We investigate the rheology of strain-hardening spherical capsules, from the dilute to the concentrated regime under a confined shear flow using three-dimensional numerical simulations. We consider the effect of capillary number, volume fraction and membrane inextensibility on the particle deformation and on the effective suspension viscosity and normal stress differences of the suspension. The suspension displays a shear-thinning behaviour that is a characteristic of soft particles such as emulsion droplets, vesicles, strain-softening capsules and red blood cells.

This article is concerned with the analysis of the one-dimensional compressible Euler equations with a singular pressure law, the so-called hard sphere equation of state. The result is twofold. First, we establish the existence of bounded weak solutions by means of a viscous regularization and refined compensated compactness arguments. Second, we investigate the smooth setting by providing a de- tailed description of the impact of the singular pressure on the breakdown of the solutions.

We introduce non-local dynamics on directed networks through the construction of a fractional version of a non-symmetric Laplacian for weighted directed graphs. Furthermore, we provide an analytic treatment of fractional dynamics for both directed and undirected graphs, showing the possibility of exploring the network employing random walks with jumps of arbitrary length. We also provide some examples of the applicability of the proposed dynamics, including consensus over multi-agent systems described by directed networks.

The use of a mathematical model is proposed in order to denoise X-ray two-dimensional patterns. The method relies on a generalized diffusion equation whose diffusion constant depends on the image gradients. The numerical solution of the diffusion equation provides an efficient reduction of pattern noise as witnessed by the computed peak of signal-to-noise ratio. The use of experimental data with different inherent levels of noise allows us to show the success of the method even in the case, experimentally relevant, when patterns are blurred by Poissonian noise.

We prove existence and uniqueness for a class of signed Radon measure-valued entropy solutions of the Cauchy problem for a first order scalar hyperbolic conservation law in one space dimension. The initial data of the problem is a finite superposition of Dirac masses, whereas the flux is Lipschitz continuous and bounded. The solution class is determined by an additional condition which is needed to prove uniqueness.

Operated by the H2020 SOMA Project, the recently established Social Observatory for Disinformation and Social Media Analysis supports researchers, journalists and fact-checkers in their quest for quality information. At the core of the Observatory lies the DisInfoNet Toolbox, designed to help a wide spectrum of users understand the dynamics of (fake) news dissemination in social networks. DisInfoNet combines text mining and classification with graph analysis and visualization to offer a comprehensive and user-friendly suite.

This study describes a semi-empirical model developed to estimate volumetric soil moisture (<mml:semantics>theta v</mml:semantics>) in bare soils during the dry season (March-May) using C-band (5.42 GHz) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery acquired from the Sentinel-1 European satellite platform at a 20 m spatial resolution. The semi-empirical model was developed using backscatter coefficient (<mml:semantics>sigma degrees dB</mml:semantics>) and in situ soil moisture collected from Siruguppa taluk (sub-district) in the Karnataka state of India.

In remote storage services, delays in the time to retrieve data can cause economic losses to the data owners. In this paper, we address the problem of properly establishing specific clauses in the service level agreement (SLA), intended to guarantee a short and predictable retrieval time. Based on the rationale that the retrieval time mainly depends on the storage media used at the server side, we introduce the concept of Provable Storage Medium (PSM), to denote the ability of a user to efficiently verify that the provider is complying to this aspect of the SLA.

Derivations of the Jarzynski equality (JE) appear to be quite general, and applicable to any particle system, whether deterministic or stochastic, under equally general perturbations of an initial equilibrium state at given temperatureT. At the same time, the definitions of the quantities appearing in the JE, in particular the work, have been questioned. Answers have been given, but a deeper understanding of the range of phenomena to which the JE applies is necessary, both conceptually and in order to interpret the experiments in which it is used.