Flow reversals in two-dimensional Rayleigh-Benard convection led by non-Oberbeck-Boussinesq (NOB) effects due to large temperature differences arc studied by direct numerical simulation. Perfect gas is chosen as the working fluid and the Prandtl number is 0.71 for the reference state. 11 NOB effects are included, the flow pattern P-11 with only one dominant roll often becomes unstable by the growth of the cold corner roll, which sometimes results in cession-led flow reversals. By exploiting the vorticity transport equation, it is found that the asymmetries of buoyancy and viscous forces are responsible for the growth of the cold corner roll because both such asymmetries cause an imbalance between the corner rolls and the large-scale circulation (I.SC). The buoyancy force near the cold wall increases and decreases near the hot wall originating from the temperature-dependent isobaric thermal expansion coefficient alpha = 1/T if NOB effects are included; Moreover, the decreased dissipation due to lower viscosity is favourable for the growth of the cold corner roll, while the increased viscosity further suppresses the growth of the hot corner roll. Finally, it is found that the boundary layer near the cold wall plays an important role in the mass transport from LSC to corner rolls subject to mass conservation.

We study the effective fronts of first order front propagations in two dimensions (n=2) in the periodic setting. Using PDE-based approaches, we show that for every α∈(0,1), the class of centrally symmetric polygons with rational vertices and nonempty interior is admissible as effective fronts for given front speeds in C^{1,α}(T^2,(0,∞)). This result can also be formulated in the language of stable norms corresponding to periodic metrics in T^2. Similar results were known long time ago when n≥3 for front speeds in C^∞(T^n,(0,∞)). Due to topological restrictions, the two dimensional case is much more subtle. In fact, the effective front is C^1, which cannot be a polygon, for given C^{1,1}(T^2,(0,∞)) front speeds. Our regularity requirements on front speeds are hence optimal. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that polygonal effective fronts have been constructed in two dimensions.

We consider reflector imaging in a weakly random waveguide. We address the situation in which the source is farther from the reflector to be imaged than the energy equipartition distance, but the receiver array is closer to the reflector to be imaged than the energy equipartition distance. As a consequence, the reflector is illuminated by a partially coherent field and the signals recorded by the receiver array are noisy. This paper shows that migration of the recorded signals cannot give a good image, but an appropriate migration of the cross correlations of the recorded signals can give a very good image. The resolution and stability analysis of this original functional shows that the reflector can be localized with an accuracy of the order of the wavelength even when the receiver array has small aperture, and that broadband sources are necessary to ensure statistical stability, whatever the aperture of the array.

We consider Hermitian and symmetric random band matrices $H = (h_{xy})$ in $d \geq 1$ dimensions. The matrix entries $h_{xy}$, indexed by $x,y \in (\bZ/L\bZ)^d$, are independent, centred random variables with variances $s_{xy} = \E |h_{xy}|^2$. We assume that $s_{xy}$ is negligible if $|x-y|$ exceeds the band width $W$. In one dimension we prove that the eigenvectors of $H$ are delocalized if $W\gg L^{4/5}$. We also show that the magnitude of the matrix entries $\abs{G_{xy}}^2$ of the resolvent $G=G(z)=(H-z)^{-1}$ is self-averaging and we compute $\E \abs{G_{xy}}^2$. We show that, as $L\to\infty$ and $W\gg L^{4/5}$, the behaviour of $\E |G_{xy}|^2$ is governed by a diffusion operator whose diffusion constant we compute. Similar results are obtained in higher dimensions.

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-borne flavivirus. It was first isolated from Uganda in 1947 and has become an emergent event since 2007. However, because of the inconsistency of alignment methods, the evolution of ZIKV remains poorly understood. In this study, we first use the complete protein and an alignment-free method to build a phylogenetic tree of 87 Zika strains in which Asian, East African, and West African lineages are characterized. We also use the NS5 protein to construct the genetic relationship among 44 Zika strains. For the first time, these strains are divided into two clades: African 1 and African 2. This result suggests that ZIKV originates from Africa, then spread to Asia, Pacific islands, and throughout the Americas. We also perform the phylogeny analysis for 53 viruses in genus Flavivirus to which ZIKV belongs using complete proteins. Our conclusion is consistent with the classification by the hosts and transmission vectors.