The fixed angle inverse scattering problem for a velocity consists in determining a sound speed, or a Riemannian metric up to diffeomorphism, from measurements obtained by probing the medium with a single plane wave. This is a formally determined inverse problem that is open in general. In this article we consider the rigidity question of distinguishing a sound speed or a Riemannian metric from the Euclidean metric. We prove that a general smooth metric that is Euclidean outside a ball can be distinguished from the Euclidean metric. The methods involve distorted plane waves and a combination of geometric, topological and unique continuation arguments.

The trend to equilibrium for reaction-diffusion systems modelling chemical reaction networks is investigated, in the case when reaction processes happen on subsets of the domain. We prove the convergence to equilibrium by directly showing functional inequalities in terms of entropy method. Our approach allows us to deal with nonlinearities of arbitrary orders, for which only global renormalised solutions are known to globally exist. For bounded solutions, we also prove the convergence to equilibrium when the diffusion as well as the reaction are degenerate, that is both diffusion and reaction processes only act on specific subsets of the domain.