Nanobuffering property of Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticles in aqueous solution

In the present study, the buffering effect of magnetite nanoparticles (Fe₃O₄) dispersed in an aqueous solution on the local pH value is investigated. It manifests itself in the fact that when some amount of acid or base is added to the solution then the solution near the nanoparticles surface becomes, respectively, less acidic and less alkaline than it is expected. It is the result of both the local electrostatic field, which represents the electric double layer at the surface of magnetic nanoparticles and the magnetic field around the nanoparticles. The magnetite nanoparticles exhibit very low toxicity and they are becoming increasingly important for new biomedical applications related to their effects on chemical reactions in body tissues and cells. The question arises, how strong are these effects at the nanoscale? The strength of the buffering property of magnetite nanoparticles is investigated both theoretically and experimentally by the direct measurement of the local pH value of a magnetic nanoparticles suspension. The theoretical model is based on stochastic equations describing the ions diffusing in the neighborhood of the electric double layer of the magnetic material. The electric double layer is modeled with the help of the Poisson–Boltzmann model. It is directly shown that both the electrostatic field and the magnetic field are responsible for the observed local changes of the pH value with respect to the bulk pH value.     

A holomorphic and background independent partition function for matrix models and topological strings

We study various properties of a nonperturbative partition function which can be associated with any spectral curve. When the spectral curve arises from a matrix model, this nonperturbative partition function is given by a sum of matrix integrals over all possible filling fractions, and includes all the multi-instanton corrections to the perturbative 1/N expansion. We show that the nonperturbative partition function, which is manifestly holomorphic, is also modular and background independent: it transforms as the partition function of a twisted fermion on the spectral curve. Therefore, modularity is restored by nonperturbative corrections. We also show that this nonperturbative partition function obeys the Hirota equation and provides a natural nonperturbative completion for topological string theory on local Calabi–Yau 3-folds.     

Cosmology with inhomogeneous magnetic fields

We review spacetime dynamics in the presence of large-scale electromagnetic fields and then consider the effects of the magnetic component on perturbations to a spatially homogeneous and isotropic universe. Using covariant techniques, we refine and extend earlier work and provide the magnetohydrodynamic equations that describe inhomogeneous magnetic cosmologies in full general relativity. Specialising this system to perturbed Friedmann–Robertson–Walker models, we examine the effects of the field on the expansion dynamics and on the growth of density inhomogeneities, including non-adiabatic modes. We look at scalar perturbations and obtain analytic solutions for their linear evolution in the radiation, dust and inflationary eras. In the dust case we also calculate the magnetic analogue of the Jeans length. We then consider the evolution of vector perturbations and find that the magnetic presence generally reduces the decay rate of these distortions. Finally, we examine the implications of magnetic fields for the evolution of cosmological gravitational waves.     

A note on the Conley attractors of lower semicontinuous multifunctions

We discuss Conley-type approach to attractive sets for lower semicontinuous multifunctions. Since every iterated function system induces a Barnsley–Hutchinson multifunction which is l.s.c. in such a case it is much more natural to consider a multifunctions of that type then closed relations on compact spaces earlier considered by some authors. We use topological (Kuratowski’s) limit instead of commonly used Hausdorff metric.     

Off-diagonal Bethe ansatz solution of the XXX spin chain with arbitrary boundary conditions

Employing the off-diagonal Bethe ansatz method proposed recently by the present authors, we exactly diagonalize the XXX spin chain with arbitrary boundary fields. By constructing a functional relation between the eigenvalues of the transfer matrix and the quantum determinant, the associated T–Q relation and the Bethe ansatz equations are derived.     

A new parametric method for ranking fuzzy numbers

Ranking fuzzy numbers is important in decision-making, data analysis, artificial intelligence, economic systems and operations research. In this paper, to overcome the limitations of the existing studies and simplify the computational procedures an approach to ranking fuzzy numbers based on α-cuts is proposed. The approach is illustrated by numerical examples, showing that it overcomes several shortcomings such as the indiscriminative and counterintuitive behavior of existing fuzzy ranking approaches.     

Thermodynamics of the small clusters: The Gibbs free-energy derivation for the Honmura–Kaneyoshi method

A cluster density matrix is proposed for calculation of the thermodynamic averages in the effective field theory with correlations. On this basis, derivation of the Gibbs free-energy for the Honmura–Kaneyoshi method is made.     

Remarks on a posteriori error estimation for finite element solutions

We utilize the classical hypercircle method and the lowest-order Raviart–Thomas H(div) element to obtain a posteriori error estimates of the _P1 finite element solutions for 2D Poisson's equation. A few other estimation methods are also discussed for comparison. We give some theoretical and numerical results to see the effectiveness of the methods.     

Dynamical behaviors of a class of recurrent neural networks with discontinuous neuron activations

This paper investigates the dynamics of a class of recurrent neural networks where the neural activations are modeled by discontinuous functions. Without presuming the boundedness of activation functions, the sufficient conditions to ensure the existence, uniqueness, global exponential stability and global convergence of state equilibrium point and output equilibrium point are derived, respectively. Furthermore, under certain conditions we prove that the system is convergent globally in finite time. The analysis in the paper is based on the properties of M-matrix, Lyapunov-like approach, and the theories of differential equations with discontinuous right-hand side as introduced by Filippov. The obtained results extend previous works on global stability of recurrent neural networks with not only Lipschitz continuous but also discontinuous neural activation functions.