Fermi, Majorana and the Statistical Model of Atoms

We give an account of the appearance and first developments of the statistical model of atoms proposed by Thomas and Fermi, focusing on the main results achieved by Fermi and his group in Rome. Particular attention is addressed to the unknown contribution to this subject by Majorana, anticipating some important results reached later by leading physicists.     

Local algebras in the representation of MV-algebras

In this paper we present several results about local MV-algebras, extending existing results given for MV-chains. The role of local MV-algebras in sheaf representation and weak boolean product is stressed and the relationship of local MV-algebras with varieties of MV-algebras is analyzed. Presented by S. Pulmannova. Received November 11, 2005; accepted in final form December 20, 2005.     

10.1007/s10955-006-9040-z

We derive hydrodynamic equations describing the evolution of a binary fluid segregated into two regions, each rich in one species,which are separated (on the macroscopic scale) by a sharp interface. Our starting point is a Vlasov-Boltzmann (VB) equation describing the evolution of the one particle position and velocity distributions, f_i (x, v, t), i = 1, 2. The solution of the VB equation is developed in a Hilbert expansion appropriate for this system. This yields incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for the velocity field u and a jump boundary condition for the pressure across the interface. The interface, in turn, moves with a velocity given by the normal component of u.     

Radiation-induced fermion resonance

The Dirac equation is solved for two novel terms which describe the interaction energy between the half-integral spin of a fermion and the classical, circularly polarized, electromagnetic field. A simple experiment is suggested to test the new terms and the existence of radiation-induced fermion resonance.     

Effects of annealing on crystallinity and phase behaviour of PET/PC block copolymers

The effects of the annealing on the properties of PET/PC block copolymers, obtained by reactive blending in the presence of different catalysts and for different mixing times, have been studied. The annealing, performed in conditions that promote the crystallization, has been used to better understand the role of block length in determining the phase behaviour. The copolymers characterized by blocks with molecular weight larger than 8000 are able to reorganize towards more ordered domains. This rearrangement maintains the phase separation, as two crystalline phases are present before and after annealing, due to the immiscibility of long blocks. In copolymers characterized by blocks with molecular weight equal to about 2500, that is the higher limit for the miscibility in the amorphous state in PET/PC block copolymers studied in this work, the rearrangement of the chains during annealing causes a phase separation leading to two crystalline phases. Only in the copolymers with molecular weight of blocks lower than 1500, the very short block length hinders the crystallization: therefore, only in this case a phase separation does not take place after annealing.