On a risk management analysis of oil spill risk using maritime transportation system simulation

Is it safer for New Orleans river gambling boats to be underway than to be dockside? Is oil transportation risk reduced by lowering wind restrictions from 45 to 35 knots at Hinchinbrook Entrance for laden oil tankers departing Valdez, Alaska? Should the International Safety Management (ISM) code be implemented fleet-wide for the Washington State Ferries in Seattle, or does it make more sense to invest in additional life craft? Can ferry service in San Francisco Bay be expanded in a safe manner to relieve high way congestion? These risk management questions were raised in a series of projects spanning a time frame of more than 10 years. They were addressed using a risk management analysis methodology developed over these years by a consortium of universities. In this paper we shall briefly review this methodology which integrates simulation of Maritime Transportation Systems (MTS) with incident/accident data collection, expert judgment elicitation and a consequence model. We shall describe recent advances with respect to this methodology in more detail. These improvements were made in the context of a two-year oil transportation risk study conducted from 2006?C2008 in the Puget Sound and surrounding waters. An application of this methodology shall be presented comparing the risk reduction effectiveness analysis of a one-way zone, an escorting and a double hull requirement in the same context.     

Maximum distance separable codes over {\mathbb{Z}_4} and {\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_4}

Known upper bounds on the minimum distance of codes over rings are applied to the case of ${\mathbb Z_{2}\mathbb Z_{4}}$ -additive codes, that is subgroups of ${\mathbb Z_{2}^{\alpha}\mathbb Z_{4}^{\beta}}$ . Two kinds of maximum distance separable codes are studied. We determine all possible parameters of these codes and characterize the codes in certain cases. The main results are also valid when ?? = 0, namely for quaternary linear codes.     

Looseness of Plane Graphs

A face of a vertex coloured plane graph is called loose if the number of colours used on its vertices is at least three. The looseness of a plane graph G is the minimum k such that any surjective k-colouring involves a loose face. In this paper we prove that the looseness of a connected plane graph G equals the maximum number of vertex disjoint cycles in the dual graph G* increased by 2. We also show upper bounds on the looseness of graphs based on the number of vertices, the edge connectivity, and the girth of the dual graphs. These bounds improve the result of Negami for the looseness of plane triangulations. We also present infinite classes of graphs where the equalities are attained.     

Limit computable integer parts

Let R be a real closed field. An integer part I for R is a discretely ordered subring such that for every ${r \in R}$ , there exists an ${i \in I}$ so that i ?? r < i?+?1. Mourgues and Ressayre (J Symb Logic 58:641?C647, 1993) showed that every real closed field has an integer part. The procedure of Mourgues and Ressayre appears to be quite complicated. We would like to know whether there is a simple procedure, yielding an integer part that is ${\Delta^0_2(R)}$ ??limit computable relative to R. We show that there is a maximal Z-ring ${I \subseteq R}$ which is ${\Delta^0_2(R)}$ . However, this I may not be an integer part for R. By a result of Wilkie (Logic Colloquium ??77), any Z-ring can be extended to an integer part for some real closed field. Using Wilkie??s ideas, we produce a real closed field R with a Z-ring ${I \subseteq R}$ such that I does not extend to an integer part for R. For a computable real closed field, we do not know whether there must be an integer part in the class ${\Delta^0_2}$ . We know that certain subclasses of ${\Delta^0_2}$ are not sufficient. We show that for each ${n \in \omega}$ , there is a computable real closed field with no n-c.e. integer part. In fact, there is a computable real closed field with no n-c.e. integer part for any n.     

Domain Structure of Bulk Ferromagnetic Crystals in Applied Fields Near Saturation

We investigate the ground state of a uniaxial ferromagnetic plate with perpendicular easy axis and subject to an applied magnetic field normal to the plate. Our interest is in the asymptotic behavior of the energy in macroscopically large samples near the saturation field. We establish the scaling of the critical value of the applied field strength below saturation at which the ground state changes from the uniform to a multidomain magnetization pattern and the leading order scaling behavior of the minimal energy. Furthermore, we derive a reduced sharp interface energy, giving the precise asymptotic behavior of the minimal energy in macroscopically large plates under a physically reasonable assumption of small deviations of the magnetization from the easy axis away from domain walls. On the basis of the reduced energy and by a formal asymptotic analysis near the transition, we derive the precise asymptotic values of the critical field strength at which non-trivial minimizers (either local or global) emerge. The non-trivial minimal energy scaling is achieved by magnetization patterns consisting of long slender needle-like domains of magnetization opposing the applied field.     

Existence and Blow-up for a Parabolic System from?Combustion Theory

We study the stability of the Solid Fuel Model, which represents a thermal reaction of a solid material. This model corresponds to a nonlinear eigenvalue problem of two strongly coupled nonlinear reaction–diffusion equations, with different boundary conditions on each unknown. We obtain a strong bifurcation criterion for the steady problem and estimates for the blow-up time in the unsteady case. In addition, numerical solutions of both the steady and unsteady problem are presented to illustrate the results.     

Bifurcation of Hyperbolic Planforms

Motivated by a model for the perception of textures by the visual cortex in primates, we analyze the bifurcation of periodic patterns for nonlinear equations describing the state of a system defined on the space of structure tensors, when these equations are further invariant with respect to the isometries of this space. We show that the problem reduces to a bifurcation problem in the hyperbolic plane D\mathcal {D} (Poincaré disc). We make use of the concept of a periodic lattice in D\mathcal {D} to further reduce the problem to one on a compact Riemann surface D/\varGamma\mathcal {D}/\varGamma, where Γ is a cocompact, torsion-free Fuchsian group. The knowledge of the symmetry group of this surface allows us to use the machinery of equivariant bifurcation theory. Solutions which generically bifurcate are called “H-planforms”, by analogy with the “planforms” introduced for pattern formation in Euclidean space. This concept is applied to the case of an octagonal periodic pattern, where we are able to classify all possible H-planforms satisfying the hypotheses of the Equivariant Branching Lemma. These patterns are, however, not straightforward to compute, even numerically, and in the last section we describe a method for computation illustrated with a selection of images of octagonal H-planforms.     

Minimizing and maximizing the Euclidean norm of the product of two polynomials

We consider the problem of minimizing or maximizing the quotient $$f_{m,n}(p,q):=\frac{\|{pq}\|}{\|{p}\|\|{q}\|} \ ,$$ where $p=p_0+p_1x+\dots+p_mx^m$ , $q=q_0+q_1x+\dots+q_nx^n\in{\mathbb K}[x]$ , ${\mathbb K}\in\{{\mathbb R},{\mathbb C}\}$ , are non-zero real or complex polynomials of maximum degree $m,n\in{\mathbb N}$ respectively and $\|{p}\|:=(|p_0|^2+\dots+|p_m|^2)^{\frac{1}{2}}$ is simply the Euclidean norm of the polynomial coefficients. Clearly f _m,n is bounded and assumes its maximum and minimum values min f _m,n ?=?f _m,n (p _min, q _min) and max f _m,n ?=?f(p _max, q _max). We prove that minimizers p _min, q _min for ${\mathbb K}={\mathbb C}$ and maximizers p _max, q _max for arbitrary ${\mathbb K}$ fulfill $\deg(p_{\min})=m=\deg(p_{\max})$ , $\deg(q_{\min})=n=\deg(q_{\max})$ and all roots of p _min, q _min, p _max, q _max have modulus one and are simple. For ${\mathbb K}={\mathbb R}$ we can only prove the existence of minimizers p _min, q _min of full degree m and n respectively having roots of modulus one. These results are obtained by transferring the optimization problem to that of determining extremal eigenvalues and corresponding eigenvectors of autocorrelation Toeplitz matrices. By the way we give lower bounds for min f _m,n for real polynomials which are slightly better than the known ones and inclusions for max f _m,n .     

Finite-element based sparse approximate inverses for block-factorized preconditioners

In this work we analyse a method to construct numerically efficient and computationally cheap sparse approximations of some of the matrix blocks arising in the block-factorized preconditioners for matrices with a two-by-two block structure. The matrices arise from finite element discretizations of partial differential equations. We consider scalar elliptic problems, however the approach is appropriate also for other types of problems such as parabolic problems or systems of equations. The technique is applicable for both selfadjoint and non-selfadjoint problems, in two as well as in three space dimensions. We analyse in detail the two-dimensional case and provide extensive numerical evidence for the efficiency of the proposed matrix approximations, both serial and parallel. Two- and three-dimensional tests are included.     

Optimal Embeddings of Spaces of Generalized Smoothness in the Critical Case

We study necessary and sufficient conditions for embeddings of Besov and Triebel-Lizorkin spaces of generalized smoothness B^(n/p,Y)_p,q(\mathbbRⁿ)B^{(n/p,\Psi)}_{p,q}(\mathbb{R}^{n}) and F^(n/p,Y)_p,q(\mathbbRⁿ)F^{(n/p,\Psi)}_{p,q}(\mathbb{R}^{n}), respectively, into generalized H?lder spaces L_￥,r^m(·)( \mathbb Rⁿ)\Lambda_{\infty,r}^{\mu(\cdot)}(\ensuremath {\ensuremath {\mathbb {R}}^{n}}). In particular, we are able to characterize optimal embeddings for this class of spaces provided q>1. These results improve the embedding assertions given by the continuity envelopes of B^(n/p,Y)_p,q(\mathbbRⁿ)B^{(n/p,\Psi)}_{p,q}(\mathbb{R}^{n}) and F^(n/p,Y)_p,q(\mathbbRⁿ)F^{(n/p,\Psi)}_{p,q}(\mathbb{R}^{n}), which were obtained recently solving an open problem of D.D. Haroske in the classical setting.