COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS APPLIED TO WILDERNESS PRESERVATION—OPTION VALUE UNCERTAINTY AND DITONICITY

It has been recognized for some time that when cost-benefit analysis is applied to irreversible environmental decisions, such as that of developing or preserving wilderness land, there can be an option value associated with the preservation decision, which arises when there is future uncertainty with respect to the benefits of development or preservation. In this paper the provenance of option value is examined and it is shown that an important cause is a special kind of uncertainty, viz. the possibility of reversals in direction of the relative valuations of wilderness land and developed land, a property we refer to as ditonicity. It is shown that the more ditonic the relative valuation process the greater the deviance between the certainty-equivalence development policy and the stochastically optimal one, and thus by implication the greater the option value. In the two cases with zero ditonicity, when relative wilderness valuations always increase or always decrease (even though in a stochastic fashion), there is zero option value. The model used assumes that service flows from wilderness and developed land are size-dependent, with future relative values known only in terms of a stochastic process, which can take jumps up or down of the same proportional size, at random times. Development can be partial or total and can occur in impulses at any time over an infinite time horizon.     

Duality in algebra and topology

We apply ideas from commutative algebra, and Morita theory to algebraic topology using ring spectra. This allows us to prove new duality results in algebra and topology, and to view (1) Poincaré duality for manifolds, (2) Gorenstein duality for commutative rings, (3) Benson–Carlson duality for cohomology rings of finite groups, (4) Poincaré duality for groups and (5) Gross–Hopkins duality in chromatic stable homotopy theory as examples of a single phenomenon.     

Indestructibility and level by level equivalence and inequivalence

If κ < λ are such that κ is indestructibly supercompact and λ is 2^λ supercompact, it is known from [4] that

• {δ < κ | δ is a measurable cardinal which is not a limit of measurable cardinals and δ violates level by level equivalence between strong compactness and supercompactness}

must be unbounded in κ. On the other hand, using a variant of the argument used to establish this fact, it is possible to prove that if κ < λ are such that κ is indestructibly supercompact and λ is measurable, then

• {δ < κ | δ is a measurable cardinal which is not a limit of measurable cardinals and δ satisfies level by level equivalence between strong compactness and supercompactness}

must be unbounded in κ. The two aforementioned phenomena, however, need not occur in a universe with an indestructibly supercompact cardinal and sufficiently few large cardinals. In particular, we show how to construct a model with an indestructibly supercompact cardinal κ in which if δ < κ is a measurable cardinal which is not a limit of measurable cardinals, then δ must satisfy level by level equivalence between strong compactness and supercompactness. We also, however, show how to construct a model with an indestructibly supercompact cardinal κ in which if δ < κ is a measurable cardinal which is not a limit of measurable cardinals, then δ must violate level by level equivalence between strong compactness and supercompactness. (© 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Constructing unextendible product bases from multiqubit ones

The construction of multipartite unextendible product bases(UPBs) is a basic problem in quantum information.We respectively construct two families of 2 × 2× 4 and 2 × 2 × 2 × 4 UPBs of size eight by using the existing four-qubit and five-qubit UPBs.As an application,we construct novel families of multipartite positive-partial-transpose entangled states,as well as their entanglement properties in terms of the geometric measure of entanglement.     

Anti‐inflammatory bioactive equivalence of combinatorial components β‐carboline alkaloids identified in Arenaria kansuensis by two‐dimensional chromatography and solid‐phase extraction coupled with liquid–liquid extraction enrichment technology

Bioactive equivalent combinatorial components play a critical role in herbal medicines. However, how to discover and enrich them efficiently is a question for herbal pharmaceuticals researchers. In our work, a novel two‐dimensional reversed‐phase/hydrophilic interaction high‐performance liquid chromatography method was established to perform real‐time components trapping and combining for preparation and isolation of coeluting components. Arenaria kansuensis was taken as an example, and solid‐phase extraction coupled with liquid–liquid extraction as a simple and efficient method for enriching trace components, reversed phase column coupled with hydrophilic interaction liquid chromatography XAmide column as two‐dimensional chromatography technology for isolation and preparation of coeluting constituents, enzyme‐linked immune‐sorbent assay as bio‐guided assay, and anti‐inflammatory bioactivity evaluation for bioactive constituents. A combination of 12 β‐carboline alkaloids was identified as anti‐inflammatory bioactive equivalent combinatorial components from A. kansuensis , which accounts for 1.9% w/w of original A. kansuensis . This work answers the key question of which are real anti‐inflammatory components from A. kansuensis and provides a fast and efficient approach for discovering and enriching trace β‐carboline alkaloids from herbal medicines for the first time. More importantly, the discovery of bioactive equivalent combinatorial components could improve the quality control of herbal products and inspire a herbal medicine based on combinatorial therapeutics.     

Characterization of canonical classes for systems of linear ODEs

The equivalence group is determined for systems of linear ordinary differential equations in both the standard form and the normal form. It is then shown that the normal form of linear systems reducible by an invertible point transformation to the canonical form y ⁽ⁿ⁾=0 consists of copies of the same iterative scalar equation. It is also shown that contrary to the scalar case, an iterative vector equation need not be reducible to the canonical form by an invertible point transformation. Other properties of iterative linear systems are also derived, as well as a simple algebraic formula for their general solution. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A thermodynamic approach with internal variables using Lagrange formalism. Part II. Continuous symmetries in the case of the time–temperature equivalence

In the first part of this contribution, the Lie-symmetries of the principle of least action associated to the constitutive equations of the DNLR formalism of relaxation have been presented. We examine in this second part the continuous symmetries corresponding to the simple case of stress relaxation under isothermal conditions. The well-known principle of time/temperature equivalence is discussed in terms of variational symmetry for the Jacobi’s action functional, and connected to the Onsager’s relation near the thermodynamic equilibrium.     

Equations of motion for mechanical systems: A unified approach

This paper presents a unified framework from which emerge the Lagrange equations, the Gibbs-Appell Equations and the Generalized Inverse Equations for describing the motion of constrained mechanical systems. The unified approach extends the applicability of the first two approaches to systems where the constraints are non-linear functions of the generalized velocities and are not necessarily independent. Furthermore, the approach leads to the Explicit Gibbs-Appell Equations.     

A Grobman–Hartman Theorem for Control Systems

We consider the problem of locally linearizing a control system via topological transformations. According to [2,3], there is no naive generalization of the classical Grobman–Hartman theorem for ODEs to control systems: a generic control system, when viewed as a set of under-determined differential equations parametrized by the control, cannot be linearized using pointwise transformations on the state and the control values. However, if we allow the transformations to depend on the control at a functional level (open loop transformations), we are able to prove a version of the Grobman–Hartman theorem for control systems.     

Consistency between independence theorems and generalized self-consistent method

Recently Zheng & Hwang established a series of independence theorems concerning with planar effective elastic properties. It is manifested that the estimation of the effective elastic properties of microcracked solids through the generalized self-consistent method (GSCM) contradicts with these independence theorems. In this paper it is shown that such contradiction is actually caused by the approximate algorithm adopted, while the exact solution of GSCM is consistent with these rigorously established independence theorems. Since only an approximate algorithm in GCSM is available in dealing with problems involving non-circular inclusions or holes, an intrinsic GSCM is proposed, which can be performed based on an approximate algorithm and the corresponding estimations are consistent with the independence theorems.