Microscopic expression for frequency and wave vector dependent dielectric constant of a dipolar liquid

A microscopic expression for the frequency and wave vector dependent dielectric constant of a dense dipolar liquid is derived starting from the linear response theory. The new expression properly takes into account the effects of the translational modes in the polarization relaxation. The longitudinal and the transverse components of the dielectric constant show vastly different behavior at the intermediate values of the wave vector k. We find that the microscopic structure of the dense liquid plays an important role at intermediate wave vectors. The continuum model description of the dielectric constant, although appropriate at very small values of wave vector, breaks down completely at the intermediate values of k. Numerical results for the longitudinal and the transverse dielectric constants are obtained by using the direct correlation function from the mean‐spherical approximation for dipolar hard spheres. We show that our results are consistent with all the limiting expressions known for the dielectric function of matter.

An accurate numerical integration scheme for finite rotations using rotation vector parametrization

A numerical integration procedure for rotational motion using a rotation vector parametrization is explored from an engineering perspective by using rudimentary vector analysis. The incremental rotation vector, angular velocity and acceleration correspond to different tangent spaces of the rotation manifold at different times and have a non-vectorial character. We rewrite the equation of motion in terms of vectors lying in the same tangent space, facilitating vector space operations consistent with the underlying geometric structure. While any integration algorithm (that works within a vector space setting) may be used, we presently employ a family of explicit Runge-Kutta algorithms to solve this equation. While this work is primarily motivated out of a need for highly accurate numerical solutions of dissipative rotational systems of engineering interest, we also compare the numerical performance of the present scheme with some of the invariant preserving schemes, namely ALGO-C1, STW, LIEMIDEA] and SUBCYC-M. Numerical results show better local accuracy via the present approach vis-a-vis the preserving algorithms. It is also noted that the preserving algorithms do not simultaneously preserve all constants of motion. We incorporate adaptive time-stepping within the present scheme and this in turn enables still higher accuracy and a `near preservation' of constants of motion over significantly longer intervals. (C) 2010 The Franklin Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Analysis of performance of a hot gas injection thrust vector control system

The complex three-dimensional flowfield produced by secondary injection of hot gases in a rocket nozzle for thrust vector control is analyzed by solving unsteady three-dimensional Euler equations with appropriate boundary conditions. Various system performance parameters like secondary jet amplification factor and axial thrust augmentation are deduced by integrating the nozzle wall pressure distributions obtained as part of the flowfield solution and compared with measurements taken in actual static tests. The agreement is good within the practical range of secondary injectant flow rates for thrust vector control applications.

Influence of Osmotic Suction on the Soil-Water Characteristic Curves of Compacted Expansive Clay

Unsaturated clays are subject to osmotic suction gradients in geoenvironmental engineering applications and it therefore becomes important to understand the effect of these chemical concentration gradients on soil-water characteristic curves (SWCCs). This paper brings out the influence of induced osmotic suction gradient on the wetting SWCCs of compacted clay specimens inundated with sodium chloride solutions/distilled water at vertical stress of 6.25 kPa in oedometer cells. The experimental results illustrate that variations in initial osmotic suction difference induce different magnitudes of osmotic induced consolidation and osmotic consolidation strains thereby impacting the wetting SWCCs and equilibrium water contents of identically compacted clay specimens. Osmotic suction induced by chemical concentration gradients between reservoir salt solution and soil-water can be treated as an equivalent net stress component, (p(pi)) that decreases the swelling strains of unsaturated specimens from reduction in microstructural and macrostructural swelling components. The direction of osmotic flow affects the matric SWCCs. Unsaturated specimens experiencing osmotic induced consolidation and osmotic consolidation develop lower equilibrium water content than specimens experiencing osmotic swelling during the wetting path. The findings of the study illustrate the need to incorporate the influence of osmotic suction in determination of the matric SWCCs.

A homotopy approach for stabilizing single-input systems with control structure constraints

A linear state feedback gain vector used in the control of a single input dynamical system may be constrained because of the way feedback is realized. Some examples of feedback realizations which impose constraints on the gain vector are: static output feedback, constant gain feedback for several operating points of a system, and two-controller feedback. We consider a general class of problems of stabilization of single input dynamical systems with such structural constraints and give a numerical method to solve them. Each of these problems is cast into a problem of solving a system of equalities and inequalities. In this formulation, the coefficients of the quadratic and linear factors of the closed-loop characteristic polynomial are the variables. To solve the system of equalities and inequalities, a continuous realization of the gradient projection method and a barrier method are used under the homotopy framework. Our method is illustrated with an example for each class of control structure constraint.

Effect of tolerance on the propagation characteristic of a superconducting thin film microstrip delay line

The propagation constant of a superconducting microstrip transmission delay line is evaluated using the spectral domain immitance approach, modelling the superconductor as a surface current having an equivalent surface impedance found through the complex resistive boundary condition. The sensitivity approach is used to study the beta variations with substrate parameters and film characteristics. Results show that the surface impedance does not have much influence on beta sensitivities with respect to epsilon r, W and h. However, it can be observed that the surface impedance plays a crucial role in determining the optimum design.

Genetic transformation of Brassica nigra by agrobacterium based vector and direct plasmid uptake

Genetic transformation systems have been established for Brassica nigra (cv. IC 257) by using an Agrobacterium binary vector as well as by direct DNA uptake of a plasmid vector. Both the type of vectors carried nptII gene and gus gene. For Agrobacterium mediated transformation, hypocotyl tissue explants were used, and up to 33% of the explants produced calli on selection medium. All of these expressed B-glucuronidase gene on histochemical staining. Protoplasts isolated from hypocotyl tissues of seedlings could be transformed with a plasmid vector by FEG mediated uptake of vector DNA. A number of fertile kanamycin resistant plants were obtained using both the methods, and their transformed nature was confirmed by Southern blot analysis and histochemical staining for GUS. Backcrossed and selfed progenies of these transformed plants showed the presence of npt and gus genes.

An ensemble of B-DNA dinucleotide geometries lead to characteristic nucleosomal DNA structure and provide plasticity required for gene expression

Background: A nucleosome is the fundamental repeating unit of the eukaryotic chromosome. It has been shown that the positioning of a majority of nucleosomes is primarily controlled by factors other than the intrinsic preference of the DNA sequence. One of the key questions in this context is the role, if any, that can be played by the variability of nucleosomal DNA structure. Results: In this study, we have addressed this question by analysing the variability at the dinucleotide and trinucleotide as well as longer length scales in a dataset of nucleosome X-ray crystal structures. We observe that the nucleosome structure displays remarkable local level structural versatility within the B-DNA family. The nucleosomal DNA also incorporates a large number of kinks. Conclusions: Based on our results, we propose that the local and global level versatility of B-DNA structure may be a significant factor modulating the formation of nucleosomes in the vicinity of high-plasticity genes, and in varying the probability of binding by regulatory proteins. Hence, these factors should be incorporated in the prediction algorithms and there may not be a unique `template' for predicting putative nucleosome sequences. In addition, the multimodal distribution of dinucleotide parameters for some steps and the presence of a large number of kinks in the nucleosomal DNA structure indicate that the linear elastic model, used by several algorithms to predict the energetic cost of nucleosome formation, may lead to incorrect results.

Support vector machine for evaluating seismic-liquefaction potential using shear wave velocity

The use of the shear wave velocity data as a field index for evaluating the liquefaction potential of sands is receiving increased attention because both shear wave velocity and liquefaction resistance are similarly influenced by many of the same factors such as void ratio, state of stress, stress history and geologic age. In this paper, the potential of support vector machine (SVM) based classification approach has been used to assess the liquefaction potential from actual shear wave velocity data. In this approach, an approximate implementation of a structural risk minimization (SRM) induction principle is done, which aims at minimizing a bound on the generalization error of a model rather than minimizing only the mean square error over the data set. Here SVM has been used as a classification tool to predict liquefaction potential of a soil based on shear wave velocity. The dataset consists the information of soil characteristics such as effective vertical stress (sigma'(v0)), soil type, shear wave velocity (V-s) and earthquake parameters such as peak horizontal acceleration (a(max)) and earthquake magnitude (M). Out of the available 186 datasets, 130 are considered for training and remaining 56 are used for testing the model. The study indicated that SVM can successfully model the complex relationship between seismic parameters, soil parameters and the liquefaction potential. In the model based on soil characteristics, the input parameters used are sigma'(v0), soil type. V-s, a(max) and M. In the other model based on shear wave velocity alone uses V-s, a(max) and M as input parameters. In this paper, it has been demonstrated that Vs alone can be used to predict the liquefaction potential of a soil using a support vector machine model. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Dendritic Poly(ether imine) Based Gene Delivery Vector

The nonviral vector based gene delivery approach is attractive due to advantages associated with molecular-level modifications suitable for optimization of vector properties. In a new class of nonviral gene delivery systems, we herein report the potential of poly(ether Mine) (PETIM) dendrimers to mediate an effective gene delivery function. PETIM dendrimer, constituted with tertiary amine branch points, n-propyl ether linkers and primary amines at their peripheries, exhibits significantly reduced toxicities, over a broad concentration range. The dendrimer complexes pDNA effectively, protects DNA from endosomal damages, and delivers to the cell nucleus. Gene transfection studies, utilizing a reporter plasmid pEGFP-C1 and upon complexation with dendrimer, showed a robust expression of the encoded protein. The study shows that PETIM dendrimers are hitherto unknown novel gene delivery vectors, combining features of poly(ethylene imine)-based polymers and dendrimers, yet are relatively nontoxic and structurally precise.

Receiver-Only Optimized Vector Quantization for Noisy Channels

This paper considers the design and analysis of a filter at the receiver of a source coding system to mitigate the excess Mean-Squared Error (MSE) distortion caused due to channel errors. It is assumed that the source encoder is channel-agnostic, i.e., that a Vector Quantization (VQ) based compression designed for a noiseless channel is employed. The index output by the source encoder is sent over a noisy memoryless discrete symmetric channel, and the possibly incorrect received index is decoded by the corresponding VQ decoder. The output of the VQ decoder is processed by a receive filter to obtain an estimate of the source instantiation. In the sequel, the optimum linear receive filter structure to minimize the overall MSE is derived, and shown to have a minimum-mean squared error receiver type structure. Further, expressions are derived for the resulting high-rate MSE performance. The performance is compared with the MSE obtained using conventional VQ as well as the channel optimized VQ. The accuracy of the expressions is demonstrated through Monte Carlo simulations.

A characteristic based numerical method with tracking for nonlinear wave equations

Many physical problems can be modeled by scalar, first-order, nonlinear, hyperbolic, partial differential equations (PDEs). The solutions to these PDEs often contain shock and rarefaction waves, where the solution becomes discontinuous or has a discontinuous derivative. One can encounter difficulties using traditional finite difference methods to solve these equations. In this paper, we introduce a numerical method for solving first-order scalar wave equations. The method involves solving ordinary differential equations (ODEs) to advance the solution along the characteristics and to propagate the characteristics in time. Shocks are created when characteristics cross, and the shocks are then propagated by applying analytical jump conditions. New characteristics are inserted in spreading rarefaction fans. New characteristics are also inserted when values on adjacent characteristics lie on opposite sides of an inflection point of a nonconvex flux function, Solutions along characteristics are propagated using a standard fourth-order Runge-Kutta ODE solver. Shocks waves are kept perfectly sharp. In addition, shock locations and velocities are determined without analyzing smeared profiles or taking numerical derivatives. In order to test the numerical method, we study analytically a particular class of nonlinear hyperbolic PDEs, deriving closed form solutions for certain special initial data. We also find bounded, smooth, self-similar solutions using group theoretic methods. The numerical method is validated against these analytical results. In addition, we compare the errors in our method with those using the Lax-Wendroff method for both convex and nonconvex flux functions. Finally, we apply the method to solve a PDE with a convex flux function describing the development of a thin liquid film on a horizontally rotating disk and a PDE with a nonconvex flux function, arising in a problem concerning flow in an underground reservoir.