Characterization of Basil Volatile Fraction and Study of Its Agronomic Variation by ASCA

Basil is a plant known worldwide for its culinary and health attributes. It counts more than a hundred and fifty species and many more chemo-types due to its easy cross-breeds. Each species and each chemo-type have a typical aroma pattern and selecting the proper one is crucial for the food industry. Twelve basil varieties have been studied over three years (2018–2020), as have four different cuts. To characterize the aroma profile, nine typical basil flavour molecules have been selected using a gas chromatography–mass spectrometry coupled with an olfactometer (GC–MS/O). The concentrations of the nine selected molecules were measured by an ultra-fast CG e-nose and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied to detect possible differences among the samples. The PCA results highlighted differences between harvesting years, mainly for 2018, whereas no observable clusters were found concerning varieties and cuts, probably due to the combined effects of the investigated factors. For this reason, the ANOVA Simultaneous Component Analysis (ASCA) methodology was applied on a balanced a posteriori designed dataset. All the considered factors and interactions were statistically significant (p < 0.05) in explaining differences between the basil aroma profiles, with more relevant effects of variety and year.     

Triples of arrangements and local systems

For a triple of complex hyperplane arrangements, there is a well-known long exact sequence relating the cohomology of the complements. We observe that this result extends to certain local coefficient systems, and use this extension to study the characteristic varieties of arrangements. We show that the first characteristic variety may contain components that are translated by characters of any order, thereby answering a question of A. Suciu.

     

Index Reduction Formulas for Twisted Flag Varieties, II

This is a continuation of the determination begun in K-Theory 10 (1996), 517–596, of explicit index reduction formulas for function fields of twisted flag varieties of adjoint semisimple algebraic groups. We give index reduction formulas for the varieties associated to the classical simple groups of outer type A _n-1 and D _n, and the exceptional simple groups of type E ₆ and E ₇. We also give formulas for the varieties associated to transfers and direct products of algebraic groups. This allows one to compute recursively the index reduction formulas for the twisted flag varieties of any semi-simple algebraic group.     

Bounds for Systems of Maximal Differential Polynomials without Mixed Derivatives

Mathematical Notes -     

A Canonical Compatible Metric for Geometric Structures on Nilmanifolds

Let (N, γ) be a nilpotent Lie group endowed with an invariant geometric structure (cf. symplectic, complex, hypercomplex or any of their ‘almost’ versions). We define a left invariant Riemannian metric on N compatible with γ to be minimal, if it minimizes the norm of the invariant part of the Ricci tensor among all compatible metrics with the same scalar curvature. We prove that minimal metrics (if any) are unique up to isometry and scaling, they develop soliton solutions for the ‘invariant Ricci’ flow and are characterized as the critical points of a natural variational problem. The uniqueness allows us to distinguish two geometric structures with Riemannian data, giving rise to a great deal of invariants.Our approach proposes to vary Lie brackets rather than inner products; our tool is the moment map for the action of a reductive Lie group on the algebraic variety of all Lie algebras, which we show to coincide in this setting with the Ricci operator. This gives us the possibility to use strong results from geometric invariant theory.Communicated by: Nigel Hitchin (Oxford) Mathematics Subject Classifications (2000): Primary: 53D05, 53D55; Secondary: 22E25, 53D20, 14L24, 53C30.     

Rook Poset Equivalence of Ferrers Boards

A natural construction due to K. Ding yields Schubert varieties from Ferrers boards. The poset structure of the Schubert cells in these varieties is equal to the poset of maximal rook placements on the Ferrers board under the Bruhat order. We determine when two Ferrers boards have isomorphic rook posets. Equivalently, we give an exact categorization of when two Ding Schubert varieties have identical Schubert cell structures. This also produces a complete classification of isomorphism types of lower intervals of 312-avoiding permutations in the Bruhat order.     

Compactification équivariante d’un tore (d’après Brylinski et Künnemann)

We give a combinatorial, self-contained proof of the existence of a smooth equivariant compactification for an algebraic torus defined over an arbitrary field.     

Schubert cycles, differential forms and D-modules on varieties of unseparated flags

Proper homogeneous G-spaces (where G is semisimple algebraic group) over positive characteristic fields k can be divided into two classes, the first one being the flag varieties G/P and the second one consisting of varieties of unseparated flags (proper homogeneous spaces not isomorphic to flag varieties as algebraic varieties). In this paper we compute the Chow ring of varieites of unseparated flags, show that the Hodge cohomology of usual flag varieties extends to the general setting of proper homogeneous spaces and give an example showing (by geometric means) that the D -affinity of Beilinson and Bernstein fails for varieties of unseparated flags.     

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Mcshane’s Identity and Variations

Greg McShane introduced a remarkable identity for lengths of simple closed geodesics on the once punctured torus with a complete, finite volume hyperbolic structure. Bowditch later generalized this and gave sufficient conditions for the identity to hold for general type-preserving representations of a free group on two generators Γ to SL(2,C), this was further generalized by the authors to obtain sufficient conditions for a generalized McShane’s identity to hold for arbitrary (not necessarily type-preserving) non-reducible representations in Tan et al. (Submitted). Here we extend the above by giving necessary and sufficient conditions for the generalized McShane identity to hold (Akiyoshi, Miyachi and Sakuma had proved it for type-preserving representations). We also give a version of Bowditch’s variation of McShane’s identity to once-punctured torus bundles, in the case where the monodromy is generated by a reducible element, and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the variations to hold.     

Classification of two-orbit varieties

We obtain the classification of two-orbit varieties, i.e. the normal complete complex algebraic varieties on which a reductive complex algebraic group acts with two orbits. We prove also Luna's conjecture saying that these varieties are spherical, i.e. admit a dense orbit of a Borel subgroup. Received: September 1, 2000