The problem of withdrawal through a point sink of water from a fluid of finite depth with a free surface is considered. Assuming the flow to be axisymmetric, it is found that there is a maximum Froude number at which such flows can exist. This maximum corresponds to the formation of a secondary stagnation ring on the free surface. This result extends earlier work on this problem. Comparison is made with a small Froude number solution and past experimental results.

A minimum Hamiltonian completion of a graph G is a minimum-size set of edges that, when added to G, guarantee a Hamiltonian path. Finding a Hamiltonian completion has applications to frequency assignment as well as distributed computing. If the new edges are deleted from the Hamiltonian path, one is left with a minimum path cover, a minimum-size set of vertex-disjoint paths that cover the vertices of G. For arbitrary graphs, constructing a minimum Hamiltonian completion or path cover is clearly NP-hard, but there exists a linear-time algorithm for trees. In this paper we first give a description and proof of correctness for this linear-time algorithm that is simpler and more intuitive than those given previously. We show that the algorithm extends also to unicyclic graphs. We then give a new method for finding an optimal path cover or Hamiltonian completion for a tree that uses a reduction to a maximum flow problem. In addition, we show how to extend the reduction to construct, if possible, a covering of the vertices of a bipartite graph with vertex-disjoint cycles, that is, a 2-factor.

The problem of the energy exponential decay rate of a Timoshenko beam with locally distributed controls is investigated. Consider the case in which the beam is nonuniform and the two wave speeds are different. Then, using Huang's theorem and Birkhoff's asymptotic expansion method, it is shown that, under some locally distributed controls, the energy exponential decay rate is identical to the supremum of the real part of the spectrum of the closed loop system. Furthermore, explicit asymptotic locations of eigenfrequencies are derived.

An analysis is made of quadrature viatwo-point formulae when the integrand is Lipschitz or of bounded variation. The error estimates are shown to be as good as those found in recent studies using Simpson (three-point) formulae.

In this article, we generalise Newton's diagram method for finding small solutions ξ(λ) of equations f (ξ,λ) = 0 (0,0) = 0 with f analytic (see [1, 2, 4, 6]) to the case of a multi-dimensional function f, unknown variable ζ and small parameter λ. This method was briefly described in [1]. The method has many different applications and allows one to solve some inflexible problems. In particular, the method can be used in very difficult bifurcation problems, for example, for systems with small imperfections.

We consider the dynamical characteristics of a continuous-time isolated Hopfield-type neuron subjected to an almost periodic external stimulus. The model neuron is assumed to be dissipative having finite time delays in the process of encoding the external input stimulus and recalling the encoded pattern associated with the external stimulus. By using non-autonomous Halanay-type inequalities we obtain sufficient conditions for the hetero-associative stable encoding of temporally non-uniform stimuli. A brief study of a discrete-time model derived from the continuous-time system is given. It is shown that the discrete-time model preserves the stability conditions of the continuous-time system.

We consider a single server queueing system where each customer visits the queue a fixed number of times before departure. A customer on his j th visit to the queue is defined to be a class-j -customer. We obtain the joint probability generating function for the number of class-j-customers and also obtain the Laplace-Stieltjes transform for the total response time of a customer.

Recently, Srivastava, Pathan and Kamarujjama established several results for generalised Voigt functions which play an important role in several diverse fields of physics—such as astrophysical spectroscopy and the theory of neutron reactions. In the present paper we aim to generalise some partly bilateral and partly unilateral representations and generating functions of Srivastava et al. by considering a specialised version of the Srivastava-Chen definition of the unified Voigt functions. Several special cases of our main results are mentioned briefly.

In this paper, we consider the problem of the steady-state fully developed magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) flow of a conducting fluid through a channel with arbitrary wall conductivity in the presence of a transverse external magnetic field with various inclined angles. The coupled governing equations for both axial velocity and induced magnetic field are firstly transformed into decoupled Poisson-type equations with coupled boundary conditions. Then the dual reciprocity boundary element method (DRBEM) [20] is used to solve the Poisson-type equations. As testing examples, flows in channels of three different crosssections, rectangular, circular and triangular, are calculated. It is shown that solutions obtained by the DRBEM with constant elements are accurate for Hartmann number up to 8 and for large conductivity parameters comparing to exact solutions and solutions by the finite element method (FEM).