Avishai Dekel Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Avishai Dekel studies the physical assembly of galaxies, including how they acquire the gas needed for star formation. With collaborators he used cosmological numerical simulations and clustering theory to investigate rapidly star-forming galaxies in the young Universe.
Their model showed narrow cold streams penetrating the hot gas of massive dark-matter haloes. Such inflows can supply an extended rotating galactic disk without requiring every episode of rapid star formation to be triggered by a destructive major merger. The paper distinguished smoother stream-fed growth from the rarer, more extreme merger-driven starbursts.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Avishai Dekel
. דאגלס גוטרי (author as credited on Commons). CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source.
Cloud computing Created 2026-10-24 Updated 2026-11-05
Cloud computing supplies configurable computation resources through a computer network, drawing on a shared pool that users can obtain and release with little provider intervention. The NIST definition distinguishes five characteristics: on-demand self-service, broad network access, resource pooling, rapid elasticity, and measured service. Together these describe how capacity is requested, shared, scaled and accounted for.[ref]
For example, a group running a numerical simulation can request several virtual machines, execute independent runs, save the results and release the virtual machines. Rapid elasticity concerns changing allocated capacity as demand changes; measured service records usage such as processor time or storage. A physically distributed system can have a single operator: physical distribution and administrative control answer different questions.
Fabio Lepreti 2026-11-05
Fabio Lepreti is a physicist who studies statistical and dynamical models of turbulence. A paper with Vincenzo Carbone and Pierluigi Veltri, published in 2006 and archived in 2007, constructed a model for the spatial and temporal unevenness of turbulent dissipation. The model combined a shell model of turbulence for transfer between scales with rules for distributing the dissipated energy across space.[ref]
A control parameter adjusted the strength of intermittency, and numerical simulations tested the resulting scaling. This addresses a physical distinction: an average dissipation rate can be steady even when individual locations undergo rare intense bursts. A model that reproduces the average alone has not yet explained that concentration in space and time.[ref]
Figure 1.
Fabio Lepreti, identified in the INAF CAESAR team directory
. External portrait linked beside Fabio Lepreti's name in CAESAR Team by INAF.
Karen L. Masters Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Karen L. Masters studies the structure and evolution of galaxies. Her review with Jerry A. Sellwood connects observed spiral arms to the dynamics of galactic disks, comparing proposed mechanisms with observations and numerical numerical simulations.
A visible spiral pattern need not be a permanent set of the same stars. Recurrent patterns can rearrange a galactic disk and increase random stellar motion; continuing activity then depends in part on the dissipative gas component. Their review also used the number of spiral arms to discuss how much mass resides in the thin galactic disk relative to its surrounding halo.[ref]
Figure 1.
Portrait of Karen L. Masters
. Via Wikimedia Commons; credits and usage information are on the linked source file page. Source.
Numerical simulation 2026-11-05
A numerical simulation evolves or solves a mathematical model by numerical approximation to study its predicted behavior. Its outputs combine the model assumptions with the properties of the discretization and implementation.
For the decay equation , , explicit Euler gives . If , positive values decay monotonically; if , the approximation alternates sign even though its magnitude decreases. The exact solution remains positive for positive initial data. This shows that bounded numerical output can still contain behavior absent from the model, so convergence checks and physical interpretation must accompany a simulated trajectory.
Stephan Stellmach 2026-11-05
Stephan Stellmach is a researcher in geophysics and fluid dynamics. His University of Münster profile records work on density stratification, convective turbulence and magnetic field generation, alongside publications on rotating convection.[ref]
His 2013 work with collaborators on fingering convection connects small-scale fluid dynamics to chemical transport inside stars. A stabilizing temperature gradient and an opposing composition gradient can have a stable combined mass density profile while still permitting fingers, because thermal diffusion and molecular diffusion act at different rates. Their paper develops a transport model supported by three-dimensional direct numerical simulations, with a prescription usable in one-dimensional models of stellar evolution.[ref]
The bridge between dimensions is the practical point: a one-dimensional calculation of a star's evolution cannot explicitly resolve every three-dimensional finger. Estimating their average transport from local numerical simulations supplies a model for that unresolved motion. It is a physically tested approximation within the modeled parameter regime, not a direct observation of all mixing inside a star.
Figure 1.
Stephan Stellmach; portrait credited to Stephan Stellmach on the LMU DeepDyn team page
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Version control Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
Version control records identifiable revisions of files and their history, making it possible to inspect an earlier state and determine what changed. A version-control commit records a revision; a version-control branch permits a line of development to proceed alongside another; version-control merging combines changes and exposes conflicts requiring a decision. These operations make collaboration and investigation of software regressions practical.[ref]
Suppose a numerical simulation produced an unexpected result after a formula changed. Recording the version-control commit with the result identifies the exact source revision, so the old and new formulas can be compared and rerun with the same inputs. Reproducing the full calculation also requires the relevant data, software dependencies and execution settings: file history is one part of that record.