On a characterization of orthogonality with respect to particular sequences of random variables in <Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis><Superscript>2</Superscript>

This note deals with the orthogonality between sequences of random variables. The main idea of the note is to apply the results on equidistant systems of points in a Hilbert space to the case of the space L ²(Ω, F, ℙ) of real square integrable random variables. The main result gives a necessary and sufficient condition for a particular sequence of random variables (elements of which are taken from sets of equidistant elements of L ²(Ω, F, ℙ) to be orthogonal to some other sequence in L ²(Ω, F, ℙ). The result obtained is interesting from the point of view of the time series analysis, since it can be applied to a class of sequences random variables that exhibit a monotonically increasing variance. An application to ergodic theorem is also provided.     

New Results on Rational Approximation

Results in Mathematics - First asymptotic relations of Voronovskaya-type for rational operators of Shepard-type are shown. A positive answer in some senses to a problem on the pointwise...     

Integral points, divisibility between values of polynomials and entire curves on surfaces

We prove some new degeneracy results for integral points and entire curves on surfaces; in particular, we provide the first examples, to our knowledge, of a simply connected smooth variety whose sets of integral points are never Zariski-dense. Some of our results are connected with divisibility problems, i.e. the problem of describing the integral points in the plane where the values of some given polynomials in two variables divide the values of other given polynomials.     

On the operations of sequences in rings and binomial type sequences

Given a commutative ring with identity R, many different and interesting operations can be defined over the set \(H_R\) of sequences of elements in R. These operations can also give \(H_R\) the structure of a ring. We study some of these operations, focusing on the binomial convolution product and the operation induced by the composition of exponential generating functions. We provide new relations between these operations and their invertible elements. We also study automorphisms of the Hurwitz series ring, highlighting that some well-known transforms of sequences (such as the Stirling transform) are special cases of these automorphisms. Moreover, we introduce a novel isomorphism between \(H_R\) equipped with the componentwise sum and the set of the sequences starting with 1 equipped with the binomial convolution product. Finally, thanks to this isomorphism, we find a new method for characterizing and generating all the binomial type sequences.

     

Fuzzy ontology representation using OWL 2

The need to deal with vague information in Semantic Web languages is rising in importance and, thus, calls for a standard way to represent such information. We may address this issue by either extending current Semantic Web languages to cope with vagueness, or by providing a procedure to represent such information within current standard languages and tools. In this work, we follow the latter approach, by identifying the syntactic differences that a fuzzy ontology language has to cope with, and by proposing a concrete methodology to represent fuzzy ontologies using OWL 2 annotation properties. We also report on some prototypical implementations: a plug-in to edit fuzzy ontologies using OWL 2 annotations and some parsers that translate fuzzy ontologies represented using our methodology into the languages supported by some reasoners.     

On the distribution of the (un)bounded sum of random variables

We propose a general treatment of random variables aggregation accounting for the dependence among variables and bounded or unbounded support of their sum. The approach is based on the extension to the concept of convolution to dependent variables, involving copula functions. We show that some classes of copula functions (such as Marshall-Olkin and elliptical) cannot be used to represent the dependence structure of two variables whose sum is bounded, while Archimedean copulas can be applied only if the generator becomes linear beyond some point. As for the application, we study the problem of capital allocation between risks when the sum of losses is bounded.     

Encoding Individual Source Sequences for the Wiretap Channel

We consider the problem of encoding a deterministic source sequence (i.e., individual sequence) for the degraded wiretap channel by means of an encoder and decoder that can both be implemented as finite-state machines. Our first main result is a necessary condition for both reliable and secure transmission in terms of the given source sequence, the bandwidth expansion factor, the secrecy capacity, the number of states of the encoder and the number of states of the decoder. Equivalently, this necessary condition can be presented as a converse bound (i.e., a lower bound) on the smallest achievable bandwidth expansion factor. The bound is asymptotically achievable by Lempel–Ziv compression followed by good channel coding for the wiretap channel. Given that the lower bound is saturated, we also derive a lower bound on the minimum necessary rate of purely random bits needed for local randomness at the encoder in order to meet the security constraint. This bound too is achieved by the same achievability scheme. Finally, we extend the main results to the case where the legitimate decoder has access to a side information sequence, which is another individual sequence that may be related to the source sequence, and a noisy version of the side information sequence leaks to the wiretapper.