Two New Eremophilenolides from Ligularia muliensis

Many Ligularia species have long been used as traditional folk medicine for theirantibiotic, antiphlogistic and antitussive activities1, and were found to be an importantsource of eremophilane. In the course of our search for bioactive sesquiterpenoids, w…     

Some conformally flat spin manifolds, Dirac operators and automorphic forms

In this paper we study Clifford and harmonic analysis on some examples of conformal flat manifolds that have a spinor structure, or more generally, at least a pin structure. The examples treated here are manifolds that can be parametrized by U/Γ where U is a subdomain of either Sn or Rn and Γ is a Kleinian group acting discontinuously on U. The examples studied here include RPn and the Hopf manifolds S¹×Sn−1. Also some hyperbolic manifolds will be treated. Special kinds of Clifford-analytic automorphic forms associated to the different choices of Γ are used to construct explicit Cauchy kernels, Cauchy integral formulas, Green's kernels and formulas together with Hardy spaces and Plemelj projection operators for Lp spaces of hypersurfaces lying in these manifolds.     

Canonical correlation analysis based on information theory

In this article, we propose a new canonical correlation method based on information theory. This method examines potential nonlinear relationships between p×1 vector Y-set and q×1 vector X-set. It finds canonical coefficient vectors a and b by maximizing a more general measure, the mutual information, between a^TX and b^TY. We use a permutation test to determine the pairs of the new canonical correlation variates, which requires no specific distributions for X and Y as long as one can estimate the densities of a^TX and b^TY nonparametrically. Examples illustrating the new method are presented.     

Global Solution of Optimization Problems with Parameter-Embedded Linear Dynamic Systems

This paper develops a theory for the global solution of nonconvex optimization problems with parameter-embedded linear dynamic systems. A quite general problem formulation is introduced and a solution is shown to exists. A convexity theory for integrals is then developed to construct convex relaxations for utilization in a branch-and-bound framework to calculate a global minimum. Interval analysis is employed to generate bounds on the state variables implied by the bounds on the embedded parameters. These bounds, along with basic integration theory, are used to prove convergence of the branch-and-bound algorithm to the global minimum of the optimization problem. The implementation of the algorithm is then considered and several numerical case studies are examined thoroughly     

Dynamic mechanical thermal analysis transitions of partially and fully substituted cellulose fatty esters

The main transitions of cellulose fatty esters with different degrees of substitution (DSs) were investigated with dynamic mechanical thermal analysis. Two distinct main relaxations were observed in partially substituted cellulose esters (PSCEs). They were attributed to the glass‐transition temperature and to the chain local motion of the aliphatic substituents. The temperatures of both transitions decreased when DS or the number of carbon atoms (n) of the acyl substituent increased. Conversely, all the transitions of fully substituted cellulose esters occurred within a narrow temperature range, and they did not vary significantly with n. This phenomenon was explained by the formation of a crystalline phase of the fatty substituents. The presence of few residual OH groups in PSCEs was responsible for a large increase in the storage bending modulus, and it eliminated the effect of n on damping. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 41: 281–288, 2003     

Mathematical topographical correction of XPS images using multivariate statistical methods

For rough heterogeneous samples, the contrast observed in XPS images may result from both changes in elemental or chemical composition and sample topography. Background image acquisition and subtraction are frequently utilized to minimize topographical effects so that images represent concentration variations in the sample. This procedure may significantly increase the data acquisition time. Multivariate statistical methods can assist in resolving topographical and chemical information from multispectral XPS images. Principal component analysis (PCA) is one method for identification of the highest correlation/variation between the images. Topography, which is common to all of the images, will be resolved in the first most significant component. The score of this component contains spatial information about the topography of the surface, whereas the loading is a quantitative representation of the topography contribution to each elemental/chemical image. The simple‐to‐use self‐modelling mixture analysis (Simplisma) method is a pure variable method that searches for the source of most differences in the data and therefore has the potential to distinguish between chemical and topographical phases in images. The mathematical background correction scheme is developed and validated by comparing results to the experimental background correction for samples with differing degrees of topography. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Parametric multiple sequence alignment and phylogeny construction

Bounds are given on the size of the parameter-space decomposition induced by multiple sequence alignment problems where phylogenetic information may be given or inferred. It is shown that many of the usual formulations of these problems fall within the same integer parametric framework, implying that the number of distinct optima obtained as the parameters are varied across their ranges is polynomially bounded in the length and number of sequences.     

Lot-sizing with fixed charges on stocks: the convex hull

In this paper, we examine a variant of the uncapacitated lot-sizing model of Wagner–Whitin that includes fixed charges on the stocks. Such a model is natural in a production environment where stocking is a complex operation, and appears as a subproblem in more general network design problems.

Linear-programming formulations, a dynamic program, the convex hull of integer solutions and a separation algorithm are presented. All these turn out to be very natural extensions of the corresponding results of Barany et al. (Math. Programming Stud. 22 (1984) 32) for the uncapacitated lot-sizing problem. The convex hull proof is based on showing that an extended facility location formulation is tight and by projecting it onto the original space of variables.     

Effects of vitrification suppression on structure morphology, conductivity and dielectric properties of vanadium phosphate glasses

Vitrification suppression in the (V₂O₅)_1−x (P₂O₅)_x glasses where x=0.10, 0.15, 0.20, and 0.25 was controlled by changing the rate of quenching glasses. The structure variations occurring in the glasses were detected by differential thermal analysis and optical microscope. The results implied the separation and growth of V₂O₅ orthorhombic microcrystal in the samples with x=0.10 and 0.15 whereas other samples did not illustrate remarkable changes in their microstructure. However, in temperature range between 300 and 473 K a semiconducting behavior for all samples appears during the study of electrical conductivity-temperature dependence. A decrease in conductivity values accompanied with some variations in activation energies by reducing quenching rate was observed. The conductivity results suggested that the conduction occurs by the phonon assisted hopping of a small polaron between V⁴⁺ and V⁵⁺ states at relatively higher temperature range above θ_D/2. Whereas at relatively low temperatures the conduction may occur by electron jumping between filled and empty states at Fermi level in the disordered matrix besides polaronic conduction. Reasonable values for the density of localized states, carrier concentration and carrier mobility were estimated and discussed. Also, dielectric constant and dielectric loss were studied as a function of frequency at different temperatures confirming the structure variations in the glass system.