Homology of Lagrangian submanifolds in cotangent bundles

In this paper we find homological restrictions on Lagrangians in cotangent bundles of spheres and Lens spaces. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grand No. 205/02).     

Multi-Item Scheduling by Benders' Decomposition

Scheduling the production of several items requires the determination of production quantities in different periods in the presence of resource constraints. Several approximate and heuristic algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem. However, no method for finding an optimal solution has as yet been developed. It is shown that the problem may be solved advantageously using Benders' decomposition. The subproblem in Benders' decomposition is shown to be a transportation problem, and some strategies for solving the master problem are indicated. The paper concludes with a sample problem demonstrating the application of the method.     

On the group extension of the transformation associated to non-archimedean continued fractions

Summary Let F_q be a finite field with q elements. We consider formal Laurent series of F_q -coefficients with their continued fraction expansions by F_q -polynomials. We prove some arithmetic properties for almost every formal Laurent series with respect to the Haar measure. We construct a group extension of the non-archimedean continued fraction transformation and show its ergodicity. Then we get some results as an application of the individual ergodic theorem. We also discuss the convergence rate for limit behaviors.     

Lagrangian flows: The dynamics of globally minimizing orbits

The objective of this note is to present some results, to be proved in a forthcoming paper, about certain special solutions of the Euler-Lagrange equations on closed manifolds. Our main results extend to time dependent periodic Lagrangians with minor modifications.We have chosen the autonomous case because this formally simpler framework allows to reach more easily the core of our concepts and results. Moreover the autonomous case exhibits certain special features involving the energy as a first integral that deserve special attention. They are closely related to the link found by Carneiro [C] between the energy and Mather's action function [Ma].Reprinted by permission of Addison Wesley Longman Ltd.     

Diffusing particles with electrostatic repulsion

Summary. We study a diffusion model of an interacting particles system with general drift and diffusion coefficients, and electrostatic inter-particles repulsion. More precisely, the finite particle system is shown to be well defined thanks to recent results on multivalued stochastic differential equations (see [2]), and then we consider the behaviour of this system when the number of particles goes to infinity (through the empirical measure process). In the particular case of affine drift and constant diffusion coefficient, we prove that a limiting measure-valued process exists and is the unique solution of a deterministic PDE. Our treatment of the convergence problem (as ) is partly similar to that of T. Chan [3] and L.C.G. Rogers - Z. Shi [5], except we consider here a more general case allowing collisions between particles, which leads to a second-order limiting PDE. Received: 5 August 1996 / In revised form: 17 October 1996     

Vector potential theory on nonsmooth domains in R<Superscript>3</Superscript> and applications to electromagnetic scattering

We study boundary value problems for the time-harmonic form of the Maxwell equations, as well as for other related systems of equations, on arbitrary Lipschitz domains in the three-dimensional Euclidean space. The main goal is to develop the corresponding theory for L^p-integrable bounday data for optimal values of p's. We also discuss a number of relevant applications in electromagnetic scattering.     

Success and survival of operational research groups—A review

Operational Research groups were established in private and public sector organizations following on from their success supporting the military in the Second World War. In the early years their numbers grew rapidly but by the mid-1970s evidence started to accumulate that they were being viewed less favourably. Many organizations chose not to set up OR groups. Established groups were closed down or dispersed to operating units in organizations, particularly during the recessionary periods. In 1993 following on the closures of some major OR groups in the UK, the Operational Research Society decided to fund research to examine those factors influencing a group's success and survival. This review, which forms part of the research, first examines the history of OR groups in the UK and North America, arguing that in practice they were one of a number of internal organizational consultancies. As such they were judged by their competitive performance. Despite the intent of the founding fathers of OR many groups found their scope was limited to mainly tactical problems using analytical model based approaches although there were exceptions that were successful in making major contributions at the strategic level also. Within their chosen fields of activity however many groups flourished whilst some failed. This review presents a comprehensive list of influences on success and survival. They include changes in the external environment, together with shifts in managerial style and culture, organizational factors, and the OR group itself. The review concludes that, while OR groups can do much to protect themselves from closure, organizational changes within a hostile managerial culture demand a creative response that acknowledges new requirements. Areas where an OR group has greatest influence over its effectiveness include its leadership and personnel, project balance and management. In addition, to be successful OR groups need to positively develop and market their services in an increasingly competitive managerial climate.     

Twistor Geometry for Hyperkähler Metrics on Complex Adjoint Orbits

We study the hyperkähler geometry of complex adjoint orbits from the point of view of twistor theory. We introduce, for complex semisimple adjoint orbits, the associated spectral curve and construct the twistor space as a union of certain regular adjoint orbits; we also exhibit the family of twistor lines. Furthermore, we show how our methods may be applied for describing hyperkähler metrics associated to more general spectral curves. In particular, we give an algebraic characterisation of the twistor lines.     

Unreasonable effectiveness of symmetry in physics

We prove that in some reasonable sense, every possible physical law can be reformulated in terms of symmetries. This result explains the well-known success of the group-theoretic approach in physics.     

Development of high-speed video cameras for Dynamic PIV

The most promising next generation Image Velocimtry (IV) is the high-speed Dynamic PIV. It requires the development of innovative high-speed video camera sensors. We started by specifying the required performance of these new sensors, for measurements in air and water flows. These criteria founded on the most recent developments in PIV algorithms and incorporate results from a large questionnaire survey of users of high-speed video cameras in Japan. The results suggest that the followings are required: (1) frame rate of 1,000,000 fps, (2) pixel count of 1,000,000 pixels, (3) frame storage capacity of 100–200 frames for tracing a single event and 10,000 frames for turbulent measurements, (4) gray levels of 4–8 bits for PTV; 12 bits for observation. Finally, we reviewed the state of the art of high-speed video-image sensors. Currently the standard parallel-readout sensors can operate at 1 Kfps with a pixel count of approximately 1 Kpixels. The In-situ Storage Image Sensor (ISIS) developed by the authors has recently achieved frame rates of 1 Mfps.