Impact of regularity in structure-property relationships

The regular evolution of properties with structural modification is quantitatively formulated. It is defined in a structural space which is exhaustive, ordered, flexible and explicit. It is detected along the ordered pathways of structural filiations by inference tools, which take into account the experimental precision and proceed by a heuristic modulation of the initial representation space. The introduction of nuances in the quantitative formulation of regularity leads to diverse tools for setting up and exploiting the relationships. These latter constitute a prediction law, which is both simple and as precise as the measurements. The detected regularities make for a generalization of certain structural effects and suggest a fruitful interpretation. Zeroth- and first-order regularities, characteristic of strongly linear variation, are used to safely extrapolate the prediction range and to orient experimental planning.     

Oxidation state of BZ reaction mixtures

The unstirred, ferroin (Fe(phen)(3)2+)-catalyzed Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction1-4 is the prototype oscillatory chemical system. After an induction period of several minutes, one sees "spontaneous" formation of "pacemaker" sites, which oscillate between a blue, oxidized state (high [Fe(phen)3(3+)]) and a red, reduced state (low [Fe(phen)(3)3+]). The reaction medium appears red (reduced) during the induction phase, and the pacemaker sites generate target patterns of concentric, outwardly moving waves of oxidation (blue). Auto-oscillatory behavior is also seen in the Oregonator model of Field, Kor?s, and Noyes (FKN), a robust, reduced model which captures qualitative BZ kinetics in the auto-oscillatory regime. However, the Oregonator model predicts a blue (oxidized) induction phase. Here, we show that including reaction R8 of the FKN mechanism, not incorporated in the original Oregonator, accounts for bromide release during the induction phase, thus producing the observed red oxidation state.     

Spatiotemporal clustering and temporal order in the excitable BZ reaction

The prototype experimental example of "spontaneous" pattern formation in an unstirred chemical medium is the oscillatory Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction: target patterns of outward-moving concentric rings are readily observed when the reaction is run in a thin layer in a Petri dish. In many experimental runs, new target centers appeared to form closer to pre-existing target centers than expected in a randomized model. Here we describe a simple direct test for the presence of temporal order in the spatiotemporal dynamics of target nucleation, and apply this test to detect significant temporal order in target formation in the ferroin-catalyzed BZ reaction. We also describe how mixing heterogeneity can generate temporal order, even in the absence of heterogeneous physical nucleating centers.     

Light absorption in hydrogen plasma on the bound-free and free-free transitions of the H-H+ system

Radiative transitions in the proton-hydrogen atom system are theoretically analyzed over a wide range of wavelengths and temperatures of equilibrium hydrogen plasma. The light absorption at T～1500–3500 K due to photodissociation and transitions in the H ₂ ⁺ ion continuum is shown to make a contribution that is comparable with the photoabsorption in the electron-hydrogen atom system near the maximum of the Planck distribution.     

Search for nu(e) from the sun at Super-Kamiokande-I

We present the results of a search for low energy nu(e) from the Sun using 1496 days of data from Super-Kamiokande-I. We observe no significant excess of events and set an upper limit for the conversion probability to nu(e) of the 8B solar neutrino. This conversion limit is 0.8% (90% C.L.) of the standard solar model's neutrino flux for total energy=8-20 MeV. We also set a flux limit for monochromatic nu(e) for E(nu(e))=10-17 MeV.     

Magnetic ordering below 10K in the high-Tc superconductor YBa2(Cu0.985Fe0.015)3O7−σ

The high-temperature superconductor with the nominal composition YBa₂Cu₃O_7?σ has been doped with iron 93% enriched in⁵⁷Fe. When 1.5 at % Fe substitutes for Cu, the transition temperature is reduced by about 30° K with full ac shielding (X′=?1/4π) achieved by ≈40 K. At room temperature the Mössbauer spectrum consists of three overlapping doublets. Below 10 K, hyperfine-field splitting is observed; relaxation still takes place at T=1.8 K.     

Maximal mean/standard deviation ratio in an undiscounted MDP

A stationary policy in an MDP (Markov decision process) induces a stationary probability distribution of the reward from each initial state. The problem analyzed here is maximization of the mean/standard deviation ratio of the stationary distribution. In the unichain case, a solution is obtained via parametric analysis of a linear program having the same number of variables and one more constraint than the formulation for gain-rate optimization. The same linear program suffices in the multichain case if the initial state is an element of choice. The easier problem of maximizing the mean/variance ratio is mentioned at the end of the paper.