We observed an optical cusp diffraction catastrophe with an initially smooth but elongated Gaussian beam with an aspect ratio of 2:1. Nonlinear and linear diffraction regimes account for the near-field elliptical annulus and the far-field spatially complex astroid.

Uniform flow distribution in a symmetric volume can be realized through a symmetric branched tree. It is shown here, however, by 3D numerical simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations, that the flow partitioning can be highly sensitive to deviations from exact symmetry if inertial effects are present. The flow asymmetry is quantified and found to depend on the Reynolds number. Moreover, for a g...

We used the time correlation of shadowgraph images to determine the angle Theta of the horizontal component of the plume velocity above (below) the center of the bottom (top) plate of a cylindrical Rayleigh-Bénard cell of aspect ratio Gamma identical with D/L=1 (D is the diameter and L approximately 87 mm is the height) in the Rayleigh-number range 7 x 10(7)</=R</=3 x 10(9) for a Prandtl number...

Combined manipulation of blur, line length and contrast reveal two distinct processes involved in curvature detection. When line length is small relative to blur, thresholds are almost directly proportional to blur and independent of line length. When line length is large relative to blur thresholds are directly proportional to line length and independent of blur. The aspect ratio (line length/...

We report on magnetoconductance measurements of metallic networks of various sizes ranging from 10 to 10(6) plaquettes, with an anisotropic aspect ratio. Both Altshuler-Aronov-Spivak h/2e periodic oscillations and Aharonov-Bohm h/e periodic oscillations are observed for all networks. For large samples, the amplitude of both oscillations results from the incoherent superposition of contributions...

Article history: Received 26 July 2010 Received in revised form 21 December 2010 Accepted 6 January 2011 Available online xxxx

We propose a primitive model of Janus ellipsoids that represents particles with an ellipsoidal core and two semisurfaces coded with dissimilar properties, for example, hydrophobicity and hydrophilicity, respectively. We investigate the effects of the aspect ratio on the self-assembly morphology and aggregation processes using Monte Carlo simulations. We also discuss certain differences between ...

The determination of the nematic order parameter S and the orientational distribution function (ODF) from scattering data involve severe approximations. The validity of these are studied here using Monte-Carlo simulations of hard spherocylinders with an aspect ratio of 15 for varying densities in the isotropic and nematic phase. The "exact" ODF of the rods, the "exact" value of S, and the inten...

We describe the Aspect Markup Language (AML), an XML-based AOP language for programming aspects. AML separates the binding instructions, written in XML, from the executable aspect code, written in a regular programming language. This separation by itself has some advantages, namely for testing. But the main goal of AML is to provide a highly extensible AOP platform, with which programmers can e...