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.     

Fine Dry Grinding of Zeolite in a Laboratory Ball Mill

This paper presents the importance and usage of natural zeolites, which was recently recognized in the industry. Therefore, the grinding properties of natural zeolite were studied with the emphasis on a kinetic study in a ball mill. The experimental mill employed was laboratory sized, 200 mm diameter, 191 mm length, providing a total mill volume of 6000 cm³, with a total mass of 5.62 kg of steel balls of 25 mm diameter with a charge of 20% of the mill volume and with a rotation speed of 76 rpm. The breakage parameters were determined by using single sized feed fractions of ?850+600 μm, ?600+425 μm, and ?425+300 μm for the zeolite samples. The S_i (specific rate of breakage) and B_{i, j} (primary breakage distribution) values were obtained for those feed size fractions in order to predict the product size distributions by simulation for comparison to the experimental data. From the experimental results, S_i values increased as the feed sizes became coarser, i.e., the highest S_i value was 0.85 min^?1 for ?850+600 μm, while the lowest S_i value was 0.65 min^?1 for ?425+300 μm feed ground in the mill. The B_{i, j} values obtained for the zeolite sample were γ=0.84, ?=0.61, and β=4.25. The breakage parameters obtained showed that the zeolite is broken faster than quartz and slower than calcite and barite in terms of the a_T values reported previously at the same experimental conditions. The simulations of the product size distributions of zeolite were in good agreement with the experimental data using a standard ball mill simulation program. The slowing‐down effect was also seen in the mill after 4 min. of grinding.     

Measuring Light Field of Light Source with High Directional Resolution Using Mirrored Ball and Pinhole Camera

This paper presents a method of measuring a light field of a light source with high directional resolution using a mirrored ball and a pinhole camera. The light field describes a spatial and directional distribution of radiances from the light source. The directional distribution is expanded by a reflection on the mirrored ball, and the radiances are measured by a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera with a pinhole lens. The light source is laterally moved by a robot arm to measure the directionally expanded light field, and each pixel on a CCD can obtain the radiances from the light source through the pinhole lens with high directional resolution. The light field is estimated from the pixel value and the position of each pixel using a ray tracing technique. The light field of a krypton lamp was experimentally measured by the proposed method, and the accuracy of the measurement was evaluated against the irradiances measured by a spectro-radiometer at sample points.     

Structural manipulation of pyrochlores: Thermal evolution of metastable Gd2(Ti1−yZry)2O7 powders prepared by mechanical milling

The structural and microstructural characteristics of metastable Gd₂(Ti_1−yZr_y)₂O₇ powders prepared by mechanical milling have been studied by a combination of XRD and Raman spectroscopy. Irrespective of their Zr content, as-prepared powder phases present an anion-deficient fluorite-type of structure as opposed to the pyrochlore equilibrium configuration obtained for the same solid solution by other synthetic routes. These fluorites are stable versus thermal activation, at least up to temperatures of 800 °C. For the Ti-rich compositions, thermal treatments at higher temperatures facilitate the rearrangement of the cation and anion substructures and the relaxation of mechanochemically induced defects whereas for compositions with high Zr content, the fluorite crystal structure is retained even at temperatures as high as 1200 °C. Interestingly enough, transient pyrochlores showing a very unusual cation distribution were observed during the thermally induced defect-recovery process.     

Technique for Monolithic Fabrication of Microlens Arrays Integrated with Infrared CCD

Based on scalar diffraction theory, 8-phase-level 256×256 elements diffractive microlens array with element dimension of 50×33 μm2 have been fabricated on the back-side of PtSi(3～5 μm) infrared CCD. The measurement results indicated that the ratio of the signal-to-noise of the infrared CCD with microlens was increased by a factor of 2.8.     

Fractional-Linear Transformations of Operator Balls; Applications to Dynamical Systems

The operator sets, which are the subject of this paper, have been studied in many papers where, under different restrictions on the generating operators, convexity, compactness in the weak operator topology, and nonemptiness were proved for sets of different classes under study. Then the results obtained were used in these papers to solve several applied problems. Namely, they played the key role in establishing the dichotomy of nonautonomous dynamical systems, with either continuous or discrete time. In the present paper, we generalize and sharpen the already known criteria and obtain several new criteria for convexity, compactness, and nonemptiness of several special operator sets. Then, using the assertions obtained, we construct examples of sets of the form under study which are nonconvex, noncompact in the weak operator topology, as well as empty, and are generated by ＂smooth＂ operators of a special class. The existence problem for such sets remained open until the authors of this paper announced some of its results.     

Alloy formation in mechanically activated mixtures

The physical mixtures of hydroxocarbonates of Cu and Ni with aluminium were activated using a laboratory planetary mill. The chemical reactions and alloy formations as the effects of grinding were followed by the phase analysis of solid products based on the thermogravimetry and X-ray diffractometry. Experimental evidence indicates that the nature of reactions and products of mechanical activation was dependent on the amount of aluminium and time of grinding. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Quantum-Like Description of the Planetary Systems

The Titius–Bode law for planetary distances is reviewed. A model describing the basic features of this rule in the “quantum-like” language of a wave equation is proposed. Some considerations about the ’t Hooft idea on the quantum behavior of deterministic systems with dissipation are discussed.     

Functional Quantization and Small Ball Probabilities for Gaussian Processes

Quantization consists in studying the L ^r -error induced by the approximation of a random vector X by a vector (quantized version) taking a finite number n of values. We investigate this problem for Gaussian random vectors in an infinite dimensional Banach space and in particular, for Gaussian processes. A precise link proved by Fehringer⁽⁴⁾ and Dereich et al. ⁽³⁾ relates lower and upper bounds for small ball probabilities with upper and lower bounds for the quantization error, respectively. We establish a complete relationship by showing that the same holds for the direction from the quantization error to small ball probabilities. This allows us to compute the exact rate of convergence to zero of the minimal L ^r -quantization error from logarithmic small ball asymptotics and vice versa.     

钢球质量监测最佳抽检方案的确定

本文介绍概率抽样法在钢球生产过程中的应用,通过此法确定钢球生产中各工序质量监测的最佳抽检方案,以确保产品被接受的概率最大。