Bursting is one of the primary activity regimes of neurons. Our study is focused on determining a generic biophysical mechanism underlying the coexistence of the bursting and silent regimes observed in a neuron model. We show that the main ingredient for this mechanism is a saddle periodic orbit. The stable manifold of the orbit sets a threshold between the regimes of activity. Thus, the range ...

The numerical simulation of the deformation of vesicle membranes under simple shear external fluid flow is considered in this paper. A new saddle-point approach is proposed for the imposition of the fluid incompressibility and the membrane inextensibility constraints, through Lagrange multipliers defined in the fluid and on the membrane respectively. Using a level set formulation, the problem i...

Computational studies on ketyl anion radicals with methyl chloride and on ω-chloroalkanal radical anions, Cl(CH2)nC(H)O (n ) 2, 3), find competing mechanisms: a dissociative electron transfer (ET) mechanism and a substitution (SUB(C)) mechanism leading to a C-alkylation product. H(CN)CdO/CH3Cl proceeds unequivocally via the SUB(C) mechanism, and ω-chloroalkanal radical anions proceed by the ET ...

With game theory, we review the optimal digital controller realization problems that maximize a finite word length (FWL) closed-loop stability measure. For a large class of these optimal FWL controller realization problems which have saddle points, a minimax-based search algorithm is derived for finding a global optimal solution. The algorithm consists of two stages. In the first stage, the clo...

The presumed ground state of a nematic fluid confined in a cylindrical geometry with planar anchoring corresponds to that of an axial configuration, wherein the director, free of deformations, is along the long axis of the cylinder. However, upon confinement of lyotropic chromonic liquid crystals in cylindrical geometries, here we uncover a surprising ground state corresponding to a doubly twis...

Using an exactly solvable pairing model Hamiltonian in the static path approximation together with small-amplitude quantal fluctuation corrections in random phase approximation (SPA+RPA), we have analyzed the behaviour of canonical (number projected) and grandcanonical treatments of nuclear level densities as a function of temperature and number of particles. For small particle numbers at a low...

An axisymmetric jet issued from a sharp edged circular convergent nozzle has been studied experimentally in the near field at Reynolds number 5.3x104  to search the saddle shape behavior of mean velocity and the role of mean static pressure in the jet flow. Due to the vena contracta effect the centerline mean velocity of the jet increases about 4.2% of its exit value and corresponding decrease ...

A study of the time evolution and a stability analysis of the phases in the extremely diluted Blume-Emery-Griffiths neural network model are shown to yield new phase diagrams in which fluctuation retrieval may drive pattern retrieval. It is shown that saddle-point solutions associated with fluctuation overlaps slow down the flow of the network states towards the retrieval fixed points. A compar...

Abstract Three local bifurcations in DC-DC converters are reviewed. They are period-doubling bifurcation, saddle-node bifurcation, and Neimark bifurcation. A general sampled-data model is employed to study types of loss of stability of the nominal (periodic) solution and their connection with local bifurcations. More accurate prediction of instability and bifurcation than using the averaging ap...