Niobium is an important alloying element in the design of heat-resistant ferritic stainless steels for automotive exhaust systems. When in solid solution, it improves both the high temperature strength and the resistance to thermal fatigue. However, it also forms several kinds of precipitates during service. These reactions have been modelled, taking into account the multicomponent nature of th...

It has long been known that barrier algorithms for constrained optimization can produce a sequence of iterates converging to a critical point satisfying weak second-order necessary optimality conditions, when their inner iterations ensures that second-order necessary conditions hold at each barrier minimizer. We show that, despite this, strong second-order necessary conditions may fail to be at...

The current trend of the investigation of the chemistry of nutrition is emphasizing the significance of the amino-acids as the fundamental factors in all problems in which hitherto the r61e of proteins has been involved. The remarkable success which has at’tended the efforts to supplant completely the proteins in the food intake by their ultimate products of hydrolysis-the so-called amino-acid ...

This paper considers the problem of evaluating barrier option prices when the dynamics of the underlying are driven by stochastic volatility following the square root process of Heston (1993). We develop a method of lines approach as it conveniently delivers not only the price, but also the delta and gamma of the option. The method is able to efficiently handle both continuously monitored and d...

Since the introduction of electron beam (EB) physical vapour deposition (PVD) thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) and their application to moving components in the hot gas stream, erosion has become a prime concern. EB PVD TBCs, due to their unique columnar microstructure are far more strain tolerant than their plasma sprayed (PS) counter parts and can thus be used under more exacting operating con...

A gas-phase oxidation method using dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs) has been developed to remove S02 and to simultaneously remove SO, and NO from gas streams that are similar to gas streams generated by the combustion of fossil fuels. SO, and NO removal efficiencies are evaluated as a function of applied voltage, temperature, and concentrations of S02, NO, t'l,O~s), and N H 3. With constant...

The analysis of surface latent heat flux (SLHF) from the epicentral regions of five recent earthquakes that occurred in close proximity to the oceans has been found to show anomalous behavior. The maximum increase of SLHF is found 2–7 days prior to the main earthquake event. This increase is likely due to an ocean-land-atmosphere interaction. The increase of SLHF prior to the main earthquake ev...

We measured the nucleation rates of lysozyme protein crystals using microfluidically produced emulsion drops containing supersaturated protein solution. The technique involves quenching several thousand independent nanoliter drops by rapidly lowering the temperature and then counting the number of drops that have not nucleated as a function of time at constant temperature. We fit the number dis...

Deformation mechanisms involving mass transport by stress driven diffusion influence a large number of technological problems. We study the formation of undulations on surfaces of stressed films at high temperature by exploring the deformation kinetics governed by volume and surface diffusion. A governing equation is derived that gives the amplitude change of such surfaces as a function of time...

We report the first observation of steps in the hysteresis loop of a high-spin molecular magnet. We propose that the steps, which occur every 0.46 T, are due to thermally assisted resonant tunneling between different quantum spin states. Magnetic relaxation increases dramatically when the field is in the neighborhood of a step. A simple model accounts for the observations and predicts a value f...