Distribution, stability, bifurcations and catastrophe of steady rotation of a symmetrical heavy gyroscope with viscous-liquid-filled cavity

The number, the angles of orientation and the stability in Rumyantsev Movchan's sense of oblique steady rotations of a symmetric heavy gyroscope with a cavity completely filled with a uniform viscous liquid, possessing a fixed point 0 on its symmetric axis. are given for various values of the parameters. By taking the square of the upright component of the angular momentum M2 as a control parameter, three types of bifurcation diagrams of the steady rotations, two types of jumps and two kinds of local catastrophes, one being the symmetric reduced cusp type and the other being of the symmetric reduced butterfly type, are obtained. By taking account of the M2-damping owing to the moment of unavoidable faint friction, two different modes for the gyroscope, initially in a stable quasi-steady upright rotation with a nutation angle theta(s) equal to zero, to topple over are found.

Chemosensory response of marine flagellate towards L- and D- dissolved free amino acids generated during heavy grazing on bacteria

This study investigated the generation of dissolved free amino acids (DFAA) by the bacterivorous flagellate Rhynchomonas nasuta when feeding on abundant prey. Specifically, it examined whether this flagellate protist exhibits a chemosensory response towards those amino acids. The concentrations of glycine and the and D-enantiomers of glutamate, serine, threonine, alanine, and leucine were determined in co-cultures of the flagellate and bacteria. Glycine, L- and D-alanine, and L-serine were found to accumulate under these conditions in amounts that correlated positively with flagellate abundance, suggesting that protists are involved in their generation. Investigations of the chemotactic response of young and old foraging protists to the same amino acids, offered in concentrations similar to those previously generated, showed that glycine elicited the strongest attraction in both age groups. Young protists were strongly attracted to all the assayed amino acids, whereas older protists maintained a high level of attraction only for glycine. These results suggest that glycine generated by protists actively grazing in bacterially enriched patches functions as an infochemical, signaling to foraging protists the presence of available prey in the aquatic environment.