We study the stability of a sequence of integral functionals on divergence-free matrix valued fields following the direct methods of Γ-convergence. We prove that the Γ-limit is an integral functional on divergence-free matrix valued fields. Moreover, we show that the Γlimit is also stable under volume constraint and various type of boundary conditions.

We provide an approximation result in the sense of Γ-convergence for energies of the form ˆ Ω Q1(e(u)) dx+ aH(Ju) + b ˆ Ju Q 1/2 0 ([u] νu) dH n−1, where Ω ⊂ Rn is a bounded open set with Lipschitz boundary, Q0 and Q1 are coercive quadratic forms on Mn×n sym , a, b are positive constants, and u runs in the space of fields SBD2(Ω) , i.e., it’s a special field with bounded deformation such that i...

The energy of a Von Kármán circular plate is described by a nonlocal nonconvex one-dimensional functional depending on the thickness ε. Here we perform the asymptotic analysis via Γ-convergence as the parameter ε goes to zero.

We show the Γ-convergence of a family of discrete functionals to the Mumford and Shah image segmentation functional. The functionals of the family are constructed by modifying the elliptic approximating functionals proposed by Ambrosio and Tortorelli. The quadratic term of the energy related to the edges of the segmentation is replaced by a nonconvex functional.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a leading cause of hospital- and community-associated infections. The formation of adherent clusters of cells known as biofilms is an important virulence factor in MRSA pathogenesis. Previous studies showed that subminimal inhibitory (sub-MIC) concentrations of methicillin induce biofilm formation in the community-associated MRSA strain LAC....

The synthesis of 1,4-amino alcohols from THF treated with N-tosyliminobenzyliodinane (PhINTs) followed by a Grignard reagent under mild reaction conditions at room temperature is described herein. Various Grignard reagents were shown to be compatible, furnishing the corresponding 4-substituted-N-1,4-tosylamino alcohols in good to excellent yields. A partial or full detosylation of the N-tosyl-1...

The formation of microdomains, also called rafts, in biomembranes can be attributed to the surface tension of the membrane. In order to model this phenomenon, a model involving a coupling between the local composition and the local curvature was proposed by Seul and Andelman in 1995. In addition to the familiar Cahn-Hilliard/Modica-Mortola energy, there are additional ‘forces’ that prevent larg...

In this paper we study the rigorous sharp interface limit of a diffuse interface model related to the dynamics of tumor growth, when a parameter ε, representing the interface thickness between the tumorous and non tumorous cells, tends to zero. More in particular, we analyze here a gradient-flow type model arising from a modification of the recently introduced model for tumor growth dynamics in...

The identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis genes necessary for persistence in vivo provides insight into bacterial biology as well as host defense strategies. We show that disruption of M. tuberculosis membrane protein PerM (Rv0955) resulted in an IFN-γ-dependent persistence defect in chronic mouse infection despite the mutant's near normal growth during acute infection. The perM mutant r...

In an effort to identify a new class of druglike HIV-1 protease inhibitors, four different stereopure β-hydroxy γ-lactam-containing inhibitors have been synthesized, biologically evaluated, and cocrystallized. The impact of the tether length of the central spacer (two or three carbons) was also investigated. A compound with a shorter tether and (3R,4S) absolute configuration exhibited high acti...