****************************************************************************** * EJMAPS Abstracts Alert Service * * This email is in response to your registration to the EJMAPS Alert Service. * You can access the full text and abstracts of the item(s) you have selected * by clicking on the URL, if this is supported by your email program. * If not, please copy and paste selected URLs to your web browser. * * ****************************************************************************** Electronic Journal of Mathematical and Physical Sciences Online Publication http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/volume_1_1.htm or via our mirrors (which may not be updated): http://www.ejmaps.org/mirrors.htm --------------------- MESSAGE FROM THE EDITORS --------------------- Saber Elaydi, Abraham F. Jalbout and Bassel E. Sawaya Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 1-2 URL (FULL TEXT HTML):This note is a celebration of the birth of the Journal of Mathematical and Physical Sciences. This neonate will serve as a voice and a forum for those areas at the frontier of physical sciences and their mathematical underpinnings. For most of the last century scientific publication has followed a reductionism approach where highly specialized new journals have been appearing at a quite astonishing rate. Starting JMAPS is an attempt to reverse this trend and to return to a more integrative approach. The existence of JMAPS reflects the commitment of the editorial board to the integration of physical and mathematical sciences. We invite all researchers in physical and mathematical sciences to join us in that effort. The journal will publish original research papers, expository and review papers, and papers that embody novel concepts in applications and techniques. This includes but not limited to Bayesian statistics, control theory, quantum theory, computational chemistry, molecular dynamic simulation, statistical mechanics, applied mathematics, engineering physics, molecular physics, and mathematical physics. Why such a broad spectrum of covered research topics at JMAPS? To answer this question consider as an example, the impact that quantum and statistical mechanics are making in many modern experimental research labs. They are deeply impacting the way many do experimental research. They allow for a very rapid comparison of many potential drug agents, without wasting the time, energy, and resources needed for preliminary test runs. Although, the era of computational drug design, mathematical modeling and bio-quantum mechanics is just beginning to make its way up the scientific ladder, there is so much potential for its use and applications that it is definitely an area where many scientists need to begin to make some serious investments to master these methods. Modern resources make it possible for the original formulations of Schrödinger, Hartree, Fermi and others to be put to the test of more practical open-ended problems. Just as the early physicists and mathematicians were put to the test of developing models to understand fundamental questions of nature, today’s scientists are given the prospect of using old tools in an extremely novel context. The future will only tell how far this dream will be fulfilled. The advantage of our policies here at JMAPS is that we not only strive for the highest quality of research articles, notes, and communications to be published but we also would like to take advantage of the speed of the internet, and the inherent ability to quickly distribute important and timely research findings. Why can’t many branches of research be housed under one roof? What is biology, chemistry or mathematics for that matter? The answer is simple. Life FULL TEXT ALSO AVAILABLE IN PDF AND PS(GZPS): URL (PDF): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E1.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E1.ps.gz --------------------- MESSAGE FROM THE HONORARY EDITOR --------------------- Vangipuram Lakshmikantham Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 3-4 The increased compartmentalization and the resulting specialization of knowledge that was the strong trend of the past century is clearly undergoing subtle changes. The private sector now recognizes that its success depends upon the educational institutions providing an abundance of well-educated and trained graduates and intellectual property to fuel the world's knowledge-based economy. The temples of learning are beginning to understand that the new socio-economic dynamics are to be taken into account to balance in their mission and courageously lead to shoulder the multiple responsibilities. This fundamental shift in society that has altered the world's socio-economic ethos and the higher education's relationship to it has been influencing the educational institutions, which are the creations of society. The most exciting research is happening at the boundaries where two or more disciplines overlap. Nanoscience and engineering knowledge is exploding, leading to fundamental scientific breakthroughs and technological paradigm changes in the ways materials, devices, and systems are understood and created. Potential breakthroughs include emergence of entirely new phenomena in physics and chemistry; nanofrabrication of three-dimensional molecular architectures; achievement of orders of magnitude increases in computer efficiency; utilizing of novel data processing architectures such as quantum computing and cellular automata; repair of human tissues with tissue replacements and realization of a continuous presence in space. Thus, it is clear that the trans-disciplinary research activity is the vision of the present century. The development of information technology has been creating dramatic changes in electronic communication, and this change has also been providing an environment for the scientific journals to look for electronic publication. Some experts and publishers believe that in about ten years every scientific journal would be of electronic publication. Of course, there are several advantages in electronic publication of journals, which are obvious in view of economic changes. It is with this spirit, the present electronic Journal of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (EJMPS) is started as a trans-disciplinary electronic journal and the editors are pleased to introduce the first issue of EJMPS. We do hope that this journal will become the forerunner for the trans-disciplinary electronic journals that might follow soon. FULL TEXT ALSO AVAILABLE IN PDF AND PS(GZPS): URL (PDF): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E2.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E2.ps.gz --------------------- EDITORIALS FROM MEMBERS OF THE EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD --------------------- Alfonso Castro and Julio Dix TEN YEARS OF THE ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 5-7 We take this opportunity to welcome the ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES (EJMAPS) to the family of electronic journals, and to share some of our experiences while founding and managing the Electronic Journal of Differential Equations (EJDE, http://ejde.math. swt.edu) In November 1992, with Professors Gregory Passty, and Ricardo Torrejon, we discussed the creation of a first refereed e-journal in mathematics. Our motivation stemmed from the difficulty of our respective universities in keeping the existing subscription to journals, due to financial constraints. While the internet was already available, a graphic interface was only minimally available. Our basic idea was to take advantage of the fact that the mathematics community was already quite familiar with the mathematics word processing system arguably the most useful tool in mathematical publication of the last fifty years. At that time, we were firmly convinced that electronic journals were here to stay. Actually we were not the only believers at the point of putting into action. At about the same time efforts were under way to develop The Electronic Transactions on Numerical Analysis, The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, and the "New York Journal of Mathematics. The last ten have ratified our belief in electronic journals. An easy way to verify the success of electronic journals is to go to a popular site such as the Electronic Library of Mathematics of The European Mathematical information Service (EMIS) to encounter a wealth of first rate mathematics information available worldwide and free of charge. Within months of deciding to develop the EJDE, the editorial board was formed and the first submissions were sent to our referees. Since then the EJDE has grown, faithful to its goal of providing free access for all Internet users. Currently we receive about 170 submissions and publish 70 articles a year. In addition, we publish a Proceedings of Conferences series raising the articles published to over a hundred. The EJDE currently has over 1400 subscribers worldwide. The receive automatic notification and a copy of the abstracts as soon as new articles are posted. Initial skepticism could be seen from questions in early days: *How do I know that your journal will be around 10 or 20 years from now? The EJDE has reached the 10-year mark. *How do I know that my article in not going to be plagiarized? So far we have encountered no plagiarism. *Is my article in the EJDE going to be counted towards tenure and promotion? Unfortunately we do not have hard data in this respect. *What is the technology changes? Certainly the change of technologies is an issue to watch. However, our experience is that electronic journals adapt very easily to these changes. When the EJDE was founded, only FTP and telnet protocols were available. Soon after, "gopher" appeared and we made the transition effortlessly. The move from gopher to the web took a little bit of learning, but again went on without hitch. Once PDF became available, we adopted that format for making articles available in addition to the previous formats. In any case, all changes in technology have provided only further visibility and ease in management to all electronic journals. Editor has the responsibility of determining scientific standards, which is a difficult balancing act. The choice ranges from very strict standards with a small number of articles and relaxed standards with a larger number of papers. We can find electronic and print journals have standards that range from "all submissions accepted" (e-print archives) to a very stringent editorial policies. For print journals standards can also be affected by having a certain number per issue and by the ratio of the subscription price to page count. The EJDE, as many free journals, depends on the support from academic institutions, and on the willingness of editors and referee to run the journal. This introduces a certain degree of uncertainty. At the other end of the spectrum we find print journals with high subscription prices. While some of the latter may survive due to special historical or economic circumstances, high prices also have an inherent degree of instability. Any considerable down turn in either the economy or the local budget may force a university library to cut print journals. Restarting subscriptions is generally not regarded as a very good investment. Obviously, high prices constitute a barrier to the spread of scientific knowledge. At the EJDE we have considered various mechanisms to generate income that could guarantee stability for the journal. Collecting voluntary subscriptions generated income that did not justify the paper work on billing. An avenue that some have experimented is charging a publication cost to the authors. Most journals from large publishers copy-edit manuscripts to ensure a uniform presentation. This is a time consuming process that has been avoided by many free journals. At the EJDE, we ask the authors to submit LaTeX files, and we do some editing afterwards. Some manuscript, from first-time authors or from non-English speaking authors, requires a significant amount of work (up to ten hours in some cases) to ensure an acceptable presentation in the style of the journal. We would like conclude by wishing well to Professor Jalbout and his associates in their effort to disseminate scientific knowledge worldwide through EJMAPS. We offer our expertise to help them in this enterprise. FULL TEXT ALSO AVAILABLE IN PDF AND PS(GZPS): URL (PDF): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E3.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E3.ps.gz Avshalom C. Elitzur LAUNCHING A NEW JOURNAL Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 8-11 One day, a new theory will revolutionize physics, yielding novel insights into the nature of reality alongside with surprising experimental predictions, just as relativity and quantum mechanics did. What will be the basic principles of this theory is anybody’s guess, but John Archibald Wheeler [1] has vividly captured its most fundamental feature: Surely someday, we can believe, we will grasp the central idea of it all as so simple, so beau tiful, so compelling that we will say to each other, Oh, how could it have been otherwise! How could we have been so blind so long!(p. 28) Greenberger [2], however, has much more sobering reflections: Most physicists believe that had they been around at the birth of relativity, they would have been able to instantly appreciate its radical elements. But my own experience indicates that if Einstein were to send his paper to Physical Review today it would have almost no chance at all of being published. Highly speculative! would be the referee report, a death shell to any paper. He would have to append it to an article on string theory, or some other fad, and hope it wasn’t noticed (p. 558). Is it conceivable that a major scientific breakthrough would be denied access to the scientific press? To most readers, this question is naïve: Not only a scientific breakthrough, they would point out, but even just a good piece of scientific work, conceived within the mainstream, can be rejected by any journal. Juan Miguel Campanario, a physicist from the University of Alcalá, Spain, has published several studies with intriguing (or infuriating) titles such as Consolation for the scientist: Sometimes it is hard to publish papers that are later highly cited [3] and Have referees rejected some of the most-cited papers of all times?[4] (See http://www2.uah.es/jmc/papers2.html#scico for downloadable articles). Indeed, it seems that a considerable amount of scientific research never gets published where it deserves to be. One might downplay this concern by pointing out the communication revolution brought about by the Internet. Numerous scientific and non-scientific groups conduct lively discussions nowadays on the net, where countless fresh and half-baked ideas get first hearing. Recall, for example, the role professional e-mail discussion groups played in the final development of Andrew Wiles’ famous proof [5]. How many genuine innovations sprout in cyberspace, later to mature into fully- fledged scientific works? Here a gold mine awaits any historian or philosopher of science who will take up the mission of revisiting Kuhn’s [6] work on paradigm shifts in the light of the Internet. So, our proverbial new Einstein needs not discard his or her paper having been rejected by Physical Review or Nature. Rather, he or she can put the paper somewhere on the web in the hope that, just by virtue of the work’s novelty, mathematical rigor and predictive power it will sooner or later catch the scientific community’s attention. But then, what is the chance of an article posted this way to ever be noticed amidst the enormous surrounding noise? After all, crackpots far outnumber genuine revolutionaries, and much of the material published privately on the web is sheer nonsense. The journal editor, who off-hand rejects several articles by exerting initial judgment, is doing an essential service to the scientific community, even at the risk that, every once in a while, a piece of real genius will end up in the waste basket. The electronic journal proposes a creative solution to this dilemma. On the one hand, its peer reviewing can be as rigorous as that of a paper journal. On the other hand, because there is no pages charge, it can allocate a section for those authors who believe that their results are so important that they give up peer reviewing with all its inherent benefits. Thus, their paper will not count as an ordinary scientific publication but still may be read by the readers of the ordinary articles. To this advantage of the online journal one should add the incredible speed and ease of the entire publication process. Articles’ submission, multiple reviewing, the ensuing correspondence, and, if everything goes well, the revisions and proof reading all become very rapid without loosing any bit of rigor and efficiency. Last but not least the journal can be free, accessible to everyone at home! EJMAPS offers all these advantages as well as many others. Its scope is enormous, encompassing as a wide variety of disciplines as that of Physical Review A to E (eventually, as EJMAPS grows, it too will hopefully branch into several special series). Alongside with the main forums, namely, the research articles, short notes, book reviews, etc., published in the journal itself, there are several e-mail lists for discussions between the readers and for communication between readers and the journal. In this respect EJMAPS is like a stimulating ongoing seminar, a nice place to hang around. Of course, this is still a newborn project, its realization depending not only on the editorial board but also on the readers, who are kindly invited to consider the journal for their next publications and to take active part in its future formation. So, if the progress of your field is dear to you, if you have a passion for truth (sorry for being politically incorrect I do believe there is such a thing), and let’s be frank if you too have a thrill every time a good work of yours comes out of press welcome aboard! References 1. J. A. Wheeler, In Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information; Zurek, W. H., Ed.; Addison-Weseley: New York, 1990; p. 3. 2. D. Greenberger, Found. Phys. 2001, 31, 557. 3. J. M. Campanario, Soc. Stud. Sci., 1993, 23 (2), 342. 4. J. M. Campanario, J. Amer. Soc. Information Sci., 1996, 47 (4), 302. 5. S. Singh, Fermat’s Last Theorem; Doubleday & Co: New York, 1997. 6. T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; Univ. of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1970. FULL TEXT ALSO AVAILABLE IN PDF AND PS(GZPS): URL (PDF): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E4.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E4.ps.gz Srinivasa Buddhudu WELCOMING MESSAGE FROM AN EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBER Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 12-13 Over the past several years there have been dramatic changes in the scholarly communication environment with the emergence of the electronic communication, that has revolutionized the scientific journals publication due to the ever increasing demand for technical innovations and scientific contributions in our modern day society. Much emphasis has been placed on the potential and development of electronic format as a medium to provide advantages of ease of production, access and ready availability of data in the form of digitized information on optical or magnetic media for ready use at any point of time from its online availability. The information on electronic publications can be refreshed, edited, transferred, communicated by the internet very quickly. Keeping these advantages in view about the online data, it is considered that still there exists a need for speedy electronic publication of important and interesting research findings pertaining to various fields of both mathematics and physical sciences, therefore a new electronic journal abbreviated as Electron J. Math and Phys. Sci. has now emerged with its first issue which is a peer refereed scientific journal, published online each quarter. The online availability of this journal clearly demonstrates the significant potential importance of a free electronic publishing medium like EJMAPS in the distribution and dissemination of new and vital research results more quickly to the several research groups working actively in those field of interest all over the world. The uniqueness of this journal is the entire process of articles publication is carried out electronically dealing with the manuscript submission, copyright transfer, its fast reviewing and rapid publication upon the careful reviewing by experts in those fields for each of the manuscripts received. Free electronic publications spell out a great impact on science and technology awareness of the global community. Also the online electronic publication of articles emphasizes a great deal of importance of the immediacy of scientific and technical information in all countries with an easy and quick access to the database available at the web address of www.ejmaps.org. This facility provides an immense advantage particularly to the scientists for those who are working in certain places where enough library resources are not available. We are quite pleased in introducing this first issue of our electronic journal namely EJMAPS and we strongly hope and look forward that it will stimulate more fruitful discussions, interactions and further cooperation amongst the Mathematicians, Physicists and Chemists of various laboratories of the world. We wish you all an enjoyable and quite useful experience with this journal. FULL TEXT ALSO AVAILABLE IN PDF AND PS(GZPS): URL (PDF): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E5.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/editorials/E5.ps.gz --------------------- MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES --------------------- SURVEY ARTICLE: Raymond H. Chan , Xiao-Qing Jin and Yue-Hung Tam STRANG-TYPE PRECONDITIONERS FOR SOLVING SYSTEM OF ODES BY BOUNDARY VALUE METHODS Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 14-46 Abstract: In this paper, we survey some of the latest developments in using boundary value methods for solving systems of ordinary differential equations with initial values. These methods require the solutions of one or more nonsymmetric, large and sparse linear systems. The GMRES method with the Strang-type preconditioner is proposed for solving these linear systems. One of the main results is that if an A?1, ?2 stable boundary value method is used for an m-by-m system of ODEs, then the preconditioner is invertible and the preconditioned matrix can be decomposed as 1 + L where 1 is the identity matrix and the rank of L is at most 2m(?1+?2) .It follows that when the GMRES method is applied to solving the preconditioned systems, the method will converge in at most 2m(?1+?2) + 1 iterations. Applications to differential algebraic equations and delay differential equations are also given. Keywords: Boundary value method, GMRES, ordinary differential equation, Strang-type preconditioner AMS Mathematical Subject Classification: 65L05, 65L06, 65N10, 65N22 FULL TEXT AVAILABLE: URL (PDF): http://http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/pdf/ac1.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/gzps/ac1.ps.gz RESEARCH ARTICLES: Amina Amassad and Caroline Fabre ON THE ANALYSIS OF A VISCOPLASTIC CONTACT PROBLEM WITH TIME DEPENDENT TRESCA'S FRICTION LAW Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 47-71 Abstract: This paper deals with the study of a nonlinear problem of frictional contact between an elastic-viscoplastic body and a rigid obstacle. We model the frictional contact by a version of Tresca's friction law where the friction bound depends on time. Firstly, we obtain an existence and uniqueness result in a weak sense for a model including the bilateral contact. To this end we use a time discretization method and the Banach fixed-point theorem. Secondly, we show an existence result for a mechanical problem with the unilateral contact conditions (Signorini's contact) using an iterative method Keywords: Quasistatic frictional contact, bilateral contact, unilateral contact, Tresca's friction law, fixed point, discretization AMS Mathematical Subject Classification: 74D10, 74A55, 49B40 FULL TEXT AVAILABLE: URL (PDF): http://http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/pdf/ac2.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/gzps/ac2.ps.gz Mouffak Benchohra, Johnny Henderson, Sotiris Ntouyas and Ahmed Ouahabi EXISTENCE RESULTS FOR IMPULSIVE FUNCTIONAL AND NEUTRAL FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENTIAL INCLUSIONS WITH LOWER SEMICONTINUOUS RIGHT HAND SIDE Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 72-91 Abstract: In this paper, Schaefer's fixed point theorem combined with a selection theorem due to Bressan and Colombo is used to investigate the existence of solutions for first and second order impulsive functional and neutral differential inclusions with lower semicontinuous and nonconvex-valued right-hand side. Keywords: Impulsive differential inclusions, selection, existence, fixed point AMS Mathematical Subject Classification: 34A37, 34A60 FULL TEXT AVAILABLE: URL (PDF): http://http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/pdf/ac3.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/gzps/ac3.ps.gz --------------------- COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE --------------------- RESEARCH ARTICLE: Michael K. Ng A FAST ALGORITHM FOR BLIND CHANNEL IDENTIFICATION Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 92-103 Abstract: In this paper, we address the problem of restoring a signal from its noisy convolutions with two unknown channels. When the transfer functions of these two channels have no common factors, the blind channel identification problem can be solved by finding the minimum eigenvalue of the Toeplitz-block matrix and its corresponding eigenvector. We present a fast algorithm to solve the numerical solution of the eigenvalue problem for Toeplitz-block matrices. Experimental results are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the method. Keywords: Blind channel identification, Toeplitz-block matrix, eigenvalues AMS Mathematical Subject Classification: 65F10, 65Y20 FULL TEXT AVAILABLE: URL (PDF): http://http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/pdf/ac4.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/gzps/ac4.ps.gz --------------------- PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL SCIENCES --------------------- RESEARCH ARTICLES: SPECTROSCOPY: Qing Xiang, Chan Hin Kam, Kantisara Pita and Srinivasa Buddhudu NIR EMISSION SPECTRA OF (Er3+: Yb3+) DOPED SiO2-TiO2-Al2O3 SOL-GEL GLASSES Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 104-113 Abstract: The present paper reports the near infrared (NIR) emission spectra of Er3+: Yb3+ co-doped SiO2-Al2O3-TiO2 sol-gel glasses. Upon optical pumping either with 980nm(Diode Laser) or 488nm (Ar+ ion laser), the NIR emission transition (4I13/2®4I15/2) at 1550nm of (Er3+:Yb3+) glasses have revealed an improved intensity by many times compared with the Er3+ singly doped sol-gel glass. The dependence of the emission intensity and lifetimes on the Yb3+/Er3+ values and also the Er3+ concentration change has been investigated. Keywords: (Er3+:Yb3+) sol-gel glasses-emission spectra PACS: 81.20F; 32.30; 78.55 FULL TEXT AVAILABLE: URL (PDF): http://http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/pdf/ac5.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/gzps/ac5.ps.gz K.Veera Brahmam STRUCTURAL AND TEM ANALYSIS OF Zn_(1-X)Mn_XTe CRYSTALS Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 114-119 Abstract: Single crystals of Zn1-xMnxTe have been grown using vertical Bridgman growth technique. XRD analysis supports the zincblende structure of Zn1-xMnxTe. As the concentration of Mn increases (x > 2.5), the single crystalline nature deteriorates (i.e grain size decreases) and polycrystalline nature with zincblende and hexagonal phases have been observed from x-ray diffractograms. This is supported by Transmission Electron Microscopic study of the samples. Surface morphology is studied from optical microscopic studies. Keywords: Zn1-xMnxTe (ZMT)Crystals, Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Bridgman growth technique, Optical microscopy. PACS: 81.20F; 32.30; 78.55 FULL TEXT AVAILABLE: URL (PDF): http://http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/pdf/ac6.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/gzps/ac6.ps.gz OF SPECIAL INTEREST: PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY EDUCATION: Borislav V. Toshev CONDENSATION ON IONS Electron. J. Math. Phys. Sci., 2002, 1, 1, 120-126 Abstract: The transition of a homogeneous system into a heterogeneous one may occur spontaneously in a labile region of supersaturations; in the metastable region of supersaturations it is realized as an energy barrier-determined process. The limit that separates the labile region from the metastable one is the boundary supersaturation sm>>scr, where scr is the critical supersaturation. The W-potential thermodynamic formalism, W = F - G, where F and G are the Helmholtz and the Gibbs free energies, respectively, allows a straightforward derivation of the formula of Tohmfor and Volmer (1938) for a nucleus formation on an ion. For the case of charged liquid drops, expressions for the capillary pressure, the vapor pressure, the work of formation of equilibrium drops from vapors, and the drop surface tension, are obtained as well. The stability conditions for the charged equilibrium drops are also examined. Keywords: Nucleation, charged drops, critical supersaturation, boundary supersaturation, thermodynamics, W- potential PACS: 82.60.N FULL TEXT AVAILABLE: URL (PDF): http://http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/pdf/ac7.pdf URL (GZPS): http://www.ejmaps.org/volume_1_1/articles/gzps/ac7.ps.gz ---------------------------------------------------- Online publication: August 22, 2002 mailto:info@ejmaps.org mailto:ajalbout@ejmaps.org (c) EJMAPS 2002