Shunting yard operations: Theoretical aspects and applications

Almost ever since freight has been transported via rail, shunting yards (also called classification or marshaling yards) are operated in order to separate freight trains and reassemble new trains. The efficient use of shunting yards has a deep impact on the efficiency and reliability of rail freight services. Thus, much research on shunting yards has been published, starting from the 1950s. Lately, several publications mostly focusing on the sorting procedures have livened up research on shunting yards. This paper reviews the literature on the operational processes at shunting yards over the last 40 years and discusses the operational challenges of freight transshipment. The approaches are classified according to different sorting strategies which allows an easy access to the models for both, researchers and practitioners. The paper concludes with an overview on future research challenges.     

An affine submersion with horizontal distribution and its applications

We define an affine submersion with horizontal distribution and obtain some fundamental equations. As applications, statistical manifolds, Thomas–Whitehead connections and reductive homogeneous spaces with invariant connections are considered.     

p-adic affine dynamical systems and applications

We consider p-adic affine dynamical systems on the ring ${\mathbb{Z}}_p$ of all p-adic integers, and we find a necessary and sufficient condition for such a system to be minimal. The minimality is equivalent to the transitivity, the ergodicity of the Haar measure, the unique ergodicity, and the strict ergodicity. When the condition is not satisfied, we prove that the system can be decomposed into strict ergodic subsystems. One of our applications is the study of the divisibility, by a power of prime number, of the sequence of integers $a^n?b$ with positive integers $a,b$ and n. To cite this article: A.-H. Fan et al., C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 342 (2006).     

Cohomology of affine Artin groups and applications

The result of this paper is the determination of the cohomology of Artin groups of type and with non-trivial local coefficients. The main result

is an explicit computation of the cohomology of the Artin group of type with coefficients over the module Here the first standard generators of the group act by -multiplication, while the last one acts by -multiplication. The proof uses some technical results from previous papers plus computations over a suitable spectral sequence. The remaining cases follow from an application of Shapiro's lemma, by considering some well-known inclusions: we obtain the rational cohomology of the Artin group of affine type as well as the cohomology of the classical braid group with coefficients in the -dimensional representation presented in Tong, Yang, and Ma (1996). The topological counterpart is the explicit construction of finite CW-complexes endowed with a free action of the Artin groups, which are known to be spaces in some cases (including finite type groups). Particularly simple formulas for the Euler-characteristic of these orbit spaces are derived.

     

Divisibility of multilinear mappings with applications to affine differential geometry

For real finite-dimensional vector spaces V, W we call a bilinear symmetric mapping h?:?V?×?V?→?W non-degenerate if the components of h with respect to a certain basis are linearly independent and non-degenerate. We say that a symmetric trilinear mapping C?:?V?×?V?×?V?→?W is divisible by h if there exists a linear form α such that C(v,?v,?v)?=?α(v)h(v,?v) for every v?∈?V. In affine differential geometry of affine immersions h is the second fundamental form and C – the cubic form of the immersion. The immersion has pointwise planar normal sections if h(v,?v)?∧?C(v,?v,?v)?=?0 for every tangent vector v. We prove that it implies that C is divisible by h if h is non-degenerate and the codimension is greater than two. For immersions with Wiehe's or Sasaki's choice of transversal bundles divisibility of C by h implies vanishing of C.     

Real Hamiltonian forms of affine Toda field theories: Spectral aspects

Theoretical and Mathematical Physics - The paper is devoted to real Hamiltonian forms of $$2$$ -dimensional Toda field theories related to exceptional simple Lie algebras, and to the spectral...     

Physical model,theoretical aspects and applications of the flight of a ball in the atmosphere. Part II: Theoretical aspects in the case of vertical angular frequency and applications

If a ball is viewed as a rigid body, its flight in the atmosphere can be described by a system of six ordinary differential equations, which has been derived in the first part of this paper. In this following second part, the theoretical aspects such as the curvature of the orbit and certain velocity functions will be investigated in the case of the vertical angular frequency of the rotating ball, in which the differential equations reduce to a planar dynamical system. This system turns out to be not explicity solvable. The solutions of the corresponding ordinary or boundary value problems. computed numerically, are used to treat certain problems in international ball games. for example, the maximum and minimum velocities of a volleyball service.     

Finite non-homogeneous semi-Markov processes: Theoretical and computational aspects

This paper gives basic definitions and properties related to what we call the non-homogeneous semi-Markov processes with a finite number of states using the formalism of counting processes, i.e. with intensity functions. We show how it is possible to get generalized Polya processes as a very particular case. We also treat the computational aspect by discretisation and as an application, we develop a social security problem.     

A Kalman particle filter for online parameter estimation with applications to affine models

Statistical Inference for Stochastic Processes - In this paper we address the problem of estimating the posterior distribution of the static parameters of a continuous-time state space model with...     

On the classification of non-equal rank affine conformal embeddings and applications

Selecta Mathematica - We complete the classification of conformal embeddings of a maximally reductive subalgebra $$\mathfrak {k}$$ into a simple Lie algebra $$\mathfrak {g}$$ at non-integrable...     

Continua of H-graphs: convexity and isoperimetric stability

In this paper we consider nonparametric solutions of the volume constrained Plateau problem with respect to a convex planar curve. Existence and regularity is obtained from standard elliptic theory, and convexity results for small volumes are obtained as an immediate consequence. Finally, the regularity is applied to show a strong stability condition (Theorem 8) for all volumes considered. This condition, in turn, allows us to adapt an argument of Cabré and Chanillo [CC97] which yields that any solution enclosing a non-zero volume has a unique nondegenerate critical point. Received March 25, 1998 / Accepted December 1, 1998     

Algebraic monoids with affine unit group are affine

In this short paper we prove that any irreducible algebraic monoid whose unit group is an affine algebraic group is affine.     

Lorentzian affine hyperspheres with constant affine sectional curvature

We study affine hyperspheres with constant sectional curvature (with respect to the affine metric ). A conjecture by M. Magid and P. Ryan states that every such affine hypersphere with nonzero Pick invariant is affinely equivalent to either

or

where the dimension satisfies or . Up to now, this conjecture was proved if is positive definite or if is a -dimensional Lorentz space. In this paper, we give an affirmative answer to this conjecture for arbitrary dimensional Lorentzian affine hyperspheres.

     

Theoretical aspects of information security

In this work, the authors obtain a topological classification of the simplest diffeomorphisms of the sphere S ² having exactly one orbit of one-sided heteroclinic tangency. Translated from Sovremennaya Matematika i Ee Prilozheniya (Contemporary Mathematics and Its Applications), Vol. 54, Suzdal Conference–2006, Part 2, 2008.     

A decomposition of a holomorphic vector bundle with connection and its applications to complex affine immersions

We study a decomposition of a holomorphic vector bundle with connection which need not be endowed with any metrics, which is a generalization of an orthogonal decomposition of a Hermitian holomorphic vector bundle. We first derive several results on the induced connections, the second fundamental forms of subbundles and curvature forms of the connections. We next apply these results to a complex affine immersion. Especially, we give elementary self-contained proofs of the fundamental theorems for a complex affine immersion to a complex affine space.     

Confluent and Open Retractible Continua

In this paper we deal with quasilinear elliptic hemivariational inequalities of higher order as generalizations of elliptic variational inequalities of higher order to nonconvex functionals. This extension is strongly motivated by various problems in mechanics. Using the notion of the generalized gradient of Clarke, existence results of solutions have been obtained.     

Algorithms for nonlinear piecewise polynomial approximation: Theoretical aspects

In this article algorithms are developed for nonlinear -term Courant element approximation of functions in ( ) on bounded polygonal domains in . Redundant collections of Courant elements, which are generated by multilevel nested triangulations allowing arbitrarily sharp angles, are investigated. Scalable algorithms are derived for nonlinear approximation which both capture the rate of the best approximation and provide the basis for numerical implementation. Simple thresholding criteria enable approximation of a target function to optimally high asymptotic rates which are determined and automatically achieved by the inherent smoothness of . The algorithms provide direct approximation estimates and permit utilization of the general Jackson-Bernstein machinery to characterize -term Courant element approximation in terms of a scale of smoothness spaces (-spaces) which govern the approximation rates.