The Development of the Asymptotic Viscous Dissipation Profile in a Vertical Free Convective Boundary Layer Flow in a Porous Medium

The effect of viscous dissipation on the development of the boundary layer flow from a cold vertical surface embedded in a Darcian porous medium is investigated. It is found that the flow evolves gradually from the classical Cheng–Minkowycz form to the recently discovered asymptotic dissipation profile which is a parallel flow.     

Structure of enantiopure and racemic alanine adlayers on Cu(1 1 0)

Plane wave density functional theory has been employed to analyze the structure of alanine adlayers on the Cu(1 1 0) surface. Alanine forms (3 × 2) adlayers on Cu(1 1 0) that are closely related to the structures of glycine on the same surface. There is essentially no energy difference between the most stable racemic and enantiopure alanine adlayers. This observation implies that adsorption of racemic alanine on Cu(1 1 0) will result in a pseudoracemate adlayer.     

A Network Simulation of High-congestion Road-traffic Flows in Cities with Marine Container Terminals

Port cities where marine cargo terminals are located are generally near urban areas characterized by high-congestion road traffic. Changes in cargo traffic volumes into a marine terminal, or in the surrounding traffic arteries, which carry this traffic, can significantly affect the terminal's operations. Conversely, activity at the terminal can have an impact on the traffic levels and congestion for a considerable distance from the terminal. This paper demonstrates a methodology useful for studying the impact of road traffic flows on marine container terminals located in highly congested areas. This model was developed at the request of the Virginia Center for World Trade and was used to answer three planning questions in the port of Hampton Roads, Virginia, USA-what would be the impact of: opening a new section of interstate highway, a projected doubling of container traffic at one terminal, and a daily unit train in the vicinity of another terminal. The problem was made more challenging by limited data-collection funds. None the less, the model was deemed valid by a panel of traffic experts and officials from several major state and private agencies involved in marine traffic management. The model results were subsequently a factor in two major decisions related to terminal management.     

Entropy estimate for high-dimensional monotonic functions

We establish upper and lower bounds for the metric entropy and bracketing entropy of the class of d-dimensional bounded monotonic functions under L^p norms. It is interesting to see that both the metric entropy and bracketing entropy have different behaviors for p<d/(d-1) and p>d/(d-1). We apply the new bounds for bracketing entropy to establish a global rate of convergence of the MLE of a d-dimensional monotone density.     

An algorithm for computing Jordan chains and inverting analytic matrix functions

We present an efficient algorithm for obtaining a canonical system of Jordan chains for an n × n regular analytic matrix function A(λ) that is singular at the origin. For any analytic vector function b(λ), we show that each term in the Laurent expansion of A(λ)⁻¹b(λ) may be obtained from the previous terms by solving an (n + d) × (n+d) linear system, where d is the order of the zero of det A(λ) at λ = 0. The matrix representing this linear system contains A(0) as a principal submatrix, which can be useful if A(0) is sparse. The last several iterations can be eliminated if left Jordan chains are computed in addition to right Jordan chains. The performance of the algorithm in floating point and exact (rational) arithmetic is reported for several test cases. The method is shown to be forward stable in floating point arithmetic.     

Synthesis of an asymmetric fullerene dimer via sequential cycloadditions

A single isomer of a monofunctionalised C₇₀ fullerene is isolated and characterised using variable temperature NMR spectroscopy. Pendant methylene bromide groups allow for further cycloaddition reactions and a C₆₀-C₇₀ asymmetric fullerene dimer is thus prepared.     

Computing Aviation Sparing Policies: Solving a Large Nonlinear Integer Program

Deployed US Navy aircraft carriers must stock a large number of spare parts to support the various types of aircraft embarked on the ship. The sparing policy determines the spares that will be stocked on the ship to keep the embarked aircraft ready to fly. Given a fleet of ten or more aircraft carriers and a cost of approximately 50 million dollars per carrier plus the cost of spares maintained in warehouses in the United States, the sparing problem constitutes a significant portion of the Navy’s resources. The objective of this work is to find a minimum-cost sparing policy that meets the readiness requirements of the embarked aircraft. This is a very large, nonlinear, integer optimization problem. The cost function is piecewise linear and convex while the constraint mapping is highly nonlinear. The distinguishing characteristics of this problem from an optimization viewpoint are that a large number of decision variables are required to be integer and that the nonlinear constraint functions are essentially “black box” functions; that is, they are very difficult (and expensive) to evaluate and their derivatives are not available. Moreover, they are not convex. Integer programming problems with a large number of variables are difficult to solve in general and most successful approaches to solving nonlinear integer problems have involved linear approximation and relaxation techniques that, because of the complexity of the constraint functions, are inappropriate for attacking this problem. We instead employ a pattern search method to each iteration of an interior point-type algorithm to solve the relaxed version of the problem. From the solution found by the pattern search on each interior point iteration, we begin another pattern search on the integer lattice to find a good integer solution. The best integer solution found across all interations is returned as the optimal solution. The pattern searches are distributed across a local area network of non-dedicated, heterogeneous computers in an office environment, thus, drastically reducing the time required to find the solution.     

Random orderings of the integers and card shuffling

In this paper we study random orderings of the integers with a certain invariance property. We describe all such orders in a simple way. We define and represent random shuffles of a countable set of labels and then give an interpretation of these orders in terms of a class of generalized riffle shuffles.     

A 24-GHz Patch Array with a Power Amplifier/Low-Noise Amplifier MMIC

This paper presents an active patch array designed at 24 GHz. It can be used as a front-end component for a phased array. A series resonant array structure is chosen which is compact and easy excite. With 5 elements, the array proved a 12-dB antenna gain. A power amplifier and a low noise amplifier are designed on a single GaAs chip (PALNA). Bias switch is used in the PALNA, which greatly reduces the switch loss in a transceiver and increases the efficiency. 20-dB small signal gain is achieved in both power amplifier and low noise amplifier. The active patch array is built by the combination of the patch array and PALNA. The measured active gain of this antenna is 35-dB for the PA mode and 31-dB for the LNA mode. This active patch array can obtain an EIRP of 34 dBm with a total radiated power of 22dBm and a maximum PAE of 32%. To check the noise performance, we applied sources at both normal temperature and 77K (liquid nitrogen) and extracted the noise figure (3.5 dB) of the active antenna by the Y factor method. The results proved that the active antenna is working efficiently as both a transmitting and receiving antenna.