Piecewise Deterministic Markov Control Processes with Feedback Controls and Unbounded Costs

The control of piecewise-deterministic processes is studied where only local boundedness of the data is assumed. Moreover the discount rate may be zero. The value function is shown to be solution to the Bellman equation in a weak sense; however the solution concept is strong enough to generate optimal policies. Continuity and compactness conditions are given for the existence of nonrelaxed optimal feedback controls.     

Synthesis of paramagnetic BODIPY dyes as new double (spin and fluorescence) sensors

Paramagnetic pyrroline and 1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine derivatives of BODIPY and their diamagnetic analogs have been synthesized and characterized as novel redox double sensor and cation sensitive reagents.     

Appropriate problems for learning and for performing—an issue for teacher training

Selecting, modifying or creating appropriate problems for mathematics class has become an activity of increaing importance in the professional development of German mathematics teachers. But rather than asking in general: “What is a good problem?” there should be a stronger emphasis on considering the specific goal of a problem, e.g.: “What are the ingredients that make a problem appropriate for initiating a learning process” or “What are the characteristics that make a problem appropriate for its use in a central test?” We propose a guiding scheme for teachers that turns out to be especially helpful, since the newly introduced orientation on outcome standards a) leads to a critical predominance of test items and b) expects teachers to design adequate problems for specific learning processes (e.g. problem solving, reasoning and modelling activities).     

Recombination of Au25+ with free electrons at low energies

The origin of the widely observed enhancement of rates for electron-ion recombination at very low energies is still unknown. We investigated the recombination of Au²⁵⁺ with free electrons in a merged-beams experiment at the UNILAC accelerator of the GSI in Darmstadt. At E _rel= 0 eV we found an enormous enhancement factor of 365 compared to the theory of radiative recombination. An increase of the electron density by a factor of 10 had not much influence on the measured rate coefficient. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The Witt ring of a Brauer–Severi variety

For a Brauer–Severi variety X over a field k of characteristic not two, every symmetric bilinear space over X up to Witt equivalence is defined over k. Received: 2 February 1998     

Anisotropic transport of charge and complexified duality

Charge transport in two dimensions provides an ideal laboratory for investigating parameter space geometries. The Onsager relations for anisotropic transport in a parity-violating external field endow these spaces with a highly nontrivial complex (and Kähler) structure, which can be given a simple geometrical interpretation. A large class of Coulomb gases exhibiting this structure have a generalized Kramers-Wannier symmetry (complexfield duality) which is contained in the modular group. Knowledge of this symmetry and the degrees of freedom encoded in the Coulomb gas appear to be sufficient to determine the global phase diagram and the renormalization group fixed-point structure, including the critical exponents. This accounts for all the scaling behavior observed so far in the quantum Hall system.