Subspaces and quotients of Banach spaces with shrinking unconditional bases

The main result is that a separable Banach space with the weak* unconditional tree property is isomorphic to a subspace as well as a quotient of a Banach space with a shrinking unconditional basis. A consequence of this is that a Banach space is isomorphic to a subspace of a space with a shrinking unconditional basis if and only if it is isomorphic to a quotient of a space with a shrinking unconditional basis, which solves a problem dating to the 1970s. The proof of the main result also yields that a uniformly convex space with the unconditional tree property is isomorphic to a subspace as well as a quotient of a uniformly convex space with an unconditional finite dimensional decomposition.     

Modelling ship operational reliability over a mission under regular inspections

A ship is required to operate for a fixed mission period. Should a critical item of equipment fail at sea, the ship is subject to a costly event with potentially high risk to ship and crew. Given warning of a pending defect, the ship can try to return to port under its own power and thus attempt to avoid an at sea failure. Defects which lead to a failure are detected by inspection, and the task is to select the appropriate frequency of inspection to balance the number of occasions that a ship fails at sea and the number of preventive inspection based returns to port during a mission to correct a defect. The modelling entails using the delay time concept. Expressions are established for the expected number of preventive and failure returns over a mission, and an example given of a cost based balance to select an optimal inspection period. Although addressing ship reliability, the model has relevance to the mission reliability of any repairable equipment with remote main repair facilities.     

On Martingale Approximation of Adapted Processes

We show that the existence of a martingale approximation of a stationary process depends on the choice of the filtration. There exists a stationary linear process which has a martingale approximation with respect to the natural filtration, but no approximation with respect to a larger filtration with respect to which it is adapted and regular. There exists a stationary process adapted, regular, and having a martingale approximation with respect to a given filtration but not (regular and having a martingale approximation) with respect to the natural filtration.     

Moufang sets and jordan division algebras

We give a simple criterion which determines when a permutation group U and one additional permutation give rise to a Moufang set. We apply this criterion to show that every Jordan division algebra gives rise in a very natural way to a Moufang set, to provide sufficient conditions for a Moufang set to arise from a Jordan division algebra and to give a characterization of the projective Moufang sets over a commutative field of characteristic different from 2. The first author is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders (Belgium) (FWO-Vlaanderen).     

On Euler's Formula exp (iθ) = cosθ + i sinθ

In approximating a function with a pole‐like singularity at a non‐rational point a* by a rational polynomial, the approximating package will be robust (i.e. undetectably erroneous to a user) if the rational polynomial includes a factor which cancels out the pole to the full accuracy of the machine in use. Naturally in order to be portable, the approximation a to a* must be to the full machine accuracy of the receiving machine.     

Price coordination in distribution channels: A dynamic perspective

In this study, we investigate two important questions related to dynamic pricing in distribution channels: (i) Are coordinated pricing decisions efficient in a context where prices have carry-over effects on demand? (ii) Should firms practice a skimming or a penetration strategy if they choose to coordinate or to decentralize their activities? To answer these questions, we consider a differential game that takes place in a bilateral monopoly where the past retail prices paid by consumers contribute to the building of a reference price. The latter is used by consumers as a benchmark to evaluate the value of the product, and by firms to decide whether to adopt a skimming or a penetration strategy.     

Lifting Property of Direct Sums of Hollow Modules

We give necessary and sufficient conditions for a module M with a decomposition that complements maximal direct summands to be a lifting module. We apply our results to get a necessary and sufficient condition for a direct sum of modules to be a quasi-discrete (discrete) module. We also give some sufficient conditions for a lifting module to be a direct sum of indecomposables.     

Linear facility location — Solving extensions of the basic problem

The basic problem is to locate a linear facility to minimize the sume of weighted shortest Euclidean distances from demand points to the facility. We extend the analysis to locating a constrained linear facility, a radial facility, a linear facility where distances are rectangular and a linear facility under the minimax criterion. Each case is shown to admit a simple solution technique.     

Generalized Solutions of Nonlinear Parabolic Equations and Diffusion Processes

We reduce the construction of a weak solution of the Cauchy problem for a quasilinear parabolic equation to the construction of a solution to a stochastic problem. Namely, we construct a diffusion process that allows us to obtain a probabilistic representation of a weak (in distributional sense) solution to the Cauchy problem for a nonlinear PDE.      

A comparison of two sourcing tactics for a new component

We compare two sourcing tactics for a manufacturer to purchase a new component to be used in a one-time production run of a new product with uncertain and price-elastic demand. One alternative is to issue a request-for-quote (RFQ), which is where the manufacturer requests a price-quantity schedule from suppliers. The manufacturer uses this information to determine a production quantity and the number of components to purchase from each supplier. The other alternative is to post a bid specifying how the manufacturer’s purchase quantity will depend on the supplier’s component price. The suppliers use this information to compete on quantity.We find that relative to RFQ, which is more challenging for the manufacturer to characterize the supplier response due to the possibility of supplier interaction, the benefit to the manufacturer from posting a bid increases with the number of suppliers due to increased intensity of competition. If the new component is from an emerging industry where there is little mutual awareness among candidate suppliers, then regardless of number of suppliers, expected manufacturer profit is higher under RFQ. Posting a bid is more likely to benefit the manufacturer when the new component is from a more established industry with a high degree of awareness among candidate suppliers.     

A parallel domain reduction method

We relate a particular version of a parallel multigrid method to a domain decomposition method, showing that the parallel multigrid method reduces computation to a small portion of the domain and then extends the solution to the entire domain using the correct reflections to get the exact solution. We extend a particular example to double the parallelism in a nonobvious manner. While the techniques of this paper are applied to twodimensional problems, they can be applied to higher dimensional problems in an obvious manner.     

A New Definition of A Priori Knowledge: In Search of a Modal Basis

In this paper I will offer a novel understanding of a priori knowledge. My claim is that the sharp distinction that is usually made between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is groundless. It will be argued that a plausible understanding of a priori and a posteriori knowledge has to acknowledge that they are in a constant bootstrapping relationship. It is also crucial that we distinguish between a priori propositions that hold in the actual world and merely possible, non-actual a priori propositions, as we will see when considering cases like Euclidean geometry. Furthermore, contrary to what Kripke seems to suggest, a priori knowledge is intimately connected with metaphysical modality, indeed, grounded in it. The task of a priori reasoning, according to this account, is to delimit the space of metaphysically possible worlds in order for us to be able to determine what is actual.     

Characterization of isolated homogeneous hypersurface singularities in C~4 Dedicated to Professor Sheng GONG on the occasion of his 75th birthday

Let V be a hypersurface with an isolated singularity at the origin in Cn 1. It is a natural question to ask when V is defined by weighted homogeneous polynomial or homogeneous polynomial up to biholomorphic change of coordinates. In 1971, a beautiful theorem of Saito gives a necessary and sufficient condition for V to be defined by a weighted homogeneous polynomial. For a two-dimensional isolated hypersurface singularity V, Xu and Yau found a coordinate free characterization for V to be defined by a homogeneous polynomial. Recently Lin and Yau gave necessary and sufficient conditions for a 3-dimensional isolated hypersurface singularity with geometric genus bigger than zero to be defined by a homogeneous polynomial. The purpose of this paper is to prove that Lin-Yau's theorem remains true for singularities with geometric genus equal to zero.     

On the solution of the symmetric eigenvalue complementarity problem by the spectral projected gradient algorithm

This paper is devoted to the eigenvalue complementarity problem (EiCP) with symmetric real matrices. This problem is equivalent to finding a stationary point of a differentiable optimization program involving the Rayleigh quotient on a simplex (Queiroz et al., Math. Comput. 73, 1849–1863, 2004). We discuss a logarithmic function and a quadratic programming formulation to find a complementarity eigenvalue by computing a stationary point of an appropriate merit function on a special convex set. A variant of the spectral projected gradient algorithm with a specially designed line search is introduced to solve the EiCP. Computational experience shows that the application of this algorithm to the logarithmic function formulation is a quite efficient way to find a solution to the symmetric EiCP.     

On the properties of orthorecursive expansions with respect to subspaces

In a Hilbert space, for orthorecursive expansions with respect to closed subspaces, we establish a criterion for expansions of elements of a certain finite-dimensional subspace with respect to a finite sequence of subspaces to coincide with the expanded elements. This implies a criterion for an element to be equal to its orthorecursive expansion with respect to a finite sequence of subspaces. We also obtain a number of results related to the best approximations of elements by partial sums of their orthorecursive expansions with respect to a sequence of finite-dimensional subspaces.     

A hybrid and integrated approach to evaluate and prevent disasters

Disasters are, by their nature, very complex phenomena. Their modelling using a systematic and logical methodology can help us identify their root causes and may facilitate in allocating appropriate resources to prevent such situations. Although techniques exist to model such phenomena, a single off-the-shelf model is insufficient to provide an effective and realistic analysis to prevent disasters due to its inherent assumptions. In order to overcome these limitations of single methods, this article proposes a hybrid model of four methods to optimise a safety investment. First, a hierarchy is constructed with a problem structuring approach. Second, a new graphical representation, the Crisis Tree Analysis, is introduced to visualise how a combination of basic events may lead to a disaster. Third, the criticality of each event is assessed using the Analytic Hierarchy Process. Finally, a mathematical programming model is proposed to calculate the optimal allocation of available funds in order to avoid the disaster. A case study of the Bhopal disaster is used to illustrate the proposed four-step method.     

Koszul Bicomplexes and Generalized Koszul Complexes in Projective Dimension One

We describe Koszul type complexes associated with a linear map from any module to a free module, and vice versa with a linear map from a free module to an arbitrary module, generalizing the classical Koszul complexes. Given a short complex of finite free modules, we assemble these complexes to what we call Koszul bicomplexes. They are used in order to investigate the homology of the Koszul complexes in projective dimension one. As in the case of the classical Koszul complexes, this homology turns out to be grade sensitive. In a special setup, we obtain necessary conditions for a map of free modules to be lengthened to a short complex of free modules.     

Simd language design using prescriptive semantics

The goal of this article is to isolate a set of primitives necessary for the construction of SIMD programs and to give a denotational semantics for these primitives. The intent is to devise a language with a simple semantics rather than to propose a language which may be conveniently implemented. The approach taken results in the addition of a synchronous parallel assignment statement and a synchronous communication statement to the familiar sequential programming language control structures of composition, projection and iteration.     

Perturbation singulière d'un problème de frottement sec non monotone

In this Note we deal with a singularly perturbed system constituted by a differential inclusion which has a unique solution for each value of the perturbation parameter. The associated degenerated problem, that corresponds to a dynamic dry friction problem, has many solutions. We show that perturbed problem solutions converge to a particular solution of the degenerated problem when the perturbation parameter goes to zero. The singular perturbation approach allows an analysis of a criterion used to select a solution of the degenerated problem, and suggests a method to study more elaborated dry friction problems.     

An ergodic measure on a locally convex topological vector space

The aim of this paper is to give a way to construct a probability measure with nice ergodic properties on a locally convex topological vector space. We have two motivations; one is to give a generalization of a Gaussian measure and the other is to give an example of a probability measure with a rich kernel space.