Ricerc@Sapienza

We introduce several notions of generalised principal eigenvalue for a linear elliptic operator on a general unbounded domain, under boundary condition of the oblique derivative type. We employ these notions in the stability analysis of semilinear problems. Some of the properties we derive are new even in the Dirichlet or in the whole space cases. As an application, we show the validity of the hair-trigger effect for the Fisher-KPP equation on general, uniformly smooth domains.

In this work, equilibrium attitude configurations, attitude stability and periodic attitude families are investigated for rigid spacecrafts moving on stationary orbits around asteroid 216 Kleopatra. The polyhedral approach is adopted to formulate the equations of rotational motion. In this dynamical model, six equilibrium attitude configurations with non-zero Euler angles are identified for a spacecraft moving on each stationary orbit. Then the linearized equations of attitude motion at equilibrium attitudes are derived.

The historical rock-cut city of Vardzia is a cave monastery site in South-western Georgia, excavated from the tuffaceous layers of the Erusheti mountain. Due to its morphology, the archaeological site is continuously affected by rock instabilities. These pose serious constrains to future conservation, as well as to the safety of tourists. In order to improve knowledge about slope stability issues in the Vardzia site and to develop a proper site specific approach, the present research focuses on the conditions of one of the largest potentially unstable rock-block.

In this report, we aim at presenting a viable strategy for the study of Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) and its opposite Mesenchymal-Epithelial Transition (MET) by means of a Systems Biology approach combined with a suitable Mathematical Modeling analysis. Precisely, it is shown how the presence of a metastable state, that is identified at a mesoscopic level of description, is crucial for making possible the appearance of a phase transition mechanism in the framework of fast-slow dynamics for Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs).