Electrochemical Recovery of Silver from Lead Alloys in Chloride Melts

Electrochemical separation of lead-silver alloys into the constituents by thin-layer electrolysis in molten electrolytes, with bismuth as metal separator, is studied. It is proposed to determine the extent of component recovery by potentiometry.     

Bilateral generating functions and operational methods

Bilateral generating functions are those involving products of different types of polynomials. We show that operational methods offer a powerful tool to derive these families of generating functions. We study cases relevant to products of Hermite polynomials with Laguerre, Legendre and other polynomials. We also propose further extensions of the method which we develop here.     

Quadratic data envelopment analysis

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) offers a piece-wise linear approximation of the production frontier. The approximation tends to be poor if the true frontier is not concave, eg in case of economies of scale or of specialisation. To improve the flexibility of the DEA frontier and to gain in empirical fit, we propose to extend DEA towards a more general piece-wise quadratic approximation, called Quadratic Data Envelopment Analysis (QDEA). We show that QDEA gives statistically consistent estimates for all production frontiers with bounded Hessian eigenvalues. Our Monte-Carlo simulations suggest that QDEA can substantially improve efficiency estimation in finite samples relative to standard DEA models.     

Characteristics of propagation of light beams in gyrotropic crystals

Translated from Zhurnal Prikladnoi Spektroskopii, Vol. 54, No. 5, pp. 815–819, May, 1991.     

Temperature dependence of corundum roentgenoluminescence and thermoluminescence

Translated from Zhurnal Prikladnoi Spektroskopii, Vol. 54, No. 3, pp. 438–444, March, 1991.     

Geometrical method for determining the surface damage threshold for femtosecond laser pulses

A new geometrical method to determine the surface damage threshold for ultrashort pulses is presented. It consists in the formation of a surface damage profile by a movement of the sample across the laser beam focus. A single measurement of the maximum transversal dimension of this damage profile, which depends solely on the laser beam power, is used to calculate the local damage threshold intensity. It is also theoretically shown that the damage in the transverse dimension can be controlled under the diffraction-limited spot.     

A detailed study of the generation of optically detectable watermarks using the logistic map

A digital watermark is a visible, or preferably invisible, identification code that is permanently embedded in digital media, to prove owner authentication and provide protection for documents. Given the interest in watermark generation using chaotic functions a detailed study of one chaotic function for this purpose is performed. In this paper, we present an approach for the generation of watermarks using the logistic map. Using this function, in conjunction with seed management, it is possible to generate chaotic sequences that may be used to create highpass or lowpass digital watermarks. In this paper we provide a detailed study on the generation of optically detectable watermarks and we provide some guidelines on successful chaotic watermark generation using the logistic map, and show using a recently published scheme, how care must be taken in the selection of the function seed.     

Dependence of the Phase Transition Temperature on the Domain Size

Dependence of the phase transition temperature on the domain size is investigated for a double-well quadratic potential. It is shown that for a domain whose boundary is subjected to a hydrostatical pressure, the temperature of phase transitions is independent of the domain and the surface tension coefficient and depends exclusively on the properties of the elastic media. If the displacement field vanishes on the boundary, then for sufficiently small domains, the temperature also does not depend on the surface tension and domain size and is determined by properties of the elastic media only. Bibliography: 8 titles. __________ Translated from Zapiski Nauchnykh Seminarov POMI, Vol. 310, 2004, pp. 98–113.     

Global stability of the Armstrong-Frederick model with periodic biaxial inputs

The paper is concerned with the study of plasticity models described by differential equations with stop and play operators. We suggest sufficient conditions for the global stability of a unique periodic solution for the scalar models and for the vector models with biaxial inputs of a particular form, namely the sum of a uniaxial function and a constant term. For another class of simple biaxial inputs, we present an example of the existence of unstable periodic solutions. The paper was written during the research stay of D. Rachinskii at the Technical University Munich supported by the research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His work was partially supported by the Russian Science Support Foundation, Russian Foundation for Basic Research (Grant No. 01-01-00146, 03-01-00258), and the Grants of the President of Russia (Grant No. MD-87.2003.01, NS-1532.2003.1). The support is gratefully acknowledged.