Some designs and codes invariant under the groups <Emphasis Type="Italic">S</Emphasis><Subscript>9</Subscript> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">A</Emphasis><Subscript>8</Subscript>

We examine some designs and binary codes constructed from the primitive permutation representations of the groups PSL ₂(8) and PSL ₂(9). For PSL ₂(8) of degree 36, we construct a design and its code with the automorphism groups PSL ₂(8) and S ₉, respectively. For PSL ₂(8) of degree 36 and PSL ₂(9) of degree 15, we construct some designs and its codes invariant under the groups S ₉ and A ₈, respectively. The weight distribution and the dual of these codes are determined. By considering the action of automorphism groups on some of these codes, we obtain the structure of the stabilizer for every codeword and construct some designs such that S ₉ or A ₈ act primitively on them.      

Quasi-symmetric designs related to the triangular graph

LetT _m be the adjacency matrix of the triangular graph. We will give conditions for a linear combination ofT _m, I andJ to be decomposable. This leads to Bruck-Ryser-Chowla like conditions for, what we call, triangular designs. These are quasi-symmetric designs whose block graph is the complement of the triangular graph. For these designs our conditions turn out to be stronger than the known non-existence results for quasi-symmetric designs.     

Relations among univariate aging, bivariate aging and dependence for exchangeable lifetimes

For a couple of lifetimes (X₁,X₂) with an exchangeable joint survival function , attention is focused on notions of bivariate aging that can be described in terms of properties of the level curves of . We analyze the relations existing among those notions of bivariate aging, univariate aging, and dependence. A goal and, at the same time, a method to this purpose is to define axiomatically a correspondence among those objects; in fact, we characterize notions of univariate and bivariate aging in terms of properties of dependence. Dependence between two lifetimes will be described in terms of their survival copula. The language of copulæ turns out to be generally useful for our purposes; in particular, we shall introduce the more general notion of semicopula. It will be seen that this is a natural object for our analysis. Our definitions and subsequent results will be illustrated by considering a few remarkable cases; in particular, we find some necessary or sufficient conditions for Schur-concavity of , or for IFR properties of the one-dimensional marginals. The case characterized by the condition that the survival copula of (X₁,X₂) is Archimedean will be considered in some detail. For most of our arguments, the extension to the case of n>2 is straightforward.     

Serre's Condition Rℓ for Affine Semigroup Rings

In this note we characterize the affine semigroup rings K[S] over an arbitrary field K that satisfy condition R_? of Serre. Our characterization is in terms of the face lattice of the positive cone pos(S) of S. We start by reviewing some basic facts about the faces of pos(S) and consequences for the monomial primes of K[S]. After proving our characterization we turn our attention to the Rees algebras of a special class of monomial ideals in a polynomial ring over a field. In this special case, some of the characterizing criteria are always satisfied. We give examples of non-normal affine semigroup rings that satisfy R₂.     

Local c- and E-optimal Designs for Exponential Regression Models

In this paper we investigate local E- and c-optimal designs for exponential regression models of the form . We establish a numerical method for the construction of efficient and local optimal designs, which is based on two results. First, we consider for fixed k the limit μ _i → γ (i = 1, ... , k) and show that the optimal designs converge weakly to the optimal designs in a heteroscedastic polynomial regression model. It is then demonstrated that in this model the optimal designs can be easily determined by standard numerical software. Secondly, it is proved that the support points and weights of the local optimal designs in the exponential regression model are analytic functions of the nonlinear parameters μ ₁, ... , μ _k . This result is used for the numerical calculation of the local E-optimal designs by means of a Taylor expansion for any vector (μ ₁, ... , μ _k ). It is also demonstrated that in the models under consideration E-optimal designs are usually more efficient for estimating individual parameters than D-optimal designs.     

Two new direct product-type constructions for resolvable group-divisible designs

We present two direct product-type constructions which will prove useful in the construction of resolvable designs. We use our constructions to complete the spectrum for resolvable group-divisible designs with block size three, as well as to give a short proof of the existence of decompositions of K_6n into a one-factors and b triangle-factors for any a, b, n with a + 2b = 6n ? 1 and a > 1. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Semi-regular divisible designs and Frobenius groups

We study and characterize semi-regular (s, k, λ₁, λ₂)-divisible designs which admit a Frobenius group as their translation group. Moreover, we give a construction method for such designs by generalized admissible triads.     

Integral averaging technique for the interval oscillation criteria of certain second-order nonlinear differential equations

We present new interval oscillation criteria related to integral averaging technique for certain classes of second-order nonlinear differential equations which are different from most known ones in the sense that they are based on the information only on a sequence of subintervals of [t₀,∞), rather than on the whole half-line. They generalize and improve some known results. Examples are also given to illustrate the importance of our results.     

On ohtsuki’s invariants of integral homology 3-spheres

We provide some more explicit formulae to facilitate the computation of Ohtsuki’s rational invariants λ _n of integral homology 3-spheres extracted from Reshetikhin-TuraevSU(2) quantum invariants. Several interesting consequences will follow from our computation of λ₂. One of them says that λ₂ is always an integer divisible by 3. It seems interesting to compare this result with the fact shown by Murakami that λ₁ is 6 times the Casson invariant. Other consequences include some general criteria for distinguishing homology 3-spheres obtained from surgery on knots by using the Jones polynomial. The first author is supported in part by NSF and the second author is supported by an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship.     

Scheduling jobs on a <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-stage flexible flow-shop

We consider the problem of makespan minimization on a flexible flow shop with k stages and m _s machines at any stage. We propose a heuristic algorithm based on the identification and exploitation of the bottleneck stage, which is simple to use and to understand by practitioners. A computational experiment is conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The study shows that our method is, in average, comparable with other bottleneck-based algorithms, but with smaller variance, and that it requires less computational effort.     

Green function for X-elliptic operators

We study the Green function associated to second order X-elliptic operators with non-regular coefficients. An existence and uniqueness theorem is given, along with some local estimations and a representation formula for the solution of the Dirichlet problem.Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 34B27, 35H99, 35J70, 35C15Revised version: 28 June 2004     

On rank 3 projective designs

The finite projective designs with rank 3 collineation groupsG such thatG _p =G _l for some point-block pair (P, l) are divided into 4 classes. 2 of these classes are formed by the Paley designs and the designs complementary to the Paley designs. For the other 2 classes restrictions on the parameters are obtained. In particular it is shown that the only such design having =1 is the projective plane of order 2.With 2 Figures     

Old and new designs via difference multisets and strong difference families

Let X =((x_1,1,x_1,2,…,x_1,k),(x_2,1,x_2,2,…,x_2,k),…,(x_t,1,x_t,2,…,x_t,k)) be a family of t multisets of size k defined on an additive group G. We say that X is a t-(G,k,μ) strong difference family (SDF) if the list of differences (x_h,i-x_h,j∣h=1,…,t;i≠ j) covers all of G exactly μ times. If a SDF consists of a single multiset X, we simply say that X is a (G,k,μ) difference multiset. After giving some constructions for SDF's, we show that they allow us to obtain a very useful method for constructing regular group divisible designs and regular (or 1-rotational) balanced incomplete block designs. In particular cases this construction method has been implicitly used by many authors, but strangely, a systematic treatment seems to be lacking. Among the main consequences of our research, we find new series of regular BIBD's and new series of 1-rotational (in many cases resovable) BIBD's.     

Symmetric Designs Attached to Four-Weight Spin Models

H. Guo and T. Huang studied the four-weight spin models (X, W ₁, W ₂, W ₃, W ₄;D) with the property that the entries of the matrix W ₂ (or equivalently W ₄) consist of exactly two distinct values. They found that such spin models are always related to symmetric designs whose derived design with respect to any block is a quasi symmetric design. In this paper we show that such a symmetric design admits a four-weight spin model with exactly two values on W ₂ if and only if it has some kind of duality between the set of points and the set of blocks. We also give some examples of parameters of symmetric designs which possibly admit four-weight spin models with exactly two values on W ₂.     

Robust designs for Haar wavelet approximation models

In this paper, we discuss the construction of robust designs for heteroscedastic wavelet regression models when the assumed models are possibly contaminated over two different neighbourhoods: G ₁ and G ₂ . Our main findings are: (1) A recursive formula for constructing D‐optimal designs under G ₁ ; (2) Equivalency of Q‐optimal and A‐optimal designs under both G ₁ and G ₂ ; (3) D‐optimal robust designs under G ₂ ; and (4) Analytic forms for A‐ and Q‐optimal robust design densities under G ₂ . Several examples are given for the comparison, and the results demonstrate that our designs are efficient. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simplices with congruent k-faces

Let S be a non-degenerate simplex in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$. We prove that S is regular if, for some k $\in$ {1,...,n-2}, all its k-dimensional faces are congruent. On the other hand, there are non-regular simplices with the property that all their (n1)-dimensional faces are congruent.     

Optimal (2, n) visual cryptographic schemes

In (2,n) visual cryptographic schemes, a secret image(text or picture) is encrypted into n shares, which are distributed among n participants. The image cannot be decoded from any single share but any two participants can together decode it visually, without using any complex decoding mechanism. In this paper, we introduce three meaningful optimality criteria for evaluating different schemes and show that some classes of combinatorial designs, such as BIB designs, PBIB designs and regular graph designs, can yield a large number of black and white (2,n) schemes that are optimal with respect to all these criteria. For a practically useful range of n, we also obtain optimal schemes with the smallest possible pixel expansion.     

A Criterion for Designs in ℤ4-codes on the Symmetrized Weight Enumerator

The Assmus–Mattson theorem is known as a method to find designs in linear codes over a finite field. It is an interesting problem to find an analog of the theorem for Z ₄-codes. In a previous paper, the author gave a candidate of the theorem. The purpose of this paper is to give an improvement of the theorem. It is known that the lifted Golay code over Z ₄ contains 5-designs on Lee compositions. The improved method can find some of those without computational difficulty and without the help of a computer.     

On reductibility of degenerate optimization problems to regular operator equations

We present an application of the p-regularity theory to the analysis of non-regular (irregular, degenerate) nonlinear optimization problems. The p-regularity theory, also known as the p-factor analysis of nonlinear mappings, was developed during last thirty years. The p-factor analysis is based on the construction of the p-factor operator which allows us to analyze optimization problems in the degenerate case. We investigate reducibility of a non-regular optimization problem to a regular system of equations which do not depend on the objective function. As an illustration we consider applications of our results to non-regular complementarity problems of mathematical programming and to linear programming problems.     

Hankel Operators on Bergman Spaces of Tube Domains over Symmetric Cones

We present here some criteria for Schatten-Von Neumann class membership for the small Hankel operator on Bergman space A ²(T _Ω), when T _Ω is the tube over the symmetric cone Ω. The author would like to thank professor Aline Bonami for helpful advices.