Fabrication of extreme wettability patterns with water-film protection for organic liquids

Selective fabrication of superhydrophilic (S-philic) region on a superhydrophobic (S-phobic) surface requires complex technology and high cost, which has limited applications of extreme wettability patterns. In this paper, a twice-chemical-etching approach without special modification is used to prepare the extreme wettability patterns. Superhydrophobicity and superhydrophilicity can be successfully achieved after twice chemical etching for 20 seconds. The obtained patterns can maintain their extreme wettability for at least 30 days. Functional platforms with single-S-philic and multi-S-philic regions are fabricated to manipulate water and various organic liquids with water-film protection in an air environment.     

Trend of extreme precipitation events over China in last 40 years

Using the daily precipitation data of 740 stations in China from 1960 to 2000, the analysis on the variations and distributions of the frequency and the percentage of extreme precipitation to the annual rainfall have been performed in this paper. Results indicate that the percentage of heavy rains （above 25mm/day） in the annual rainfall has increased, while on average the day number of heavy rains has slightly reduced during the past 40 years. In the end of 1970s and the beginning of 1980s, both the number of days with extreme precipitation and the percentage of extreme precipitation abruptly changed over China, especially in the northern China. By moving t test, the abrupt change year of extreme precipitation for each station and its spatial distribution over the whole country are also obtained. The abrupt change years concentrated in 1978-1982 for most regions of northern China while occurred at various stations in southern China in greatly different/diverse years. Besides the abrupt change years of extreme precipitation at part stations of Northwest China happened about 5 years later in comparison with that of the country＇s average.     

Teleportation of an arbitrary mixture of diagonal states of multiqudit

This paper proposes a scheme to teleport an arbitrary mixture of diagonal states of multiqutrit via classical correlation and classical communication. To teleport an arbitrary mixture of diagonal states of N qutrits, N classically correlated pairs of two qutrits are used as channel. The sender （Alice） makes Fourier transform and conditional gate （i.e., XOR（3） gate） on her qutrits and does measurement in appropriate computation bases. Then she sends N ctrits to the receiver （Bob）. Based on the received information, Bob performs the corresponding unitary transformation on his qutrits and obtains the teleported state. Teleportation of an arbitrary mixture of diagonal states of multiqudit is also discussed.     

Exact Buffer Overflow Calculations for Queues via Martingales

Let _n be the first time a queueing process like the queue length or workload exceeds a level n. For the M/M/1 queue length process, the mean _n and the Laplace transform e^-sn is derived in closed form using a martingale introduced in Kella and Whitt (1992). For workload processes and more general systems like MAP/PH/1, we use a Markov additive extension given in Asmussen and Kella (2000) to derive sets of linear equations determining the same quantities. Numerical illustrations are presented in the framework of M/M/1 and MMPP/M/1 with an application to performance evaluation of telecommunication systems with long-range dependent properties in the packet arrival process. Different approximations that are obtained from asymptotic theory are compared with exact numerical results.     

Positivity preserving finite element approximation

We consider finite element operators defined on ``rough' functions in a bounded polyhedron in . Insisting on preserving positivity in the approximations, we discover an intriguing and basic difference between approximating functions which vanish on the boundary of and approximating general functions which do not. We give impossibility results for approximation of general functions to more than first order accuracy at extreme points of . We also give impossibility results about invariance of positive operators on finite element functions. This is in striking contrast to the well-studied case without positivity.

     

Oscillation and Nonoscillation of Higher Order Self-Adjoint Differential Equations

Oscillation and nonoscillation criteria for the higher order self-adjoint differential equation (-1)ⁿ(t^alphay⁽ⁿ⁾)⁽ⁿ⁾+q(t)y = 0 (*) are established. In these criteria, equation (*) is viewed as a perturbation of the conditionally oscillatory equation (-1)ⁿ(t^alphay⁽ⁿ⁾)⁽ⁿ⁾ - µ,t^2n-y = 0, where _n, is the critical constant in conditional oscillation. Some open problems in the theory of conditionally oscillatory, even order, self-adjoint equations are also discussed.     

Limit Theorems for the Maximum Terms of a Sequence of Random Variables with Marginal Geometric Distributions

Let X _n1 ^* , ... X _nn ^* be a sequence of n independent random variables which have a geometric distribution with the parameter p _n = 1/n, and M _n ^* = \max\{X _n1 ^* , ... X _nn ^* }. Let Z ₁, Z₂, Z₃, ... be a sequence of independent random variables with the uniform distribution over the set N _n = {1, 2, ... n}. For each j N _n let us denote X _nj = min{k : Z_k = j}, M _n = max{X_n1, ... X_nn}, and let S _n be the 2nd largest among X _n1, X_n2, ... X_nn. Using the methodology of verifying D(u_n) and D'(u_n) mixing conditions we prove herein that the maximum M _n has the same type I limiting distribution as the maximum M _n ^* and estimate the rate of convergence. The limiting bivariate distribution of (S_n, M_n) is also obtained. Let _n, _n N_n, , and T _n = min{M(A_n), M(B_n)}. We determine herein the limiting distribution of random variable T _n in the case _n , _n/_n > 0, as n .     

Compound Poisson Approximation of the Number of Exceedances in Gaussian Sequences

Consider a finite sequence of Gaussian random variables. Count the number of exceedances of some level a, i.e. the number of values exceeding the level. Let this level and the length of the sequence increase simultaneously so that the expected number of exceedances remains fixed. It is well-known that if the long-range dependence is not too strong, the number of exceeding points converges in distribution to a Poisson distribution. However, for sequences with some individual large correlations, the Poisson convergence is slow due to clumping. Using Steins method we show that, at least for m-dependent sequences, the rate of convergence is improved by using compound Poisson as approximating distribution. An explicit bound for the convergence rate is derived for the compound Poisson approximation, and also for a subclass of the compound Poisson distribution, where only clumps of size two are considered. Results from numerical calculations and simulations are also presented.     

MSE's of prediction in growth curve model with covariance structures

We consider the growth curve model with covariance structures: positive-definite, uniform covariance structure and serial covariance structure. Two types of prediction problems are studied in this paper. One is called the conditional prediction problem and the other is called the extended prediction problem. For both types of prediction problems, the mean squared error for a serial covariance structure is obtained for the estimates based on the conditional expectation: the mean squared error for an unrestricted covariance structure is compared with the mean squared error for a uniform covariance structure or a serial covariance structure. These results are exemplified by two sets of real data.This research was supported in part by Grant-in-Aid for general Scientific Research, The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture under Contract Number 03640239.