Overcompensation and population cycles in an ungulate.

Although theoretical studies show that overcompensatory density-dependent mechanisms can potentially generate regular or chaotic fluctuations in animal numbers, the majority of realistic single-species models of invertebrate populations are not overcompensatory enough to cause sustained population cycles. The possibility that overcompensation may generate cycles or chaos in vertebrate populations has seldom been considered. Here we show that highly overcompensatng density-dependent mortality can generate recurrent population crashes consistent with those observed in a naturally limited population of Soay sheep. The observed interval of three or more years between crashes points to sharp 'focusing' of mortality over a narrow range of population density.     

Vibrational control of crystal growth from liquid phase

Modeling and numerical simulations of the convective flows induced by the vibration of the monocrystal during crystal growth have been performed for two configurations simulating the Cz and FZ methods. This permitted to emphasize the role of different vibrational mechanisms in the formation of the average flows. It is shown that an appropriate combination of these mechanisms can be used to counteract the usual convective flows (buoyancy- and/or thermocapillary-driven) inherent to crystal growth processes from the liquid phase. While vibrational convection is rather complex due to these identified mechanisms, the new modeling used in the present paper opens up very promising perspectives to efficiently control heat and mass transfer during real industrial applications of crystal growth from the liquid phase.     

Development of new dyes for use in integrated optical sensors

New chromoionophores have been developed, focused on NIR applications so that optode membranes may be used in monolithically integrated optical sensors. The wavelength of maximum absorbance has been estimated for a new model compound by the Pariser-Parr-Pople (PPP) method. Several cyanine type dyes have been tested as membrane chromoionophores. Membrane composition has been altered to overcome solubility problems. In this way, simple pH-sensitive optode membranes have been produced.     

Database reverse engineering: From requirements to CARE tools

This paper analyzes the requirements that CASE tools should meet for effective database reverse engineering (DBRE), and proposes a general architecture for data-centered applications reverse engineering CASE environments. First, the paper describes a generic DBMS-independent DBRE methodology, then it analyzes the main characteristics of DBRE activities in order to collect a set of desirable requirements. Finally, it describes DB-MAIN, an operational CASE tool developed according to these requirements. The main features of this tool that are described in this paper are its unique generic specification model, its repository, its transformation toolkit, its user interface, the text processors, the assistants, the methodological control and its functional extensibility. Finally, the paper describes five real-world projects in which the methodology and the CASE tool were applied. This is a heavily revised and extended version of “Requirements for Information System Reverse Engineering Support” by J.-L. Hainaut, V. Englebert, J. Henrard, J.-M. Hick, D. Roland, which first appeared in the Proceedings of the Second Working Conference on Reverse Engineering, IEEE Computer Society Press, pp. 136–145, July 1995. This paper presents some results of the DB-MAIN project. This project is partially supported by the Région Wallonne, the European Union, and by a consortium comprising ACEC-OSI (Be), ARIANE-II (Be), Banque UCL (Lux), BBL (Be), Centre de recherche public H. Tudor (Lux), CGER (Be), Cockerill-Sambre (Be), CONCIS (Fr), D'Ieteren (Be), DIGITAL, EDF (Fr), EPFL (CH), Groupe S (Be), IBM, OBLOG Software (Port), ORIGIN (Be), Ville de Namur (Be), Winterthur (Be), 3 Suisses (Be). The DB-Process subproject is supported by the Communauté Fran?aise de Belgique.     

Orbifolds, Sheaves and Groupoids

We characterize orbifolds in terms of their sheaves, and show that orbifolds correspond exactly to a specific class of smooth groupoids. As an application, we construct fibered products of orbifolds and prove a change-of-base formula for sheaf cohomology.     

Selective saturation and inversion of multiple resonances in high-resolution solid-state 13C experiments using slow spinning CP/MAS and tailored DANTE pulse sequences.

Taking advantage of the long 13C T1 values generally encountered in solids, selective saturation and inversion of more than one resonance in 13C CP/MAS experiments can be achieved by sequentially applying several DANTE pulse sequences centered at different transmitter frequency offsets. A new selective saturation pulse sequence is introduced composed of a series of 90 degrees DANTE sequences separated by interrupted decoupling periods during which the selected resonance is destroyed. Applications of this method, including the simplification of the measurement of the principal values of the 13C chemical shift tensor under slow MAS conditions, are described. The determination of the aromaticity of coal using a relatively slow MAS rate is also described.     

Magnetic resonance imaging: a new window into industrial processing.

Although the most important use of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) continues to be for diagnostic medicine, recognition is being gained for many nonmedical applications. Examples include the following areas: petrogeology, food, agriculture, polymers and polymer-composites, and pharmaceuticals. These areas all involve studies of species that have short spin-spin relaxation times, and consequently need far fast gradient switching. These technical details are discussed and typical applications given.     

Optical Tunnelling from One-Dimensional Square-Well Potentials

The authors study a one-dimensional model for optical tunnellingwith a refractive index in the shape of a square well. The relevanceof the model and its limiting cases are discussed. The mainresult is the leading behaviour of the exponentially small imaginarypart of the eigenvalue which determines the radiation loss.The leading behaviour of the imaginary part is calculated usingBerry's formula which controls the asymptotic expansion of theAiry function Bi(z) to better-than-exponential accuracy.