the unified approach. Also, the paper presents a procedure-switching matrix that depicts the possibilities for switching from one procedure to another, one iteration to the next, in the unified algorithm if so directed by a user.     

Analysis of atmospheric particular matter and water using atomic emission spectrometry with inductively-coupled plasma and two-jet plasmatron

Summary A method for the atomic emission spectrometric analysis of air and water with inductively coupled and two-jet direct current plasmas has been developed. The method has been applied to the determination of impurity contents with good accuracy and sensitivity.