Pit your wits against young minds!

This column is a place for those bits of contagious mathematics that travel from person to person in the community, because they are so elegant, suprising, or appealing that one has an urge to pass them on. Contributions are most welcome.     

利福平菌丝体厌氧生化处理的研究

制药厂生产利福平过程中产生大量的利福平菌丝体,可严重污染环境。用厌氧消化法处理利福平菌丝体,消化温度40℃,反应器容积负荷2KgCOD/m~3·d,液料滞留期(SRT)14～20天,取得了良好的处理效果。COD去除率稳定在90％左右,BOD_5去除率达到95％以上,产气率达到0.49m~3/去除KgCOD。     

Ruin Probability with Variable Premium Rate and Disturbed by Diffusion in a Markovian Environment

We consider a risk model with a premium rate which varies with the level of free reserves. In this model, the occurrence of claims is described by a Cox process with Markov intensity process, and the influence of stochastic factors is considered by adding a diffusion process. The integro-differential equation for the ruin probability is derived by a infinitesimal method.     

CoCl（CNPh）2（pph3）2的制备,结构和性质

由ＣｏＣｌ（ＰＰｈ３）３与过量ＰｈＮＣＳ在苯溶液中的反应制备出一种流的Ｃｏ（Ｉ）的五配位配合物．根据红外，１Ｈ核磁共振、快原子轰击质谱、ｘ电子能谱及元素分析结果确定其分子式为ＣｏＣｌ（ＣＮＰｈ）２（ＰＰｈ３）２与类似的配合物比较，推断该配合物具有三角双锥结构，其中两个大体积的叔膦基成轴间配位．从ｄ－ｐ户反馈π键度讨论了ＩＲ及１ＨＮＭＲ．此外，也对该回合物的溶解性、热稳定性以及对Ｏ２的稳定性加以了描述．     

AC=BD在微分方程中的应用

利用AC＝BD的思想，将变系数广义KdV方程约化成常微分方程，求出了KdV方程的Lax对。     

A Novel Polymethyl Methacrylate （PMMA）TiO2 Nanocomposite and Its Thermal and Photic Stability

A new kind of polymethyl methacrylate （PMMA）-TiO2 nanocomposite was synthesized through polymerization. The thermal and photic stability of this PMMA TiO2 nanocomposites were investigated. The as prepared samples were characterized by scanning electron microscopy （SEM）, UV-Vis spectroscopy, differential thermal analysis （DTA） and the photo-induced weight loss, The results show that the photostability of the PMMA-TiO2 nanocomposite is higher than that of the pure PMMA under UV-light irradiation, The weight loss of the pure PMMA reaches 30 % after 300 h UVirradiation, while the composite only 0.3% under the identical experimental condition. The glass transition temperature （TR） of pure PMMA is only 80℃, while the Tg of the composite reaches 258℃. Compared with pure PMMA, the thermal stability of the composite is greatly enhanced.     

Atomistic phenomena in dense fluid shock waves

The shock structure problem is one of the classical problems of fluid mechanics and at least for non-reacting dilute gases it has been considered essentially solved. Here we present a few recent findings, to show that this is not the case. There are still new physical effects to be discovered provided that the numerical technique is general enough to not rule them out a priori. While the results have been obtained for dense fluids, some of the effects might also be observable for shocks in dilute gases.     

Approximation of transient temperatures in complex geometries using fractional derivatives

It is shown that time-dependent temperatures in a transient, conductive system can be approximately modeled by a fractional-order differential equation, the order of which depends on the Biot number. This approximation is particularly suitable for complex shapes for which a first-principles approach is too difficult or computationally time-consuming. Analytical solutions of these equations can be written in terms of the Mittag-Leffler function. The approximation is especially useful if a suitable fractional-order controller is to be designed for the system.     

Damage and fracture evaluation of granular composite materials by digital image correlation method

This paper presents the applications of digital image correlation technique to the mesoscopic damage and fracture study of some granular based composite materials including steelfiber reinforced concrete, sandstone and crystal-polymer composite. The deformation fields of the composite materials resulted from stress localization were obtained by the correlation computation of the surface images with loading steps and thus the related damage prediction and fracture parameters were evaluated. The correlation searching could be performed either directly based on the gray levels of the digital images or from the wavelet transform (WT) coefficients of the transform spectrum. The latter was developed by the authors and showed higher resolution and sensitivity to the singularity detection. Because the displacement components came from the rough surfaces of the composite materials without any coats of gratings or fringes of optical interferometry, both surface profiles and the deformation fields of the composites were visualized which was helpful to compare each other to analyze the damage of those heterogeneous materials. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10125211 and 10072002), the Scientific Committee of Yunnan Province for the Program of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete, and the Institute of Chemical Materials, CAEP at Mianyang     

Preparation,thermal properties,and flame retardance of epoxy–silica hybrid resins

A novel epoxy system was developed through the in situ curing of bisphenol A type epoxy and 4,4′‐diaminodiphenylmethane with the sol–gel reaction of a phosphorus‐containing trimethoxysilane (DOPO–GPTMS), which was prepared from the reaction of 9,10‐dihydro‐9‐oxa‐10‐phosphaphenanthrene‐10‐oxide (DOPO) with 3‐glycidoxypropyltrimethoxysilane (GPTMS). The preparation of DOPO–GPTMS was confirmed with Fourier transform infrared, ¹H and ³¹P NMR, and elemental analysis. The resulting organic–inorganic hybrid epoxy resins exhibited a high glass‐transition temperature (167 °C), good thermal stability over 320 °C, and a high limited oxygen index of 28.5. The synergism of phosphorus and silicon on flame retardance was observed. Moreover, the kinetics of the thermal oxidative degradation of the hybrid epoxy resins were studied. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 41: 2354–2367, 2003