Design of a Composite Membrane with Patches

This paper is concerned with minimization and maximization problems of eigenvalues. The principal eigenvalue of a differential operator is minimized or maximized over a set which is formed by intersecting a rearrangement class with an affine subspace of finite co-dimension. A solution represents an optimal design of a 2-dimensional composite membrane Ω, fixed at the boundary, built out of two different materials, where certain prescribed regions (patches) in Ω are occupied by both materials. We prove existence results, and present some features of optimal solutions. The special case of one patch is treated in detail.     

Unprecedented Diastereoselective Arylogous Michael Addition of Unactivated Phthalides

The first highly enantioselective arylogous Michael reaction (AMR) of 3-unsubstituted phthalides has been described. This phase-transfer methodology, which uses catalytic amounts of KOH/18-crown-6 catalyst in mesitylene in the presence of N,O-bis(trimethylsilyl)acetamide (BSA), gives access to a broad range of 3-monosubstituted phthalides with high levels of syn diastereoselectivity and good yields, starting from 3-unsubstituted derivatives and diverse α,β-unsaturated carbonyl compounds. The reaction also applies to unactivated 3-alkyl phthalides to afford 3,3-dialkyl derivatives. A plausible mechanism has been suggested. DFT analysis of possible transition states gives a rationale of the high syn diastereoselectivity observed and its correlation with the solvent's dielectric constant.     

Parallel and totally geodesic hypersurfaces of non-reductive homogeneous four-manifolds

We classify totally geodesic and parallel hypersurfaces of four-dimensional non-reductive homogeneous pseudo-Riemannian manifolds.     

Some trends in the theory of groups with finitely many normalizers

Ricerche di Matematica - This paper provides an account of results and methods from the theory of infinite groups admitting only finitely many normalizers of subgroups with a given property. Some...     

Necessary conditions and non-existence results for autonomous nonconvex variational problems

Classical one-dimensional, autonomous Lagrange problems are considered. In absence of any smoothness, convexity or coercivity condition on the energy density, we prove a DuBois-Reymond type necessary condition, expressed as a differential inclusion involving the subdifferential of convex analysis. As a consequence, a non-existence result is obtained.     

The location of median paths on grid graphs

In this paper we consider the location of a path shaped facility on a grid graph. In the literature this problem was extensively studied on particular classes of graphs as trees or series-parallel graphs. We consider here the problem of finding a path which minimizes the sum of the (shortest) distances from it to the other vertices of the grid, where the path is also subject to an additional constraint that takes the form either of the length of the path or of the cardinality. We study the complexity of these problems and we find two polynomial time algorithms for two special cases, with time complexity of O(n) and O(nℓ) respectively, where n is the number of vertices of the grid and ℓ is the cardinality of the path to be located. The literature about locating dimensional facilities distinguishes between the location of extensive facilities in continuous spaces and network facility location. We will show that the problems presented here have a close connection with continuous dimensional facility problems, so that the procedures provided can also be useful for solving some open problems of dimensional facilities location in the continuous case.     

Spin dynamics from time-dependent spin-density-functional theory

We derive the spin-wave dynamics of a magnetic material from the time-dependent spin-density-functional theory in the linear response regime. The equation of motion for the magnetization includes, besides the static spin stiffness, a "Berry curvature" correction and a damping term. A gradient expansion scheme based on the homogeneous spin-polarized electron gas is proposed for the latter two quantities, and the first few coefficients of the expansion are calculated to second order in the Coulomb interaction.     

An Extended Ant Colony Algorithm and Its Convergence Analysis

In this work, we propose a stochastic algorithm for solving combinatorial optimization problems. The procedure is formulated within the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) framework, and extends the so-called Graph-based Ant System with time-dependent evaporation factor, (GBAS/tdev) studied in Gutjahr (2002). In particular, we consider an ACO search procedure which also takes into account the objective function value. We provide a rigorous theoretical study on the convergence of the proposed algorithm. Further, for a toy example, we compare by simulation the rate of convergence of the proposed algorithm with those from the Random Search (RS) and from the corresponding procedure in Gutjahr (2002).AMS 2000 Subject Classification: 9OC15, 9OC27     

Microscopic models for welfare measures addressing a reduction of economic inequality

We formulate a flexible micro‐to‐macro kinetic model which is able to explain the emergence of income profiles out of a whole of individual economic interactions. The model is expressed by a system of several nonlinear differential equations which involve parameters defined by probabilities. Society is described as an ensemble of individuals divided into income classes; the individuals exchange money through binary and ternary interactions, leaving the total wealth unchanged. The ternary interactions represent taxation and redistribution effects. Dynamics is investigated through computational simulations, the focus being on the effects that different fiscal policies and differently weighted welfare policies have on the long‐run income distributions. The model provides a tool which may contribute to the identification of the most effective actions toward a reduction of economic inequality. We find for instance that, under certain hypotheses, the Gini index is more affected by a policy of reduction of the welfare and subsidies for the rich classes than by an increase of the upper tax rate. Such a policy also has the effect of slightly increasing the total tax revenue. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Complexity 21: 89–98, 2016