A variational analysis of soliton switching in an NLDC with saturating non-linearity

A comparative analysis of soliton switching in a non-linear directional coupler with saturating non-linearity is carried out by a variational method. Two models of fractional non-linearity, one the usual unaveraged and the other obtained after averaging over the fibre cross-section, are considered. It is shown that the switching characteristics differ (for the same set of fibre parameters), qualitatively as well as quantitatively, for these models. The soliton switching characteristics in both the models are obtained, compared and discussed.     

Semigroups of transcendental entire functions and their dynamics

We investigate the dynamics of semigroups of transcendental entire functions using Fatou–Julia theory. Several results of the dynamics associated with iteration of a transcendental entire function have been extended to transcendental semigroups. We provide some condition for connectivity of the Julia set of the transcendental semigroups. We also study finitely generated transcendental semigroups, abelian transcendental semigroups and limit functions of transcendental semigroups on its invariant Fatou components.     

OVERLAPPING CONTROL VOLUME APPROACH FOR CONVECTION–DIFFUSION PROBLEMS

This paper introduces a finite volume method to solve 2D steady state convection–diffusion problems on structured non-orthogonal grids. Overlapping control volumes (OCV) are used to discretize the physical domain and the governing equations are solved without transformation. An isoparametric formulation is used to compute diffusion and for upwinding. Four test problems are solved using this and other schemes. The modelling of diffusion in OCV seems very effective even on distorted meshes. The convection modelling in OCV is found to be second-order-accurate, like QUICK, on regular meshes. Although its accuracy is slightly inferior to the latter on rectangular grids, its faster convergence gives it a better overall performance. On non-orthogonal grids, OCV gives better accuracy for a large and practical range of Peclet numbers than does QUICK applied to the transformed equations using the conventional five-point diffusion modelling. The results obtained also demonstrate that the scheme reduces false diffusion to a considerable extent in comparison with the power-law scheme.     

Chemical composition,and antibacterial and antioxidant activities of essential oils from Laggera tomentosa Sch. Bip. ex Oliv. et Hiern (Asteraceae)

Laggera tomentosa Sch. Bip. ex Oliv. et Hiern (Asteraceae), an endemic Ethiopian medicinal plant, is traditionally used to treat various ailments. Previously, the chemical constituents of the essential oil (EO) of its leaves and inflorescence were documented. However, no data about the chemical compositions of other parts of the EOs of the plant have been reported to date. Moreover, there are no previous biological activity reports on any parts of the EOs of this plant. Thus, in this study, the EOs were isolated from the stem bark and roots of this plant by hydrodistillation and analyzed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to identify their components. In addition, antibacterial potentials of the oils were evaluated using the disc diffusion and minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) methods. 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and hydrogen peroxide methods were also employed to assess their antioxidant properties. Oxygenated monoterpenes (71.82% and 77.51%), of which 2,5-dimethoxy- p -cymene (57.28% and 64.76%) and thymol methyl ether (9.51% and 8.93%) were identified as major components in the EOs of stem bark and roots of L. tomentosa and the oils, were the most potent in the DPPH (IC50, 0.33 ± 1.10 and 0.39 ± 0.97 mg/mL) assay, respectively. Moreover, the EOs demonstrated appreciable activity towards the gram+ ( S. aureus and B. cereus ) bacteria. Among these oils, the oil of the stem bark showed the greatest activity to the gram+ (MIC = 0.625 mg/mL) bacteria. Therefore, the overall results suggested that the EOs of L. tomentosa may be a promising prospect for pharmaceutical, food, and other industrial applications.     

Phonon heat transport in gallium arsenide

The lifetimes of quantum excitations are directly related to the electron and phonon energy linewidths of a particular scattering event. Using the versatile double time thermodynamic Green’s function approach based on many-body theory, an ab-initio formulation of relaxation times of various contributing processes has been investigated with newer understanding in terms of the linewidths of electrons and phonons. The energy linewidth is found to be an extremely sensitive quantity in the transport phenomena of crystalline solids as a collection of large number of scattering processes, namely, boundary scattering, impurity scattering, multiphonon scattering, interference scattering, electron–phonon processes and resonance scattering. The lattice thermal conductivities of three samples of GaAs have been analysed on the basis of modified Callaway model and a fairly good agreement between theory and experimental observations has been reported.     

Measurement of peak fluence of neutron beams using Bi-fission detectors

Fission fragments and other charged particles leave tracks of permanent damage in most of the insulating solids. Damage track detectors are useful for personal dosimeters and for flux/dose determination of high-energy particles from accelerators or cosmic rays. A detector that has its principal response at nucleon energy above 50 MeV is provided by the fission of Bi-209. Neutrons produce the largest percentage of hadron dose in most high-energy radiation fields. In these fields, the neutron spectrum is typically formed by low-energy neutrons (evaporation spectrum) and high-energy neutrons (knock-on spectrum). We used Bi-fission detectors to measure neutron peak fluence and compared the result with the calculated value of neutron peak fluence. For the exposure to 100 MeV we have used the iThemba Facility in South Africa.     

B s data at Tevatron and possible new physics

The new physics (NP) is parametrized with four model-independent quantities: the magnitudes and phases of the dispersive part M ₁₂ and the absorptive part ??₁₂ of the NP contribution to the effective Hamiltonian. We constrain these parameters using the four observables ??M _s, ????_s, the mixing phase $\beta_\mathrm{s}^{J/\psi\phi}$ and $A^b_{\rm sl}$ . This formalism is extended to include charge-parity-time reversal (CPT) violation, and it is shown that CPT violation by itself, or even in the presence of CPT-conserving NP without an absorptive part, helps only marginally in the simultaneous resolution of these anomalies.     

Heat transfer in MHD flow of dusty viscoelastic (Walters’ liquid model-B) stratified fluid in porous medium under variable viscosity

The paper investigates the effects of heat transfer in MHD flow of viscoelastic stratified fluid in porous medium on a parallel plate channel inclined at an angle θ. A laminar convection flow for incompressible conducting fluid is considered. It is assumed that the plates are kept at different temperatures which decay with time. The partial differential equations governing the flow are solved by perturbation technique. Expressions for the velocity of fluid and particle phases, temperature field, Nusselt number, skin friction and flow flux are obtained within the channel. The effects of various parameters like stratification factor, magnetic field parameter, Prandtl number on temperature field, heat transfer, skin friction, flow flux, velocity for both the fluid and particle phases are displayed through graphs and discussed numerically.