Exhausters af a positively homogeneous function *

Notions of upper exhauster and lower exhauster of a positively homogeneous (of the first degree) function h: ? ⁿ →? are introduced. They are linked to exhaustive families of upper convex and lower concave approximations of the function h. The pair of an upper exhauster and a lower exhauster is called a biexhauster of h. A calculus for biexhausters is described (in particular, a composition theorem is formulated). The problem of minimality of exhausters is stated. Necessary and sufficient conditions for a constrained minimum and a constrained maximum of a directionally differentiable function f: ? ⁿ →? are formulated in terms of exhausters of the directional derivative of f. In general, they are described by means of exhausters of the Hadamard upper and lower directional derivatives of the function f. To formulate conditions for a minimum, an upper exhauster is employed while conditions for a maximum are formulated via a lower exhauster of the respective directional derivative (the Hadamard lower derivative for a minimum and the Hadamard upper derivative for a maximum).

If a point x _o is not stationary then directions of steepest ascent and descent can also be calculated by means of exhausters.     

On upper continuous and semimodular lattices

Four well known semimodularity conditions are considered: Birkhoff condition, upper semimodularity, MacLane condition,M-symmetry. It is shown that, for upper continuous strongly atomic lattices, these conditions are equivalent. It is also shown that, for lower continuous strongly coatomic lattices,M-symmetry and upper semimodularity coincide, but are different from the MacLane condition; this is so even for lower continuous lattices with ACC. An example of a nonalgebraic upper continuous strongly atomic lattice is given.Presented by R. Freese.     

The kth upper and lower bases of primitive nonpowerful minimally strong signed digraphs

In this article, we study the kth upper and lower bases of primitive nonpowerful minimally strong signed digraphs. A bound on the kth upper bases for primitive nonpowerful minimally strong signed digraphs is obtained, and the equality case of the bound is characterized. For the kth lower bases, we obtain some bounds. For some cases, the bounds are best possible and the extremal signed digraphs are characterized. We also show that there exist ‘gaps’ in both the kth upper base set and the kth lower base set of primitive nonpowerful minimally strong signed digraphs.     

Upper bounds on the length of the shortest closed geodesic on simply connected manifolds

The subject of this paper is upper bounds on the length of the shortest closed geodesic on simply connected manifolds with non-trivial second homology group. We will give three estimates. The first estimate will explicitly depend on volume and the upper bound for the sectional curvature; the second estimate will depend on diameter, a positive lower bound for the volume, and on the (possibly negative) lower bound on sectional curvature; the third estimate will depend on diameter, on a (possibly negative) lower bound for the sectional curvature and on a lower bound for the simply-connectedness radius. The technique that we develop in order to obtain the last result will also enable us to estimate the homotopy distance between any two closed curves on compact simply connected manifolds of sectional curvature bounded from below and diameter bounded from above. More precisely, let c be a constant such that any metric ball of radius is simply connected. There exists a homotopy connecting any two closed curves such that the length of the trajectory of the points during this homotopy has an upper bound in terms of the lower bound of the curvature, the upper bound of diameter and c. Received November 10, 1997; in final form June 23, 1998     

On Fractional Power Moments of <Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>-functions Associated with Certain Cusp Forms

This paper is devoted to upper and lower bounds of fractional moments of L-functions attached to certain cusp forms. The upper bound is proved under the analogue of the Riemann hypothesis.     

Upper and Lower Hausdorff Dimension Estimates for Invariant Sets of k — 1 — Endomorphisms

For a special class of non–injective maps on Riemannian manifolds upper and lower bounds for the Hausdorff dimension of invariant sets are given in terms of the singular values of the tangent map. The upper estimation is based on a theorem by Douady and Oesterlé and its generalization to Riemannian manifolds by Noack and Reitmann , but additionally information about the noninjectivity is used. The lower estimation can be reached by modifying a method, derived by Shereshevskij for geometric constructions on the real line (also described by Barreira , for similar constructions in general metric spaces. The upper and lower dimension estimates for k — 1 — endomorphisms can for instance be applied to Julia sets of quadratic maps on the complex plane.     

On exit time from balls of jump-type symmetric Markov processes

We obtain upper and lower bounds of the exit times from balls of a jump-type symmetric Markov process. The proofs are delivered separately. The upper bounds are obtained by using the Levy system corresponding to the process, while the precise expression of the （L^2-）generator of the Dirichlet form associated with the process is used to obtain the lower bounds.     

A geometric proof of the combinatorial bounds for the number of optimal solutions for the Euclidean 2-center problem

We provide lower and upper bounds for γ(n), the number of optimal solutions for the two-center problem: “Given a set S of n points in the real plane, find two closed discs whose union contains all of the points such that the radius of the larger disc is minimized.”The main result of the paper shows the matching upper and lower bounds for the two-center problem and demonstrates that γ(n)=n.     

A General Upper Bound for the Satisfiability Threshold of Randomr-SAT Formulae

Experiments on solvingr-SAT random formulae have provided evidence of a satisfiability threshold phenomenon with respect to the ratio of the number of clauses to the number of variables of formulae. Presently, only the threshold of 2-SAT formulae has been proved to exist and has been computed to be equal to 1. For 3-SAT formulae and more generally forr-SAT formulae, lower and upper bounds of the threshold have been established. The best established bounds concern 3-SAT. For an observed threshold of about 4.25, the best lower bound is 3.003 and the best upper bound 4.76. In this paper we establish a general upper bound of the threshold forr-SAT formulae giving a value for 3-SAT of 4.64, significantly improving the previous best upper bound. For this we have defined a more restrictive structure than a satisfying truth assignment for characterizing the satisfiability of a SAT formula which we have called negatively prime solution (NPS). By merely applying the first moment method to negatively prime solutions of a randomr-SAT formula we obtain our bound.     

Bounds for the growth rate of meander numbers

We provide improvements on the best currently known upper and lower bounds for the exponential growth rate of meanders. The method of proof for the upper bounds is to extend the Goulden–Jackson cluster method.     

Obtaining upper bounds of heat kernels from lower bounds

We show that a near‐diagonal lower bound of the heat kernel of a Dirichlet form on a metric measure space with a regular measure implies an on‐diagonal upper bound. If in addition the Dirichlet form is local and regular, then we obtain a full off‐diagonal upper bound of the heat kernel provided the Dirichlet heat kernel on any ball satisfies a near‐diagonal lower estimate. This reveals a new phenomenon in the relationship between the lower and upper bounds of the heat kernel. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Periodic and boundary value problems for second order differential equations

In this paper we study second order scalar differential equations with Sturm-Liouville and periodic boundary conditions. The vector fieldf(t,x,y) is Caratheodory and in some instances the continuity condition onx ory is replaced by a monotonicity type hypothesis. Using the method of upper and lower solutions as well as truncation and penalization techniques, we show the existence of solutions and extremal solutions in the order interval determined by the upper and lower solutions. Also we establish some properties of the solutions and of the set they form.     

On the Asymptotically Optimal Rate of Approximation of Multiplier Operators from L p into L q

The asymptotic behavior of the n -widths of multiplier operators from L _p [0,1] into L _q [0,1] is studied. General upper and lower bounds for the n -widths in terms of the multipliers are established. Moreover, it is shown that these upper and lower bounds coincide for some important concrete examples. August 3, 1994. Date revised: November 15, 1996.     

Periodic problems and problems with discontinuities for nonlinear parabolic equations

In this paper we study nonlinear parabolic equations using the method of upper and lower solutions. Using truncation and penalization techniques and results from the theory of operators of monotone type, we prove the existence of a periodic solution between an upper and a lower solution. Then with some monotonicity conditions we prove the existence of extremal solutions in the order interval defined by an upper and a lower solution. Finally we consider problems with discontinuities and we show that their solution set is a compact R -set in (CT, L ²(Z)).     

Some New Bounds for Singular Values and Eigenvalues of Matrix Products

For two Hermitian matrices A and B, at least one of which is positive semidefinite, we give upper and lower bounds for each eigenvalue of AB in terms of the eigenvalues of A and B. For two complex matrices A,B with known singular values, upper and lower bounds are deduced for each singular value of AB.     

Upper and Lower Bounds for the Stanley Depth of Certain Classes of Monomial Ideals and Their Residue Class Rings

We give an upper bound for the Stanley depth of the edge ideal of a complete k-partite hypergraph and as an application we give an upper bound for the Stanley depth of a monomial ideal in a polynomial ring S. We also give a lower and an upper bound for the cyclic module S/I associated to the complete k-partite hypergraph.     

A computational study of graph partitioning

LetG = (N, E) be an edge-weighted undirected graph. The graph partitioning problem is the problem of partitioning the node setN intok disjoint subsets of specified sizes so as to minimize the total weight of the edges connecting nodes in distinct subsets of the partition. We present a numerical study on the use of eigenvalue-based techniques to find upper and lower bounds for this problem. Results for bisecting graphs with up to several thousand nodes are given, and for small graphs some trisection results are presented. We show that the techniques are very robust and consistently produce upper and lower bounds having a relative gap of typically a few percentage points.Corresponding author.     

On variable length coding with side information for discrete memoryless sources

In this paper we consider the zero error variable length coding problem for discrete memoryless sources with side information at the decoder only. Using concepts of graph theory, we obtain a characterization of the minimum achievable rater for this coding problem. Furthermore, computable upper and lower bounds for the minimum achievable rater is given and a condition under which the upper and lower bounds are equal is found. Finally, this result is applied to some examples in which the minimum achievable rater can be evaluated.     

Two-sided bounds and leading term for rates of convergence in the multivariate central limit theorem

For a sequence of independent and identically distributed random vectors, upper and lower bounds are obtained for the discrepancy between the probability measure P_n, induced by their normalized sum, and the Normal measure Φ. The upper and lower bounds are of the same order of magnitude. These results may be derived by a “leading term” approach, in which a signed measure Q_n is introduced as a first order approximation to P_n − Φ. The purpose of this paper is to investigate properties of the leading term.     

Triangular stochastic matrices generated by infinitesimal elements

We show that each element in the semigroup S _n of all n × n non-singular upper (or lower) triangular stochastic matrices is generated by the infinitesimal elements of S _n, which form a cone consisting of all n × n upper (or lower) triangular intensity matrices.