Haematite natural crystals: non-linear initial susceptibility at low temperature

Several works have reported that haematite has non-linear initial susceptibility at room temperature, like pyrrhotite or titanomagnetite, but there is no explanation for the observed behaviours yet. This study sets out to determine which physical property (grain size, foreign cations content and domain walls displacements) controls the initial susceptibility. The performed measurements include microprobe analysis to determine magnetic phases different to haematite; initial susceptibility (300 K); hysteresis loops, SIRM and backfield curves at 77 and 300 K to calculate magnetic parameters and minor loops at 77 K, to analyse initial susceptibility and magnetization behaviours below Morin transition. The magnetic moment study at low temperature is completed with measurements of zero field cooled-field cooled and AC susceptibility in a range from 5 to 300 K. The minor loops show that the non-linearity of initial susceptibility is closely related to Barkhausen jumps. Because of initial magnetic susceptibility is controlled by domain structure it is difficult to establish a mathematical model to separate magnetic subfabrics in haematite-bearing rocks.

Determining departure times in dynamic and stochastic maritime routing and scheduling problem

In maritime transportation, decisions are made in a dynamic setting where many aspects of the future are uncertain. However, most academic literature on maritime transportation considers static and deterministic routing and scheduling problems. This work addresses a gap in the literature on dynamic and stochastic maritime routing and scheduling problems, by focusing on the scheduling of departure times. Five simple strategies for setting departure times are considered, as well as a more advanced strategy which involves solving a mixed integer mathematical programming problem. The latter strategy is significantly better than the other methods, while adding only a small computational effort.

Linear chaos for the Quick-Thinking-Driver model.

In recent years, the topic of car-following has experimented an increased importance in traffic engineering and safety research. This has become a very interesting topic because of the development of driverless cars (Google driverless cars, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_driverless_car). Driving models which describe the interaction between adjacent vehicles in the same lane have a big interest in simulation modeling, such as the Quick-Thinking-Driver model. A non-linear version of it can be given using the logistic map, and then chaos appears. We show that an infinite-dimensional version of the linear model presents a chaotic behaviour using the same approach as for studying chaos of death models of cell growth.