Kinetic aspect of Landauer’s blowtorch effect is investigated for a model doublewell potential with localized heating. Using the supersymmetric approach, we derive an approximate analytical expression for the equilibration rate as function of the strength, width and the position of the hot zone, and the barrier height. We find that the presence of the hot zone enhances the equilibration rate, w...

Pictor A is a nearby Fanaroff-Riley class II (FR II) radio galaxy with a bright hot spot, the western hot spot. Observation of high polarization in the optical emission of the hot spot indicates that the optical emission could be synchrotron radiation of relativistic electrons in the hot spot. These electrons may be able to produce high energy γ-ray photons through inverse Compton (IC) scatteri...

In this paper, a rigorous MILP formulation for grass-root design of heat exchanger networks is developed. The methodology does not rely on traditional supertargeting followed by network design steps typical of the Pinch Design Method, nor is a non-linear model based on superstructures, but rather gives cost-optimal solutions in one step. Unlike most models, it considers splitting, non-isotherma...

Richard Preston's timing could not have been better. In August 1994, only a few weeks before his new book appeared in bookstores, alarming national newspaper headlines informed the public of a scientist becoming infected with the exotic Sabia arenavirus after a laboratory centrifuge accident at the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit. Following the scientist's relatively rapid recovery under ribavirin...

Hot luminous stars show a variety of phenomena in their photospheres and in their winds which still lack clear physical explanations at this time. Among these phenomena are non-thermal line broadening, line profile variability (LPVs), discrete absorption components (DACs), wind clumping and stochastically excited pulsations. Cantiello et al. (2009) argued that a convection zone close to the sur...