Multiplicative Programming Problems: Analysis and Efficient Point Search Heuristic

Multiplicative programming problems are difficult global optimization problems known to be NP-hard. At the same time, these problems have some important applications in engineering, finance, economics, and other fields. This article has two purposes. The first is to present an analysis that shows several relationships between concave multiplicative programs and concave minimization problems, and between concave multiplicative programs and certain multiple-objective mathematical programs. The second purpose is to propose and report computational results for a heuristic efficient-point search algorithm that we have designed for use on linear multiplicative programming problems. To our knowledge, this is the first heuristic algorithm of its type. The theoretical and algorithmic results given in the article offer some potentially important new avenues for analyzing and solving multiplicative programming problems of various types.     

A Strong Schottky Lemma for Nonpositively Curved Singular Spaces

Motivated by the question of faithfulness of the four-dimensional Burau representation, we study a generalization of the Schottky Lemma which is useful for studying actions on affine buildings.     

Varieties and cohomology of infinitely generated modules

Suppose that k is a field of characteristic p and that G is a finite group having p-rank at least three. Given a regular sequence of length 2 in H*(G, k), we show how to construct an infinitely generated module whose support variety is strictly smaller than the small support of its cohomology. Received: 25 January 2008     

Schur–Weyl duality over finite fields

We prove a version of the Schur–Weyl duality over finite fields. We prove that for any field k, if k has at least r + 1 elements, the Schur–Weyl duality holds for the rth tensor power of a finite dimensional vector space V. Moreover, if the dimension of V is at least r + 1, the natural map ${{k\mathfrak{S}_r \to \mathsf{End}_{{\rm GL}(V)}(V^{\otimes r})}}We prove a version of the Schur–Weyl duality over finite fields. We prove that for any field k, if k has at least r + 1 elements, the Schur–Weyl duality holds for the rth tensor power of a finite dimensional vector space V. Moreover, if the dimension of V is at least r + 1, the natural map k\mathfrakS_r ? End_GL(V)(V^?r){{k\mathfrak{S}_r \to \mathsf{End}_{{\rm GL}(V)}(V^{\otimes r})}} is an isomorphism. This isomorphism may fail if dim _k V is not strictly larger than r.     

The Green Correspondence for Infinitely Generated Modules

If G is a finite group, then the usual version of the Greencorrespondence applies to finitely generated kG-modules whenk is a field of characteristic p > 0 or a p-adic ring. Thepaper presents a categorical version of the Green correspondenceand a version of the Burry–Carlson–Puig theoremthat remain valid for arbitrary modules and coefficient rings.In this generality, however, it is not clear whether the Greencorrespondent of a finitely generated module is always finitelygenerated.     

Noisy Hamiltonian Monte Carlo for Doubly Intractable Distributions

Hamiltonian Monte Carlo (HMC) has been progressively incorporated within the statistician’s toolbox as an alternative sampling method in settings when standard Metropolis–Hastings is inefficient. HMC generates a Markov chain on an augmented state space with transitions based on a deterministic differential flow derived from Hamiltonian mechanics. In practice, the evolution of Hamiltonian systems cannot be solved analytically, requiring numerical integration schemes. Under numerical integration, the resulting approximate solution no longer preserves the measure of the target distribution, therefore an accept–reject step is used to correct the bias. For doubly intractable distributions—such as posterior distributions based on Gibbs random fields—HMC suffers from some computational difficulties: computation of gradients in the differential flow and computation of the accept–reject proposals poses difficulty. In this article, we study the behavior of HMC when these quantities are replaced by Monte Carlo estimates. Supplemental codes for implementing methods used in the article are available online.     

Group homomorphisms inducing isomorphisms in cohomology

In this article, we call a ring R right generalized semiregular if for any a ∈ R there exist two left ideals P, L of R such that lr(a) = P⊕ L, where P ? Ra and Ra ∩ L is small in R. The class of generalized semiregular rings contains all semiregular rings and all AP-injective rings. Some properties of these rings are studied and some results about semiregular rings and AP-injective rings are extended. In addition, we call a ring R semi-π-regular if for any a ∈ R there exist a positive integer n and e ² = e ∈ a ⁿ R such that (1 ? e)a ⁿ  ∈ J(R), the Jacobson radical of R. It is shown that a ring R is semi-π-regular if and only if R/J(R) is π-regular and idempotents can be lifted modulo J(R).