We study a continuum model for epitaxial growth of thin films in which the slope of mound structure of film surface increases. This model is a diffusion equation for the surface height profile h which is assumed to satisfy the periodic boundary condition. The equation happens to possess a Liapunov or �free-energy� functional. This functional consists of the term |? h|2, which represents the surface diffusion, and - log (1 + |? h|2), which describes the effect of kinetic asymmetry in the adatom attachment-detachment. We first prove for large time t that the interface width---the standard deviation of the height profile---is bounded above by O(t1/2), the averaged gradient is bounded above by O(t1/4), and the averaged energy is bounded below by O(- log t). We then consider a small coefficient e2 of |? h|2 with e = 1/L and L the linear size of the underlying system, and study the energy asymptotics in the large system limit e ? 0. We show that global minimizers of the free-energy functional exist for each e>0, the L2-norm of the gradient of any global minimizer scales as O(1/e), and the global minimum energy scales as O( log e). The existence of global energy minimizers and a scaling argument are used to construct a sequence of equilibrium solutions with different wavelengths. Finally, we apply our minimum energy estimates to derive bounds in terms of the linear system size L for the saturation interface width and the corresponding saturation time.

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We consider a one-dimensional model biodegradation system consisting of two reactionadvection equations for nutrient and pollutant concentrations and a rate equation for biomass. The hydrodynamic dispersion is ignored. Under an explicit condition on the decay and growth rates of biomass, the system can be approximated by two component models by setting biomass kinetics to equilibrium. We derive closed form solutions for constant speed traveling fronts for the reduced two component models and compare their profiles in homogeneous media. For a spatially random velocity field, we introduce travel time and study statistics of degradation fronts via representations in terms of the travel time probability density function (<i>pdf</i>) and the traveling front profiles. The travel time <i>pdf</i> does not vary with the nutrient and pollutant concentrations and only depends on the random water velocity. The traveling front profiles

Nous considérons un modèle provenant de la biologie, composé d03équations de chimiotactisme couplées aux équations de fluide visqueux incompressible par le transport et le for04age externe. L03existence globale des solutions du problème de Cauchy est étudiée sous certaines conditions. Précisément, pour le système chimiotactisme–Navier–Stokes en deux dimensions d03espace, nous obtenons l03existence globale pour des données grandes. En trois dimensions d03espace, nous démontrons l03existence globale des solutions faibles pour le système chimiotactisme–Stokes avec une diffusion non-linéaire de la densité des cellules.

We consider the spatially inhomogeneous Boltzmann equation without angular cutoff. We prove the existence and uniqueness of local classical solutions to the Cauchy problem, in the function space with Maxwellian type exponential decay with respect to the velocity variable. <b><i>To cite this article: R. Alexandre et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 347 (2009).</i></b>