Characterisation of Sol-Gel TiO2 Films by Etching

This article describes the SmartKom Companion, one of three demonstrators developed within the SmartKom project whose goal has been to provide an intuitive and intelligent interface for non-expert users to everyday computer-based applications in different scenarios of use. Conceived for the SmartKom Mobile scenario, the Companion allows intuitive multimodal interaction for drivers and pedestrians. The development of the SmartKom prototypes was constantly accompanied by Wizard-of-Oz experiments as well as system evaluations at different stages of the project. Some usability evaluation results relative to the SmartKom Companion will also be presented.     

Distributed Gaussian discrete variable representation

A discrete variable representation (DVR) made from distributed Gaussians g_n(x) = e, (n = ?∞, …, ∞) and its infinite grid limit is described. The infinite grid limit of the distributed Gaussian DVR (DGDVR) reduces to the sinc function DVR of Colbert and Miller in the limit c → 0. The numerical performance of both finite and infinite grid DGDVRs and the sinc function DVR is compared. If a small number of quadrature points are taken, the finite grid DGDVR performs much better than both infinite grid DGDVR and sinc function DVR. The infinite grid DVRs lose accuracy due to the truncation error. In contrast, the sinc function DVR is found to be superior to both finite and infinite grid DGDVRs if enough grid points are taken to eliminate the truncation error. In particular, the accuracy of DGDVRs does not get better than some limit when the distance between Gaussians d goes to zero with fixed c, whereas the accuracy of the sinc function DVR improves very quickly as d becomes smaller, and the results are exact in the limit d → 0. An analysis of the performance of distributed basis functions to represent a given function is presented in a recent publication. With this analysis, we explain why the sinc function DVR performs better than the infinite grid DGDVR. The analysis also traces the inability of Gaussians to yield exact results in the limit d → 0 to the incompleteness of this basis in this limit. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2005     

Fast folding and comparison of RNA secondary structures

Summary Computer codes for computation and comparison of RNA secondary structures, the Vienna RNA package, are presented, that are based on dynamic programming algorithms and aim at predictions of structures with minimum free energies as well as at computations of the equilibrium partition functions and base pairing probabilities.An efficient heuristic for the inverse folding problem of RNA is introduced. In addition we present compact and efficient programs for the comparison of RNA secondary structures based on tree editing and alignment.All computer codes are written in ANSI C. They include implementations of modified algorithms on parallel computers with distributed memory. Performance analysis carried out on an Intel Hypercube shows that parallel computing becomes gradually more and more efficient the longer the sequences are.

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Schnelle Faltung und Vergleich von Sekundärstrukturen von RNA

Zusammenfassung Die im Vienna RNA package enthaltenen Computer Programme für die Berechnung und den Vergleich von RNA Sekundärstrukturen werden präsentiert. Ihren Kern bilden Algorithmen zur Vorhersage von Strukturen minimaler Energie sowie zur Berechnung von Zustandssumme und Basenpaarungswahrscheinlichkeiten mittels dynamischer Programmierung.Ein effizienter heuristischer Algorithmus für das inverse Faltungsproblem wird vorgestellt. Darüberhinaus präsentieren wir kompakte und effiziente Programme zum Vergleich von RNA Sekundärstrukturen durch Baum-Editierung und Alignierung.Alle Programme sind in ANSI C geschrieben, darunter auch eine Implementation des Faltungs-algorithmus für Parallelrechner mit verteiltem Speicher. Wie Tests auf einem Intel Hypercube zeigen, wird das Parallelrechnen umso effizienter je länger die Sequenzen sind.

     

Analysis of First-Order Reactions with Distributed Parameters

Simple methods of analysis of first-order kinetic processes controlled by distributions of parameters (activation energies and/or frequency factors) are presented. Both the isothermal and nonisothermal regimes are considered. The procedures make use of numerically calculated time derivatives of the concentrations of decaying species (reactants in the case of chemical reactions). They do not require any adjustable initial or boundary values of parameters (like concentration at the infinite time) being thus more accurate and reliable than earlier methods in which kinetic parameters were determined from the concentration, and not from its time derivative. The methods were successfully employed in analysis of the thermally driven cis–trans isomerization of a photochromic crown ether containing the azobenzene moiety incorporated in the crown.     

Migration of seismic data

Prospecting for oil and gas resources poses the problem of determining the geological structure of the earth's crust from indirect measurements. Seismic migration is an acoustic image reconstruction technique based on the inversion of the scalar wave equation. Extensive computation is necessary before reliable information can be extracted from large sets of recorded data. In this paper a collection of industrial migration techniques, each giving rise to a data parallel algorithm, is outlined. Computer simulations on synthetic seismic data illustrate the problem and the approach.     

Complete solutions of a family of quartic Thue and index form equations

Continuing the recent work of the second author, we prove that the diophantine equation

for has exactly 12 solutions except when , when it has 16 solutions. If denotes one of the zeros of , then for we also find all with .

     

On the minimal time function for distributed control systems in Banach spaces

In this paper, it is shown that the minimal time function is locally Lipschitz continuous for the control systemx=Ax+u in a Banach spadeE, under either of two conditions:A is linear and generates aC ₀-semigroup of bounded linear operators; orA is nonlinear, possibly multivalued, and dissipative. The main tool used for the nonlinear case is a result of Barbu concerning the null controllability of the system.     

微波辐照制备无皂阳离子PMMA胶乳粒子

在微波辐照条件下 ,用偶氮二异丁基脒盐酸盐 (AIBA)引发甲基丙烯酸甲酯的均聚 ,制得窄分散的无皂阳离子胶乳粒子 .讨论了引发剂的浓度、单体的浓度、离子强度等对粒子大小、分散性和乳液稳定性的影响 .对微波辐照和水浴加热进行比较 ,发现微波辐照反应速度快、反应无恒速阶段 ,所得粒子的粒径小 ,粒子数目多 ,这为通过改变反应条件制备适宜的窄分散的胶乳粒子提供了一条途径 .     

PRIRODA-04: a quantum-chemical program suite. New possibilities in the study of molecular systems with the application of parallel computing

Main characteristics are described of the PRIRODA quantum-chemical program suite designed for the study of complex molecular systems by the density functional theory, at the MP2, MP3, and MP4 levels of multiparticle perturbation theory, and by the coupled-cluster single and double excitations method (CCSD) with the application of parallel computing. A number of examples of calculations are presented.__________Published in Russian in Izvestiya Akademii Nauk. Seriya Khimicheskaya, No. 3, pp. 804–810, March, 2005.     

A parallel implementation of the COLUMBUS multireference configuration interaction program

Summary In this work a parallel implementation of the COLUMBUS MRSDCI program system is presented. A coarse grain parallelization approach using message passing via the portable toolkit TCGMSG is used. The program is very well portable and runs on shared memory machines like the Cray Y-MP, Alliant FX/2800 or Convex C2 and on distributed memory machines like the iPSC/860. Further implementations on a network of workstations and on the Intel Touchstone Delta are in progress. Overall, results are quite satisfactory considering the complexity and the prodigious requirements, especially the I/O bandwidth, of MRCI programs in general. For our largest test case we obtain a speedup of a factor of 7.2 on an eight processor Cray Y-MP for that section of the program (hamiltonian matrix times trial vector product) which has been parallelized. The speedup for one complete diagonalization iteration amounts to 5.9. An absolute speed close to 1 GFLOPS is found. Results for the iPSC/860 show that ordinary disk I/O is certainly not sufficient in order to guarantee a satisfactory performance. As a solution for that problem, the implementation of a fully asynchronous distributed-memory model for certain data files is in preparation. On leave from: Bereich Informatik, Universität Leipzig, Augustusplatz 10/11, O-7010 Leipzig, Germany