In this paper, we study the retrieval of water vapor profiles from simulated FORUM measurements. We show that the bias towards the a-priori introduced by the Optimal Estimation technique can be reduced by using larger errors for the a-priori. Reducing the strength of the a-priori may, however, cause unphysical oscillations in the resulting profiles because of the ill-conditioning of the retrieval problem. An a-posteriori regularization technique, the Iterative Variable Strength method, is thus applied to reduce the amplitude of the oscillations.

The exit-time statistics of experimental turbulent data is analyzed. By looking at the exit-time moments (inverse structure functions) it is possible to have a direct measurement of scaling properties of the laminar statistics. It turns out that the inverse structure functions show a much more extended intermediate dissipative range than the structure functions, leading to the first clear evidence of the existence of such a range of scales. [S1063-651X(99)51012-X].

t. The present work was inspired by the recent developments in laboratory experiments made on chip, where culturing of multiple cell species was possible.

The computation of the eigenvalue decomposition of matrices is one of the most investigated problems in numerical linear algebra. In particular, real nonsymmetric tridiagonal eigenvalue problems arise in a variety of applications. In this paper the problem of computing an eigenvector corresponding to a known eigenvalue of a real nonsymmetric tridiagonal matrix is considered, developing an algorithm that combines part of a QR sweep and part of a QL sweep, both with the shift equal to the known eigenvalue. The numerical tests show the reliability of the proposed method.

Here we present some studies on the behavior of individuals in a biological networks. The first study is about Physarum polycephalum slime mold and its ability to find the shortest path in a maze. Here we present a PDE chemotaxis model that reproduce its behavior in a network, schematized as a planar graph, (1). In particular, suitable transmission and boundary conditions at each node of the graph are considered to mimic the choice of such an organism to move from an arc to another arc of the network, motivated by the search for food.

A new class of multiscale scheme is presented for micro-hydrodynamic problems based on a dual representation of the fluid observables. The hybrid model is first tested against the classical flow between two parallel plates and then applied to a plug flow within a micrometer-sized striction and a shear flow within a microcavity.

The phase-separation process of a binary mixture with order-parameter-dependent mobility under shear flow is numerically studied. The ordering is characterized by an alternate stretching and bursting of domains which produce oscillations in the physical observables. The amplitude of such modulations reduce in time when the mobility vanishes in the bulk phase, disfavoring the growth of bubbles coming from bursted domains.

We provide a framework to extend the relative entropy method to a class of diffusive relaxation systems with discrete velocities. The methodology is detailed in the toy case of the 1D Jin-Xin model under the diffusive scaling, and provides a direct proof of convergence to the limit parabolic equation in any interval of time, in the regime where the solutions are smooth. Recently, the same approach has been successfully used to show the strong convergence of a vector-BGK model to the 2D incompressible Navier-Stokes equations.