Luciano Messia prosatore: Appunti per un profilo letterario di Luciano Messina.

Density Functional Theory study of the TTC> TTT Isomerization of a Photochromic Spyropiran Merocyanine

Dynamics of non-local systems handled by fractional calculus

Mechanical vibrations of non-local systems with long-range, cohesive, interactions between material particles have been studied in this paper by means of fractional calculus. Long-range cohesive forces between material particles have been included in equilibrium equations assuming interaction distance decay with order α . This approach yields as limiting case a partial fractional differential equation of order α involving space-time variables. It has been shown that the proposed model may be obtained by a discrete, mass-spring model that includes non-local interactions by non-adjacent particles and the mechanical vibrations of the particles have been obtained by an approximation fractional …

Computational methods and theory for ion channel research

Ion channels are fundamental biological devices that act as gates in order to ensure selective ion transport across cellular membranes; their operation constitutes the molecular mechanism through which basic biological functions, such as nerve signal transmission and muscle contraction, are carried out. Here, we review recent results in the field of computational research on ion channels, covering theoretical advances, state-of-the-art simulation approaches, and frontline modeling techniques. We also report on few selected applications of continuum and atomistic methods to characterize the mechanisms of permeation, selectivity, and gating in biological and model channels.

Damage identification by a modified Ant Colony Optimization for not well spaced frequency systems

Recently, it has been shown , that a damage detection strategy based on a proper functional calculated on the analytical signal of the structural dynamical response, consents to identify very low damage level. In this regard, they stressed the efficiency of Hilbert Transform to obtain the analytical response representation that shows more sensitivity for predicting damage with respect to the simple signal response. Then, a damage identification procedure based on the minimization of the difference between theoretical and measured data was proposed with satisfactory results. Unfortunately, this procedure, since the need of use of band pass filter around the natural frequency of the system, f…