A branch-and-bound method for the minimum k−enclosing ball problem

The minimum k-enclosing ball problem seeks the ball with smallest radius that contains at least k of m given points. This problem is NP-hard. We present a branch-and-bound algorithm on the tree of the subsets of k points to solve this problem. Our method is able to solve the problem exactly in a short amount of time for small and medium sized datasets.     

Thermally induced solid-state transformation of cimetidine. A multi-spectroscopic/chemometrics determination of the kinetics of the process and structural elucidation of one of the products as a stable N3-enamino tautomer

Exposure of cimetidine (CIM) to dry heat (160–180 °C) afforded, upon cooling, a glassy solid containing new and hitherto unknown products. The kinetics of this process was studied by a second order chemometrics-assisted multi-spectroscopic approach. Proton and carbon-13 nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), as well as ultraviolet and infrared spectroscopic data were jointly used, whereas multivariate curve resolution with alternating least squares (MCR-ALS) was employed as the chemometrics method to extract process information. It was established that drug degradation follows a first order kinetics.     

Potts models with magnetic field: Arithmetic,geometry, and computation

We give a sheaf theoretic interpretation of Potts models with external magnetic field, in terms of constructible sheaves and their Euler characteristics. We show that the polynomial countability question for the hypersurfaces defined by the vanishing of the partition function is affected by changes in the magnetic field: elementary examples suffice to see non-polynomially countable cases that become polynomially countable after a perturbation of the magnetic field. The same recursive formula for the Grothendieck classes, under edge-doubling operations, holds as in the case without magnetic field, but the closed formulae for specific examples like banana graphs differ in the presence of magnetic field. We give examples of computation of the Euler characteristic with compact support, for the set of real zeros, and find a similar exponential growth with the size of the graph. This can be viewed as a measure of topological and algorithmic complexity. We also consider the computational complexity question for evaluations of the polynomial, and show both tractable and NP-hard examples, using dynamic programming.     

Synthesis, structure, and antimetastatic activity of thetrans-[Pt(NC5H4C(O)NHC2H4ONO2)2Cl2] complex

Thetrans-[Pt(NC₅H₄C(O)NHC₂H₄ONO₂)₂Cl₂] complex (2) was prepared by the reaction of nicorandyl (N-nitroethoxynicotinamide), which is widely used in cardiology, with K₂PtCl₄ in water. The structure of2 was established by X-ray structural analysis. It was found that complex2 exhibits high antitumor activity, in particular, antimetastatic activity, unlike the analogous Cu^II complex with bromine atoms. Translated fromIzvestiya Akademii Nauk. Seriya Khimicheskaya, No. 9, pp. 1672–1675, September, 1997.     

High index of refraction via quantum interference in a three-level system of Er^3＋-doped yttrium aluminium garnet crystal

A simple three-level system is proposed to produce high index of refraction with zero absorption in an Er^3＋-doped yttrium aluminium garnet （YAG） crystal, which is achieved for a probe field between the excited state 4I13/2 and ground state 4I15/2 by adjusting a strong coherent driving field between the upper excited state 4I11/2 and 4I15/2. It is found that the changes of the frequency of the coherent driving field and the concentration of Er^3＋ ions in the YAG crystal can maximize the index of refraction accompanied by vanishing absorption. This result could be useful for the dispersion compensation in fibre communication, laser particle acceleration, high precision magnetometry and so on.     

Real-time recursive estimation of statistical parameters

Recursive algorithms for the computation of standard deviation and average deviation are derived and their applications in data acquisition are discussed. The relative speeds and accuracies of the two algorithms are compared for synthetic data. The performance of recursive estimation under shot and proportional noise limitations is also described. As an example of the utility of these algorithms, absorbance data with constant confidence intervals are collected regardless of incident and transmitted intensities. The desired precision is specified prior to data acquisition and used to control signal-averaging of the data in real time.     

Method of lines with boundary elements for 1‐D transient diffusion‐reaction problems

Time‐dependent differential equations can be solved using the concept of method of lines (MOL) together with the boundary element (BE) representation for the spatial linear part of the equation. The BE method alleviates the need for spatial discretization and casts the problem in an integral format. Hence errors associated with the numerical approximation of the spatial derivatives are totally eliminated. An element level local cubic approximation is used for the variable at each time step to facilitate the time marching and the nonlinear terms are represented in a semi‐implicit manner by a local linearization at each time step. The accuracy of the method has been illustrated on a number of test problems of engineering significance. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 2006