On the Physical Origin of Long-Ranged Fluctuations in Fluids in Thermal Nonequilibrium States

Thermodynamic fluctuations in systems that are in nonequilibrium steady states are always spatially long ranged, in contrast to fluctuations in thermodynamic equilibrium. In the present paper we consider a fluid subjected to a stationary temperature gradient. Two different physical mechanisms have been identified by which the temperature gradient causes long-ranged fluctuations. One cause is the presence of couplings between fluctuating fields. Secondly, spatial variation of the strength of random forces, resulting from the local version of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem, has also been shown to generate long-ranged fluctuations. We evaluate the contributions to the long-ranged temperature fluctuations due to both mechanisms. While the inhomogeneously correlated Langevin noise does lead to long-ranged fluctuations, in practice, they turn out to be negligible as compared to nonequilibrium temperature fluctuations resulting from the coupling between temperature and velocity fluctuations.     

Implementation of an integrated glucose POCT system

In response to a change of the Belgian National Directives whereby hospital laboratories became responsible for all point-of-care testing (POCT) performed within hospital walls a standardized and automated POC glucose-testing system was implemented in our hospital. The system consists of 50 AccuCheck Inform instruments (Roche Diagnostics, Vilvoorde, Belgium), 50 docking stations, a DataCare Server, and connections to the medical laboratory information system (MOLIS, Sysmex, Barchon, Belgium) and to the hospital information system. Implementation involved many parties and extensive preparation and communication. Key issues were bar-coded patient and user identification, training, and responsibilities. One year after the hospital wide implementation of this system the quality of POC glucose testing has significantly increased, thereby improving patient safety. This study describes a stepwise change over involving the medical laboratory and with a focus on hands-on quality.Presented at the ninth conference on Quality in the Spotlight, 18–19 March 2004, Antwerp, Belgium.     

Rheological and physical properties of aliphatic hyperbranched polyesters

The effects of the size (pseudo‐generation number) and nature of end groups on physical and rheological properties were investigated for a series of hyperbranched polyesters based on an ethoxylated pentaerythritol core and 2,2‐bis‐(hydroxymethyl)propionic acid repeat units. The observed linear dependence of the melt viscosity on the molar mass in the high pseudo‐generation‐number limit indicated that entanglement effects were substantially absent. Moreover, the marked influence of end capping of the end groups on the physical and rheological properties suggested that intermolecular interactions were dominated by contacts between the outer shells of the molecules, in which the end groups were assumed to be concentrated. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 42: 1218–1225, 2004     

Lower semicontinuity of quasi-convex integrals in BV

Some boundedness properties for an extension operator are proved and used together with techniques of Maly [24], Meyers [29], Fonseca and Müller [13] and Fonseca and Marcellini [12] to obtain lower semicontinuity results in BV for quasiconvex integrals of super-linear growth. Received January 25, 1997 / Accepted October 3, 1997     

Lamp configuration design for rapid thermal processing systems

We have studied lamp configuration design for rapid thermal processing (RTP) systems. We considered a configuration consisting of four concentric circular lamp zones, three of them above the wafer and one circumventing the wafer. We propose a method to determine the geometric parameters, the width, height and radius, of the lamp zones so that the configuration designed has the capacity to achieve a uniform temperature on the wafer. The method is based on a necessary and sufficient condition for uniform temperature tracking and analytic expressions of the view factors. A design example is given in which a least square open-loop control law yields good temperature uniformity     

Algebraic representation of the linear problem as a method to construct the Darboux-Bäcklund transformation

An effective algorithm to construct the Darboux matrix based on the dressing method is proposed. Our approach consists in representing the linear problem as a system of algebraic constraints on two matrices. The Darboux matrix is determined from the requirement that the Darboux-Bäcklund transformation preserves these constraints. A non-isospectral deformation of the derivative nonlinear Schrödinger equation is discussed as an example.     

A new insight into the understanding of the collapsed form of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) molecules

Possible collapsed forms of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) molecules are reviewed on the basis of first principle calculations. Various configurations and associated conformations are detailed. The calculated optimized structures exhibit different possibilities of creating networks of intra-molecular bonds of the hydrogen type. We show that the most remarkable one is able to form a local, self-saturated and well ordered helix. We also indicate in which direction the synthesis of the molecule should be oriented to improve its global behavior in term of hydrophobic/hydrophilic behavior.     

Semigroups of matrices of intermediate growth

Finitely generated linear semigroups over a field K that have intermediate growth are considered. New classes of such semigroups are found and a conjecture on the equivalence of the subexponential growth of a finitely generated linear semigroup S and the nonexistence of free noncommutative subsemigroups in S, or equivalently the existence of a nontrivial identity satisfied in S, is stated. This ‘growth alternative’ conjecture is proved for linear semigroups of degree 2, 3 or 4. Certain results supporting the general conjecture are obtained. As the main tool, a new combinatorial property of groups is introduced and studied.