The flowfield inside the second solid stage of the European launch vehicle VEGA is simulated with a full 3D unsteady flow solver in order to characterize the unsteadinesses, aero-acoustics and dynamics loads resulting from the growth of complex vorticity patterns in the internal flow of the aft-finocyl solid rocket motor.

We prove global existence and uniqueness of smooth solutions to a nonlinear system of parabolic-elliptic equations, which describes the chemical aggression of a permeable material, like calcium carbonate rocks, in presence of acid atmosphere. This model applies when convective flows are not negligible, due to the high permeability of the material. The global (in time) result is proven by using a weak continuation principle for the local solutions.

Indefinite symmetric matrices occur in many applications, such as optimization, least squares problems, partial differential equations, and variational problems. In these applications one is often interested in computing a factorization of the indefinite matrix that puts into evidence the inertia of the matrix or possibly provides an estimate of its eigenvalues. In this paper we propose an algorithm that provides this information for any symmetric indefinite matrix by transforming it to a block antitriangular form using orthogonal similarity transformations.

We show in this paper that the roots $x_1$ and $x_2$ of a scalar quadratic polynomial $ax^2 + bx + c = 0$ with real or complex coefficients $a, b, c$ can be computed in an element-wise mixed stable manner, measured in a relative sense. We also show that this is a stronger property than norm-wise backward stability but weaker than element-wise backward stability. We finally show that there does not exist any method that can compute the roots in an element-wise backward stable sense, which is also illustrated by some numerical experiments.

The equality constrained indefinite least squares problem involves the minimization of an indefinite quadratic form subject to a linear equality constraint. In this paper, we study this problem and present a numerical method that is proved to be backward stable in a strict sense, i.e., that the computed solution satisfies a slightly perturbed equality constrained indefinite least squares problem. We also perform a sensitivity analysis of this problem and derive bounds for the accuracy of the computed solution. We give several numerical experiments to illustrate these results.

In non-parametric regression analysis the advantage of frames with respect to classical orthonormal bases is that they can furnish an efficient representation of a more broad class of functions. For example, fast oscillating functions as audio, speech, sonar, radar, EEG and stock market are much more well represented by a frame, with similar oscillating characteristic, than by a classical orthonormal basis. In this respect, a new frame based shrinkage estimator is derived as the Empirical Regularized version of the optimal Shrinkage estimator generalized to the frame operator.

Nel febbraio del 2010 nei pressi dell'abitato di Maierato, in provincia di Vibo Valentia, si è verificata una frana profonda, evoluta in colata veloce, che ha determinato una condizione di grave emergenza. Le attività di studio e indagine condotte nell'ambito dell'Ordinanza della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri n. 3862/2010 ed i successivi approfondimenti, hanno evidenziato la presenza di un'antica frana nella parte sud dell'abitato, in località Vonace.

Gene therapy is a promising approach for treating a wide range of human pathologies such as genetic disorders as well as diseases acquired over time. Viral and non-viral vectors are used to convey sequences of genes that can be expressed for therapeutic purposes. Plasmid DNA is receiving considerable attention for intramuscular gene transfer due to its safety, simplicity and low cost of production. Nevertheless, strategies to improve DNA uptake into the nucleus of cells for its expression are required. Cytoskeleton plays an important role in the intracellular trafficking.