Long-range NMR data, namely residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) from external alignment and paramagnetic data, are becoming increasingly popular for the characterization of conformational heterogeneity of multidomain biomacromolecules and protein complexes. The question addressed here is how much information is contained in these averaged data.

Flood area detection from multipass Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data can be performed via amplitude change detection techniques. These methods allow flooded zones to be discriminated only when they are flooded at the time of the second passage, and not at the time of the first one. Coherence derived from multipass SAR interferometry can be used instead, as an indicator of changes in the electromagnetic scattering behaviour of the surface, thus potentially revealing all the areas affected by the flood event at any time between the two passes.

The rheology and dynamics of suspensions of fluid vesicles is investigated by a combination of molecular dynamics and mesoscale hydrodynamics simulations in two dimensions. The vesicle suspension is confined between two no-slip shearing walls. The flow behavior is studied as a function of the shear rate, the volume fraction of vesicles, and the viscosity ratio between inside and outside fluids. Results are obtained for the interactions of two vesicles, the intrinsic viscosity of the suspension, and the cell-free layer near the walls.

In this paper, multi-disciplinary optimization techniques are applied to sail design. Two different mathematical models, providing the solution of the fluid-dynamic and the structural problems governing the behaviour of a complete sailplan, are coupled in a fluid-structure interaction (FSI) scheme, in order to determine the real flying shape of the sails and the forces acting on them. A numerical optimization algorithm is then applied, optimizing the structural pattern of the sailplan in order to maximize the driving force or other significant quantities.

In the last two decades, PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) gained a lot of attention among the different derivative-free algorithms for global optimization. The simplicity of the implementation, compact memory usage and parallel structure represent some key features, largely appreciated. On the other hand, the absence of local information about the objective function slow down the algorithm when one or more constraints are violated, even if a penalty approach is applied.

Application of interpolation/approximation techniques (metamodels, for brevity) is commonly adopted in numerical optimization, typically to reduce the overall execution time of the optimization process. A limited number of trial solution are computed, cov- ering the design variable space: those trial points are then used for the determination of an estimate of the objective function in any desired location of the design space.

MIPAS measurements on ENVISAT represent a unique database for the study of atmospheric composition and of the time variation of atmospheric constituents. For trend studies it is important that instrumental drifts are reduced.

The Hilbert transform of a function g, H(g) is an important tool in many mathematical fields. Expecially its numerical evaluation is often useful in some procedures for searcing solutions of the singular integral equations. In this context an approximation of (HV^alpha,beta,f;t), |t|1, where f is a continuous function in [-1,1] and v^alpha,beta, alpha,beta>-1 is a Jacobi weight, is required. In the last decade more then one paper appeared on this subject and among others we recall [1,2,3,4,5,14,15,20]. The procedure used in these papers can be described as follows.