Nodal length fluctuations for arithmetic random waves

Using the spectral multiplicities of the standard torus, we endow the Laplace eigenspaces with Gaussian probability measures. This induces a notion of random Gaussian Laplace eigenfunctions on the torus (''arithmetic random waves''). We study the distribution of the nodal length of random eigenfunctions for large eigenvalues, and our primary result is that the asymptotics for the variance is nonuniversal. Our result is intimately related to the arithmetic of lattice points lying on a circle with radius corresponding to the energy.

Queueing delay - error probability tradeoff for point-to-point channels with fixed length block codes

We study the tradeoff between the average error probability and the average queueing delay of messages which randomly arrive to the transmitter of a point-to-point discrete memoryless channel that uses variable rate fixed codeword length random coding. Bounds to the exponential decay rate of the average error probability with average queueing delay in the regime of large average delay are obtained. Upper and lower bounds to the optimal average delay for a given average error probability constraint are presented. We then formulate a constrained Markov decision problem for characterizing the rate of transmission as a function of queue size given an average error probability constraint. Using a Lagrange multiplier the constrained Markov decision problem is then converted to a problem of minimizing the average cost for a Markov decision problem. A simple heuristic policy is proposed which approximately achieves the optimal average cost.

Simulation of length-preserving motions of flexible one dimensional oObjects using optimization

During the motion of one dimensional flexible objects such as ropes, chains, etc., the assumption of constant length is realistic. Moreover,their motion appears to be naturally minimizing some abstract distance measure, wherein the disturbance at one end gradually dies down along the curve defining the object. This paper presents purely kinematic strategies for deriving length-preserving transformations of flexible objects that minimize appropriate ‘motion’. The strategies involve sequential and overall optimization of the motion derived using variational calculus. Numerical simulations are performed for the motion of a planar curve and results show stable converging behavior for single-step infinitesimal and finite perturbations 1 as well as multi-step perturbations. Additionally, our generalized approach provides different intuitive motions for various problem-specific measures of motion, one of which is shown to converge to the conventional tractrix-based solution. Simulation results for arbitrary shapes and excitations are also included.

On the mechanism and the length scales involved in the ductile fracture of a bulk metallic glass

Some bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) exhibit high crack initiation toughness due to shear band mediated plastic flow at the crack tip and yet do not display additional resistance to crack growth due to the lack of a microstructure. Thus, at crack initiation, the fracture behavior of BMGs transits from that of ductile alloys to that of brittle ceramics. In this paper, we attempt to understand the physics behind the characteristic length from the notch root at which this transition occurs, through testing of four-point bend specimens made of a nominally ductile Zr-based BMG in three different structural states. In the as-cast state, both symmetric (mode I) and asymmetric (mixed mode) bend specimens are tested. The process of shear band mediated plastic flow followed by crack initiation at the notch root was monitored through in situ imaging. Results show that stable crack growth occurs inside a dominant shear band through a distance of, similar to 60 mu m, irrespective of the structural state and mode mixity, before attaining criticality. Detailed finite element simulations show that this length corresponds to the distance from the notch root over which a positive hydrostatic stress gradient prevails. The mean ridge heights on fractured surfaces are found to correlate with the toughness of the BMG. The Argon and Salama model, which is based on the meniscus instability phenomenon at the notch root, is modified to explain the experimentally observed physics of fracture in ductile BMGs. (C) 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evaluation of isopentane, R-245fa and their mixtures as working fluids for organic Rankine cycles

Low grade thermal energy from sources such as solar, geothermal and industrial waste heat in the temperature range of 380-425 K can be converted to electrical energy with reasonable efficiency using isopentane and R-245fa. While the former is flammable and the latter has considerable global warming potential, their mixture in 0.7/0.3 mole fraction is shown to obviate these disadvantages and yet retain dominant merits of each fluid. A realistic thermodynamic analysis is carried out wherein the possible sources of irreversibilities such as isentropic efficiencies of the expander and the pump and entropy generation in the regenerator, boiler and condenser are accounted for. The performance of the system in the chosen range of heat source temperatures is evaluated. A technique of identifying the required source temperature for a given output of the plant and the maximum operating temperature of the working fluid is developed. This is based on the pinch point occurrence in the boiler and entropy generation in the boiling and superheating regions of the boiler. It is shown that cycle efficiencies of 10-13% can be obtained in the range investigated at an optimal expansion ratio of 7-10. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Evaluation of carbon dioxide blends with isopentane and propane as working fluids for organic Rankine cycles

The main theme of this paper is to study the flammability suppression of hydrocarbons by blending with carbon dioxide, and to evaluate these mixtures as possible working fluids in organic Rankine cycle for medium temperature concentrated solar power applications. The analysis takes into account inevitable irreversibilities in the turbine, the pump, and heat exchangers. While the isopentane + CO2 mixture suffers from high irreversibility mainly in the regenerator owing to a large temperature glide, the propane + CO2 mixture performs more or less the same as pure propane albeit with high cycle pressures. In general, large temperature glides at condensing pressures extend the heat recovery into the two-phase dome, which is an advantage. However, at the same time, the shift of the pinch point towards the warm end of the regenerator is found to be a major cause of irreversibility. In fact, as the number of carbon atoms in alkanes decreases, their blend with CO2 moves the pinch point to the colder end of the regenerator. This results in lower entropy generation in the regenerator and improved cycle efficiency of propane + CO2 mixtures. With this mixture, real cycle efficiencies of 15-18% are achievable at a moderate source temperature of 573 K. Applicability for a wide range of source temperatures is found to be an added advantage of this mixture.

Performance improvement of short-length regular low-density parity-check codes with low-complexity post-processing

It is well known that extremely long low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes perform exceptionally well for error correction applications, short-length codes are preferable in practical applications. However, short-length LDPC codes suffer from performance degradation owing to graph-based impairments such as short cycles, trapping sets and stopping sets and so on in the bipartite graph of the LDPC matrix. In particular, performance degradation at moderate to high E-b/N-0 is caused by the oscillations in bit node a posteriori probabilities induced by short cycles and trapping sets in bipartite graphs. In this study, a computationally efficient algorithm is proposed to improve the performance of short-length LDPC codes at moderate to high E-b/N-0. This algorithm makes use of the information generated by the belief propagation (BP) algorithm in previous iterations before a decoding failure occurs. Using this information, a reliability-based estimation is performed on each bit node to supplement the BP algorithm. The proposed algorithm gives an appreciable coding gain as compared with BP decoding for LDPC codes of a code rate equal to or less than 1/2 rate coding. The coding gains are modest to significant in the case of optimised (for bipartite graph conditioning) regular LDPC codes, whereas the coding gains are huge in the case of unoptimised codes. Hence, this algorithm is useful for relaxing some stringent constraints on the graphical structure of the LDPC code and for developing hardware-friendly designs.

Study of the effect of alkali mixture on V-O bond length in Oxyfluoro Vanadate glasses using Raman spectroscopy

Raman spectroscopic study on Oxyfluoro Vanadate glasses containing various proportions of lithium fluoride and rubidium fluoride was carried out to see an effect of mixture of alkali on vanadium-oxygen (V-O) bond length. Glasses with a general formula 40V(2)O(5) - 30BaF(2) - (30 - x) LiF - xRbF (x = 0-30) were prepared. Room temperature Raman spectra of these glass samples were recorded in back scattering geometry. The data presented is in ``reduced Raman intensity'' form with maximum peak scaled to 100. We have used v = Aexp(BR), where A and B are fitting parameters, to correlate the bond length R with Raman scattering frequency v. We observed that variation in bond length and its distribution about a most probable value can be correlated to the alkali environment present in these glasses. We also observed that all rubidium environment around the network forming unit is more homogenous than all lithium environment.

Deformation behaviour at macro- and nano-length scales: The development of orientation gradients

The deformation behaviour of macrocrystalline and nanocrystalline nickel shows a striking similarity in terms of higher intragranular misorientation and a texture with dominant Brass component on rolling. This is in contrast to microcrystalline nickel, with lower intragranular misorientation and typical Copper type texture. This has been attributed to the free surfaces in macrocrystalline sample and grain boundaries in nanocrystalline sample. Experimental evidence of `Grain Boundary Affected Zone' (GBAZ) showing multi-slip in contrast to limited slip in the grain interiors has been provided. The similarity in evolution of texture and intragranular misorientation is explained on the basis of reduced contribution from the GBAZ at the two extreme length scales.

Length-scale dependent mechanical properties of Al-Cu eutectic alloy: Molecular dynamics based model and its experimental verification

This paper attempts to gain an understanding of the effect of lamellar length scale on the mechanical properties of two-phase metal-intermetallic eutectic structure. We first develop a molecular dynamics model for the in-situ grown eutectic interface followed by a model of deformation of Al-Al2Cu lamellar eutectic. Leveraging the insights obtained from the simulation on the behaviour of dislocations at different length scales of the eutectic, we present and explain the experimental results on Al-Al2Cu eutectic with various different lamellar spacing. The physics behind the mechanism is further quantified with help of atomic level energy model for different length scale as well as different strain. An atomic level energy partitioning of the lamellae and the interface regions reveals that the energy of the lamellae core are accumulated more due to dislocations irrespective of the length-scale. Whereas the energy of the interface is accumulated more due to dislocations when the length-scale is smaller, but the trend is reversed when the length-scale is large beyond a critical size of about 80 nm. (C) 2014 Author(s).

Growing Length Scales and Their Relation to Timescales in Glass-Forming Liquids

The question of whether the dramatic slowing down of the dynamics of glass-forming liquids near the structural glass transition is caused by the growth of one or more correlation lengths has received much attention in recent years. Several proposals have been made for both static and dynamic length scales that may be responsible for the growth of timescales as the glass transition is approached. These proposals are critically examined with emphasis on the dynamic length scale associated with spatial heterogeneity of local dynamics and the static point-to-set or mosaic length scale of the random first order transition theory of equilibrium glass transition. Available results for these length scales, obtained mostly from simulations, are summarized, and the relation of the growth of timescales near the glass transition with the growth of these length scales is examined. Some of the outstanding questions about length scales in glass-forming liquids are discussed, and studies in which these questions may be addressed are suggested.

Toward a Scalable Working Set Size Estimation Method and Its Application for Chip Multiprocessors

It is essential to accurately estimate the working set size (WSS) of an application for various optimizations such as to partition cache among virtual machines or reduce leakage power dissipated in an over-allocated cache by switching it OFF. However, the state-of-the-art heuristics such as average memory access latency (AMAL) or cache miss ratio (CMR) are poorly correlated to the WSS of an application due to 1) over-sized caches and 2) their dispersed nature. Past studies focus on estimating WSS of an application executing on a uniprocessor platform. Estimating the same for a chip multiprocessor (CMP) with a large dispersed cache is challenging due to the presence of concurrently executing threads/processes. Hence, we propose a scalable, highly accurate method to estimate WSS of an application. We call this method ``tagged WSS (TWSS)'' estimation method. We demonstrate the use of TWSS to switch-OFF the over-allocated cache ways in Static and Dynamic NonUniform Cache Architectures (SNUCA, DNUCA) on a tiled CMP. In our implementation of adaptable way SNUCA and DNUCA caches, decision of altering associativity is taken by each L2 controller. Hence, this approach scales better with the number of cores present on a CMP. It gives overall (geometric mean) 26% and 19% higher energy-delay product savings compared to AMAL and CMR heuristics on SNUCA, respectively.

Thermally Induced Demixing in an LCST Mixture in the Presence of Densely Grafted Nanoparticles: Tuning the Graft Chain Length To Induce Thermodynamic Miscibility

The demixing in an LCST mixture of PS/PVME (polystyrene/poly(vinyl methyl ether)) was probed here by melt rheology in the presence of gold nanoparticles which were densely coated with varying graft lengths of PS. The graft density for the gold nanoparticles coated with 3 kDa PS was ca. Sigma = 1.7 chains/nm(2), and that for 53 kDa PS was ca. Sigma = 1.2 chains/nm(2). The evolution of morphology, as the blends transit through the metastable and the unstable envelopes of the phase diagram, and the localization of the gold nanoparticles upon demixing were monitored using in situ hot-stage AFM and confocal Raman imaging. Interestingly, gold nanoparticles coated with 3 kDa polystyrene (PS(3 kDa)-g-nAu) were localized in the PVME phase, whereas gold nanoparticles coated with 53 kDa polystyrene (PS(53 kDa)-g-nAu) were localized in the PS phase of the blend. While the localization of PS(3 kDa)-g-nAu in the PVME phase can be expected to be of entropic origin due to expulsion from the PS phase as R-g,R-matrix chains > R-g,R-grafted chains (where R-g is the radius of gyration of the polymer chain), the localization of PS(53 kDa)-g-nAu in the PS phase is believed to be facilitated by favorable melt/graft interactions. The latter nanoparticles also delayed the demixing by 12 degrees C with respect to the neat mixture. The observed changes were addressed in context to enthalpic interactions between the grafted PS and the free PS, the entropic losses (deformational entropic losses on blending, translational entropic loss of the free PS, and the conformational entropic loss of the grafted PS), and the interface of the grafted and the free chains.

How does spacer length of imidazolium gemini surfactants control the fabrication of 2D-Langmuir films of silver-nanoparticles at the air-water interface?

A series of gemini surfactants based on cationic imidazolium ring as polar headgroup, abbreviated as lm-n-lm], 2Br(-) (n = 2, 5, 6 and 12), was synthesized. Their ability to stabilize silver nanoparticles in aqueous media was investigated. The resulting suspensions were characterized by UV-Vis spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). They exhibit specific morphologies by adopting different supramolecular assemblies in aqueous media depending on the internal packing arrangements and on the number of spacer methylene units -(CH2)(n)-]. Individual colloids were extracted from the aqueous to chloroform layer and spread at the air/water interface to allow the formation of well-defined Langmuir films. By analysis of the surface pressure-area isotherms, the details about the packing behavior and orientation of the imidazolium gemini surfactant capped silver nanoparticles were obtained. Morphological features of the dynamic process of monolayer compression at the air-water interface were elucidated using Brewster angle microscopy (BAM). These monolayers were further transferred on mica sheets by the Langmuir-Blodgett technique at their associated collapse pressure and the morphology of these monolayers was investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The number of spacer methylene units -(CH2)(n)-] of the gemini surfactants exerted critical influence in modulating the characteristics of the resulting Langmuir films. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Structure-specific nuclease activity of RAGs is modulated by sequence, length and phase position of flanking double-stranded DNA

RAGs (recombination activating genes) are responsible for the generation of antigen receptor diversity through the process of combinatorial joining of different V (variable), D (diversity) and J (joining) gene segments. In addition to its physiological property, wherein RAG functions as a sequence-specific nuclease, it can also act as a structure-specific nuclease leading to genomic instability and cancer. In the present study, we investigate the factors that regulate RAG cleavage on non-B DNA structures. We find that RAG binding and cleavage on heteroduplex DNA is dependent on the length of the double-stranded flanking region. Besides, the immediate flanking double-stranded region regulates RAG activity in a sequence-dependent manner. Interestingly, the cleavage efficiency of RAGs at the heteroduplex region is influenced by the phasing of DNA. Thus, our results suggest that sequence, length and phase positions of the DNA can affect the efficiency of RAG cleavage when it acts as a structure-specific nuclease. These findings provide novel insights on the regulation of the pathological functions of RAGs.