Counting unrooted maps on the plane

A planar map is a 2-cell embedding of a connected planar graph, loops and parallel edges allowed, on the sphere. A plane map is a planar map with a distinguished outside (“infinite”) face. An unrooted map is an equivalence class of maps under orientation-preserving homeomorphism, and a rooted map is a map with a distinguished oriented edge. Previously we obtained formulae for the number of unrooted planar n-edge maps of various classes, including all maps, non-separable maps, eulerian maps and loopless maps. In this article, using the same technique we obtain closed formulae for counting unrooted plane maps of all these classes and their duals. The corresponding formulae for rooted maps are known to be all sum-free; the formulae that we obtain for unrooted maps contain only a sum over the divisors of n. We count also unrooted two-vertex plane maps.     

Zinn und Antimon in Legierungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Restructuring ordered binary trees

We consider the problem of restructuring an ordered binary tree T, preserving the in-order sequence of its nodes, so as to reduce its height to some target value h. Such a restructuring necessarily involves the downward displacement of some of the nodes of T. Our results, focusing both on the maximum displacement over all nodes and on the maximum displacement over leaves only, provide (i) an explicit tradeoff between the worst-case displacement and the height restriction (including a family of trees that exhibit the worst-case displacements) and (ii) efficient algorithms to achieve height-restricted restructuring while minimizing the maximum node displacement.     

Block transitive Steiner systems with more than one point orbit

For all ‘reasonable’ finite t, k, and s, we construct a t‐(?₀, k, 1) design and a group of automorphisms which is transitive on blocks and has s orbits on points. In particular, there is a 2‐(?0, 4, 1) design with a block‐transitive group of automorphisms having two point orbits. This answers a question of P. J. Cameron and C. E. Praeger. The construction is presented in a purely combinatorial way, but is a by‐product of a new way of looking at a model‐theoretic construction of E. Hrushovski. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

A Generally Covariant Wave Equation for Grand Unified Field Theory

A generally covariant wave equation is derived geometrically for grand unified field theory. The equation states most generally that the covariant d'Alembertian acting on the vielbein vanishes for the four fields which are thought to exist in nature: gravitation, electromagnetism, weak field and strong field. The various known field equations are derived from the wave equation when the vielbein is the eigenfunction. When the wave equation is applied to gravitation the wave equation is the eigenequation of wave mechanics corresponding to Einstein's field equation in classical mechanics, the vielbein eigenfunction playing the role of the quantized gravitational field. The three Newton laws, Newton's law of universal gravitation, and the Poisson equation are recovered in the classical and nonrelativistic, weak-field limits of the quantized gravitational field. The single particle wave-equation and Klein-Gordon equations are recovered in the relativistic, weak-field limit of the wave equation when scalar components are considered of the vielbein eigenfunction of the quantized gravitational field. The Schrödinger equation is recovered in the non-relativistec, weak-field limit of the Klein-Gordon equation). The Dirac equation is recovered in this weak-field limit of the quantized gravitational field (the nonrelativistic limit of the relativistic, quantezed gravitational field when the vielbein plays the role of the spinor. The wave and field equations of O(3) electrodynamics are recovered when the vielbein becomes the relativistic dreibein (triad) eigenfunction whose three orthonormal space indices become identified with the three complex circular indices (1), (2), (3), and whose four spacetime indices are the indices of non-Euclidean spacetime (the base manifold). This dreibein is the potential dreibein of the O(3) electromagnetic field (an electromagnetic potential four-vector for each index (1), (2), (3)). The wave equation of the parity violating weak field is recovered when the orthonormal space indices of the relativistic dreibein eigenfunction are identified with the indices of the three massive weak field bosons. The wave equation of the strong field is recovered when the orthonormal space indices of the relativistic vielbein eigenfunction become the eight indices defined by the group generators of the SU (3) group.     

Isosteres of peptides: boron analogs as dipolar forms of α‐amino acids – a theoretical study

Modification of peptides to produce peptidomimetics is of great interest, with the aim of designing potent, selective, and metabolically stable analogs having certain conformational properties. Organoboranes have been reported in the literature with a wide range of therapeutic applications. One of the therapeutically important class of molecules is amine‐carboxyboranes derived from amino acids by replacement of the Cα atom of an amino acid/peptide by boron. The conformational preferences of these peptides, with respect to backbone ω, ?, and ψ torsion angles, have been investigated by theoretical calculations. The amide bond in these molecules has the same geometry in the ground and transition states as the natural peptides. However, the boron isosteres of glycine and alanine peptides are less structured than their natural derivatives, but are distinguished by structures with a positive value for the ? angle, which is normally disfavored for natural peptides. This property could be used to build peptides with a geometry not usually seen in natural peptides. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On worst-case aggregation analysis for network location problems

Network location problems occur when new facilities must be located on a network, and the network distances between new and existing facilities are important. In urban, regional, or geographic contexts, there may be hundreds of thousands (or more) of existing facilities, in which case it is common to aggregate existing facilities, e.g. represent all the existing facility locations in a zip code area by a centroid. This aggregation makes the size of the problem more manageable for data collection and data processing purposes, as well as for purposes of analysis; at the same time, it introduces errors, and results in an approximating location problem being solved. There seems to be relatively little theory for doing aggregation, or evaluating the results of aggregation; most approaches are based on experimentation or computational studies. We propose a theory that has the potential to improve the means available for doing aggregation.This research was supported in part by the National Science Foundation, Grant No. DDM-9023392.