Challenging Students to View the Concept of Area in Triangles in a Broad Context: Exploiting the Features of Cabri-II

This study focuses on the constructions in terms of area and perimeter in equivalent triangles developed by students aged 12–15 years-old, using the tools provided by Cabri-Geometry II [Labore (1990). Cabri-Geometry (software), Université de Grenoble]. Twenty-five students participated in a learning experiment where they were asked to construct: (a) pairs of equivalent triangles “in as many ways as possible” and to study their area and their perimeter using any of the tools provided and (b) “any possible sequence of modifications of an original triangle into other equivalent ones”. As regards the concept of area and in contrast to a paper and pencil environment, Cabri provided students with different and potential opportunities in terms of: (a) means of construction, (b) control, (c) variety of representations and (d) linking representations, by exploiting its capability for continuous modifications. By exploiting these opportunities in the context of the given open tasks, students were helped by the tools provided to develop a broader view of the concept of area than the typical view they would construct in a typical paper and pencil environment.     

On an Application of Newton's Method to Nonlinear Operators with w-Conditioned Second Derivative

We present a new approach to study the convergence of Newton's method in Banach spaces, which relax the conditions appearing in the usual studies. The approach is based on the bound required for the second derivative of the operator involved. An application to a nonlinear integral equation is presented.     

Extrusion of pastes with a piston extruder for the determination of the local solid and fluid concentration, the local porosity and saturation and displacement profiles by means of NMR imaging

 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) was used to investigate the extrusion behaviour of PTFE pastes in a ram extruder. By means of ¹H-NMR imaging (MRI) it is possible to determine the local proton density and therefore, the local fluid concentration. The ¹⁹F-MRI provides the local solid concentration. Thus the local saturation and the local porosity can be calculated with the information of the local fluid and solid concentration. Furthermore displacement profiles can be derived from NMR images by means of correlation techniques without any preparation or marking of the pastes. Received: 8 May 2000   Accepted: 1 May 2001     

On a class of new and practical performance indexes for approximation of fold bifurcations of nonlinear power flow equations

Efficient measurement of the performance index (the distance of a loading parameter from the voltage collapse point) is one of the key problems in power system operations and planning and such an index indicates the severity of a power system with regard to voltage collapse. There exist many interesting methods and ideas to compute this index. However, some successful methods are not yet mathematically justified while other mathematically sound methods are often proposed directly based on the bifurcation theory and they require the initial stationary state to be too close to the unknown turning point to make the underlying methods practical.This paper first gives a survey of several popular methods for estimating the fold bifurcation point including the continuation methods, bifurcation methods and the test function methods (Seydel's direct solution methods, the tangent vector methods and the reduced Jacobian method) and discuss their relative advantages and problems. Test functions are usually based on scaling of the determinant of the Jacobian matrix and it is generally not clear how to determine the behaviour of such functions. As the underlying nonlinear equations are of a particular type, this allows us to do a new analysis of the determinants of the Jacobian and its submatrices in this paper. Following the analysis, we demonstrate how to construct a class of test functions with a predictable analytical behaviour so that a suitable index can be produced. Finally, examples of two test functions from this class are proposed. For several standard IEEE test systems, promising numerical results have been achieved.     

Stabilizing management of fluctuating resources

We consider a resource management problem in which the management objective is to minimize fluctuations in resource stocks. Stabilizing management policies constitute the designing of memoryless state feedback control strategies for a discrete time resource model which contains unknown but bounded fluctuations. We also show that the problem of maximizing sustainable yield in an uncertain fishery can be considered as the problem of stabilizing of the stock level.The paper corresponds to an invited talk at the 14th Symposium on Operations Research, Ulm, September 6–8, 1989.The support by Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.This work was supported by NSF and AFOSR under grant ECS 8602524.     

Remote stereocontrol by the sulfinyl group: Mukaiyama aldol reactions of (S)-2-[2-(p-tolylsulfinyl)phenyl]acetaldehyde in the asymmetric synthesis of β-hydroxyacids and 1,3-diols

(S)-2-[2-(p-Tolylsulfinyl)phenyl]acetaldehyde reacts with different O-silylated ketenethioacetals in the presence of Yb(OTf)₃ yielding β-hydroxythioesters in high yields and diastereoselectivities. The obtained compounds were readily transformed into β-hydroxyacids and their corresponding diols. These Mukaiyama aldol reactions are a direct evidence of the ability of the sulfinyl group to control 1,5- and 1,6-asymmetric induction processes.     

Novel model of FM-noise conversion in a UMZI using RF external phase modulation of lasers: Theoretical and experimental results

In this paper, we propose and demonstrate a new and original model for theoretical calculation and experimental measurement of the noise power spectral density (NPSD) in phase-modulated optical links. The phase modulation is operated in the RF frequency range by an external phase modulator. The NPSD is derived for the first time in interferometric systems, by considering all effects such as the 1/f FM noise of the laser and white noise applied to light from a 1550 nm DFB laser, with phase modulation. The results show for the first time the influence of the phase modulation index, modulation frequency and interferometric delay in the phase-to-intensity noise conversion. The experimental and simulation results of conversion of FM-noise to intensity noise in an optical link by considering the external RF phase modulation are shown with good agreement.     

Hybrid abstractions of affine systems

This paper considers the problem of building a set of hybrid abstractions for affine systems in order to compute over approximations of the reachable space. Each abstraction is based on a decomposition of the continuous state space that is defined by hyperplanes generated by linear combinations of two vectors. The choice of these vectors is based on consideration of the dynamics of the system and uses, for example, the left eigenvectors of the matrix that defines these dynamics. We show that the reachability calculus can then be performed on a combination of such abstractions and how its accuracy depends on the choice of hyperplanes that define the decomposition.     

Hankel convolution operators on entire functions and distributions

In this paper we study the Hankel convolution operators on the space of even and entire functions and on Schwartz distribution spaces. We characterize the Hankel convolution operators as those ones that commute with Hankel translations and with a Bessel operator. Also we prove that the Hankel convolution operators are hypercyclic and chaotic on the spaces under consideration.     

超临界流体触媒作用下石墨-金刚石转变

 研究了超临界流体CO₂在石墨-金刚石转变中的触媒作用。实验中，采用Ag₂O作为流体触媒的先驱材料，在7.7 GPa压力下，Ag₂O在1 200 ℃分解成Ag和O₂，O₂与石墨套管在高温高压下反应形成CO₂超临界流体。研究结果表明，在7.7 GPa和1 500 ℃以上温度条件下，石墨在CO₂流体触媒的作用下可转变为金刚石晶体，在1 500～1 700 ℃温度范围内合成出的金刚石具有完好的八面体形貌，与天然金刚石的生长特征非常相似。