All issues

The temporal variability of exergy of short-wave and long-wave radiation and its relationships with sensible heat, water vapor (H₂O) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) fluxes on a recently clear-cut area in a mixed coniferous and small-leaved forest in the Tver region is discussed. On the basis of the analysis of radiation and exergy efficiency coefficients suggested by Yu.M. Svirezhev it was shown that during the first eight months after clearcutting the forest ecosystem functions as a "heat engine" i.e. the processes of energy dissipation dominated over processes of biomass production. To validate the findings the statistical analysis of temporary variability of meteorological parameters, as well as, daily fluxes of sensible heat, H₂O and CO₂ was provided using the trigonometrical polynomials. The statistical models that are linearly depended on an exergy of short-wave and long-wave radiation were obtained for mean daily values of CO₂ fluxes, gross primary production of regenerated vegetation and sensible heat fluxes. The analysis of these dependences is also confirmed the results obtained from processing the radiation and exergy efficiency coefficients. The splitting the time series into separate time intervals, e.g. “spring–summer” and “summer–autumn”, allowed revealing that the statistically significant relationships between atmospheric fluxes and exergy were amplified in summer months as the clear-cut area was overgrown by grassy and young woody vegetation. The analysis of linear relationships between time-series of latent heat fluxes and exergy showed their statistical insignificance. The linear relationships between latent heat fluxes and temperature were in turn statistically significant. The air temperature was a key factor improving the accuracy of the models, whereas effect of exergy was insignificant. The results indicated that at the time of active vegetation regeneration within the clear-cut area the seasonal variability of surface evaporation is mainly governed by temperature variation.

This paper studies electromagnetic fields, frequencies of lasing, and emission thresholds of a drop-shaped microcavity laser. From the mathematical point of view, the original problem is a nonstandard two-parametric eigenvalue problem for the Helmholtz equation on the whole plane. The desired positive parameters are the lasing frequency and the threshold gain, the corresponding eigenfunctions are the amplitudes of the lasing modes. This problem is usually referred to as the lasing eigenvalue problem. In this study, spectral characteristics are calculated numerically, by solving the lasing eigenvalue problem on the basis of the set of Muller boundary integral equations, which is approximated by the Nystr¨om method. The Muller equations have weakly singular kernels, hence the corresponding operator is Fredholm with zero index. The Nyström method is a special modification of the polynomial quadrature method for boundary integral equations with weakly singular kernels. This algorithm is accurate for functions that are well approximated by trigonometric polynomials, for example, for eigenmodes of resonators with smooth boundaries. This approach leads to a characteristic equation for mode frequencies and lasing thresholds. It is a nonlinear algebraic eigenvalue problem, which is solved numerically by the residual inverse iteration method. In this paper, this technique is extended to the numerical modeling of microcavity lasers having a more complicated form. In contrast to the microcavity lasers with smooth contours, which were previously investigated by the Nyström method, the drop has a corner. We propose a special modification of the Nyström method for contours with corners, which takes also the symmetry of the resonator into account. The results of numerical experiments presented in the paper demonstrate the practical effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

In this paper, we consider predator – prey models and carry out a global bifurcation analysis of the Leslie –Gower system with an additive Allee effect and a simplified Holling type III functional response, which models the dynamics of predator and prey populations in a given ecological or biomedical system. This system uses the most common mathematical form of expressing the Allee effect (or law) through the prey growth function. Allee’s law states that there is a very specific relationship between individual fitness to living conditions and the number or density of individuals of a given species, namely: with an increase in the population size, the ability to survive and reproductive ability also increases. After algebraic transformations, the rational Leslie –Gower system with additive Allee effect and simplified Holling type III functional response can be written as a quantic-sextic dynamical system, i. e., as a system with polynomials of the fifth and sixth degrees. Using information about its singular points and applying our bifurcation-geometric approach to qualitative analysis, we study global bifurcations of limit cycles of the quintic-sextic system. To control all limit cycle bifurcations, especially bifurcations of multiple limit cycles, it is necessary to know the properties and combine the actions of all parameters rotating the vector field of the system. This can be done using the Wintner – Perko termination principle, according to which a maximal one-parameter family of multiple limit cycles terminates either at a singular point, which typically has the same multiplicity (cyclicity), or at a separatrix cycle, which also typically has the same multiplicity (cyclicity). This principle is a consequence of the principle of natural termination which was stated for higher-dimensional dynamical systems by Wintner who studied one-parameter families of periodic orbits of the restricted three-body problem and proved that in the analytic case any oneparameter family of periodic orbits can be uniquely continued through any bifurcation except a period-doubling bifurcation. Applying the planar Wintner – Perko principle, we prove that if the cyclicity of the focus in the system under consideration is three, then the system can have at most three limit cycles surrounding one singular point.

In this paper, we discuss the procedure for finding nominal trajectories of the planar five-link bipedal robot with point contact. To this end we use a virtual constraints method that transforms robot’s dynamics to a lowdimensional zero manifold; we also use a nonlinear optimization algorithms to find virtual constraints parameters that minimize robot’s cost of transportation. We analyzed the effect of the degree of Bezier polynomials that approximate the virtual constraints and continuity of the torques on the cost of transportation. Based on numerical results we found that it is sufficient to consider polynomials with degrees between five and six, as further increase in the degree of polynomial results in increased computation time while it does not guarantee reduction of the cost of transportation. Moreover, it was shown that introduction of torque continuity constraints does not lead to significant increase of the objective function and makes the gait more implementable on a real robot.

We propose a two step procedure for finding minimum of the considered optimization problem with objective function in the form of cost of transportation and with high number of constraints. During the first step we solve a feasibility problem: remove cost function (set it to zero) and search for feasible solution in the parameter space. During the second step we introduce the objective function and use the solution found in the first step as initial guess. For the first step we put forward an algorithm for finding initial guess that considerably reduced optimization time of the first step (down to 3–4 seconds) compared to random initialization. Comparison of the objective function of the solutions found during the first and second steps showed that on average during the second step objective function was reduced twofold, even though overall computation time increased significantly.