A set of geometric programming test problems and their solutions

This paper attempts to provide a set of standard test examples for researchers working in the area of geometric programming and general nonlinear, continuous, nonconvex programming algorithms. The examples consist partly of applications of nonlinear programming that have appeared in the literature and partly of original geometric programming applications. Solutions to all the problems are provided as well as the starting points from which these solutions were computed. Other computationally important aspects such as tolerances and degree of accuracy with which these problems were solved, are also included.This work was supported in part by Canada Council Grant #S74-0148 and National Research Council of Canada Grant #084-6319-32.     

X-ray laser gain from Bragg reflection in relativistic electronbeam channel radiation systems

The application of distributed feedback by Bragg reflections in electron-beam channeling X-ray lasers is investigated. Expressions for low-threshold gain are derived for this cavity mirror structure in single crystals and are shown to have possible application in reducing beam high-current requirements by many orders of magnitude     

Instance-optimality in probability with an -minimization decoder

Let Φ(ω), ωΩ, be a family of n×N random matrices whose entries _i,j are independent realizations of a symmetric, real random variable η with expectation and variance . Such matrices are used in compressed sensing to encode a vector by y=Φx. The information y holds about x is extracted by using a decoder . The most prominent decoder is the ℓ₁-minimization decoder Δ which gives for a given the element which has minimal ℓ₁-norm among all with Φz=y. This paper is interested in properties of the random family Φ(ω) which guarantee that the vector will with high probability approximate x in to an accuracy comparable with the best k-term error of approximation in for the range kan/log₂(N/n). This means that for the above range of k, for each signal , the vector satisfies

with high probability on the draw of Φ. Here, Σ_k consists of all vectors with at most k nonzero coordinates. The first result of this type was proved by Wojtaszczyk [P. Wojtaszczyk, Stability and instance optimality for Gaussian measurements in compressed sensing, Found. Comput. Math., in press] who showed this property when η is a normalized Gaussian random variable. We extend this property to more general random variables, including the particular case where η is the Bernoulli random variable which takes the values with equal probability. The proofs of our results use geometric mapping properties of such random matrices some of which were recently obtained in [A. Litvak, A. Pajor, M. Rudelson, N. Tomczak-Jaegermann, Smallest singular value of random matrices and geometry of random polytopes, Adv. Math. 195 (2005) 491–523].     

Magnetic susceptibility measurements of dilute MgEu alloys

Magnetic susceptibility measurements of strain-free dilute alloys of Eu in Mg indicate that the Eu is predominantly divalent with ${}^8\text{S}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>7</mtext><mtext>2</mtext>}}$ ground state. The analysis indicates no solid solubility of Eu in Mg.     

A phase I, randomized study of combined IL-2 and therapeutic immunisation with antiretroviral therapy

Background  

Fully functional HIV-1-specific CD8 and CD4 effector T-cell responses are vital to the containment of viral activity and disease progression. These responses are lacking in HIV-1-infected patients with progressive disease. We attempted to augment fully functional HIV-1-specific CD8 and CD4 effector T-cell responses in patients with advanced chronic HIV-1 infection.     

Simple modification of a protein database for mass spectral identification of N-linked glycopeptides

We describe an algorithm which modifies a protein database such that during a database search deamidation is limited to asparagines strictly contained within the N-glycosylation consensus sequence. The modified database was evaluated using a dataset created from the shotgun proteomic analysis of N-linked glycopeptides from human blood serum. We demonstrate that the application of the modified database eliminates incorrect glycopeptide assignments, reduces the peptide false-discovery rate, and eliminates the need for manual validation of glycopeptide identifications.     

The Classification of Flats in {\boldsymbol {PG}}({\bf 9,2}) which are External to the Grassmannian {\cal G}_{\bf 1,4,2}

Constructions are given of different kinds of flats in the projective space $PG(9,2)={\mathbb P}(\wedge^{2}V(5,2))$ which are external to the Grassmannian ${\cal G}_{\bf 1,4,2}$ of lines of PG(4,2). In particular it is shown that there exist precisely two GL(5,2)-orbits of external 4-flats, each with stabilizer group ?31:5. (No 5-flat is external.) For each k=1,2,3, two distinct kinds of external k-flats are simply constructed out of certain partial spreads in PG(4,2) of size k+2. A third kind of external plane, with stabilizer ?2³:(7:3), is also shown to exist. With the aid of a certain ‘key counting lemma’, it is proved that the foregoing amounts to a complete classification of external flats.