<Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>,<Emphasis Type="Italic">t</Emphasis>-Fuß–Catalan numbers for finite reflection groups

In type A, the q,t-Fuß–Catalan numbers can be defined as the bigraded Hilbert series of a module associated to the symmetric group. We generalize this construction to (finite) complex reflection groups and, based on computer experiments, we exhibit several conjectured algebraic and combinatorial properties of these polynomials with nonnegative integer coefficients. We prove the conjectures for the dihedral groups and for the cyclic groups. Finally, we present several ideas on how the q,t-Fuß–Catalan numbers could be related to some graded Hilbert series of modules arising in the context of rational Cherednik algebras and thereby generalize known connections.     

Self-affine convex polygons

A polygon in ${{\mathbb R}^2}$ is called self-affine if it can be dissected into k ≥ 2 affine images of itself. Self-affine convex polygons have at most five vertices. Triangles are trivially self-affine. It is shown that every convex quadrangle is self-affine, whereas only some, but not all convex pentagons are self-affine.     

Oriented Mixed Area and Discrete Minimal Surfaces

Recently a curvature theory for polyhedral surfaces has been established, which associates with each face a mean curvature value computed from areas and mixed areas of that face and its corresponding Gauss image face. Therefore a study of minimal surfaces requires studying pairs of polygons with vanishing mixed area. We show that the mixed area of two edgewise parallel polygons equals the mixed area of a derived polygon pair which has only the half number of vertices. Thus we are able to recursively characterize vanishing mixed area for hexagons and other n-gons in an incidence-geometric way. We use these geometric results for the construction of discrete minimal surfaces and a study of equilibrium forces in their edges, especially those with the combinatorics of a hexagonal mesh.     

Birational modifications of surfaces via unprojections

We describe elementary transformations between minimal models of rational surfaces in terms of unprojections. These do not fit into the framework of Kustin–Miller unprojections as introduced by Papadakis and Reid, since we have to leave the world of projectively Gorenstein varieties. Also, our unprojections do not depend on the choice of the unprojection locus only, but need extra data corresponding to the choice of a divisor on this unprojection locus.     

Generalized discrete autoregressive moving‐average models

This article proposes the generalized discrete autoregressive moving‐average (GDARMA) model as a parsimonious and universally applicable approach for stationary univariate or multivariate time series. The GDARMA model can be applied to any type of quantitative time series. It allows to compute moment properties in a unique way, and it exhibits the autocorrelation structure of the traditional ARMA model. This great flexibility is obtained by using data‐specific variation operators, which is illustrated for the most common types of time series data, such as counts, integers, reals, and compositional data. The practical potential of the GDARMA approach is demonstrated by considering a time series of integers regarding votes for a change of the interest rate, and a time series of compositional data regarding television market shares.     

Resonance in viscous film flow over topography

We study viscous gravity-driven films flowing over periodically undulated substrates. Linear analysis describes resonance in steady flow along small bottom corrugations for films of arbitrary thickness. Depending on the dimensionless film thickness we find different regimes for the resonance, which is associated with the interaction of the undulated film with capillarygravity waves traveling against the flow. Nonlinear resonance produces higher harmonics and bistable resonance. The higher harmonics are due to higher harmonics resonance and due to the nonlinear coupling to lower harmonics. For the bistable resonance we derive a minimum model showing that the bistability corresponds essentially to that of the driven Duffing oscillator. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A novel class of thermodynamically consistent isotropic hardening rules for some damage models at finite strains

This paper proposes isotropic hardening rules for plasticity damage models which satisfy the 2nd law of thermodynamics. Here, the Gurson -model modified by Tvergaard/Needleman is used as a prototype model for finite strains to discuss main properties of the novel hardening rules. Additionally it is shown that thermodynamically consistent rules are suitable to fit experimental data. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Thermomechanical behavior of pseudoelastic NiTi shape memory alloys

The thermomechanical behavior of polycrystalline Ni-rich pseudoelastic NiTi shape memory alloys is analyzed. Special focus is on regions within the stress strain diagram which are regarded as linear elastic in common phenomenological material models, i.e. the region between zero stress and the beginning of the pseudoelastic plateau as well as the region within the hysteresis. In both cases, severe temperature changes can be observed. A possible explanation for this effect is twofold: On the one hand, it might be explained by the presence of an R-phase transformation. On the other hand, unstructured martensite of the B19' phase may form. However, the assumption of a purely thermo-elastic material behavior in those regions does not seem to hold true in general. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

High-frequency volume and boundary acoustic backscatter fluctuations in shallow water

Volume and boundary acoustic backscatter envelope fluctuations are characterized from data collected by the Toroidal Volume Search Sonar (TVSS), a 68 kHz cylindrical array capable of 360 degrees multibeam imaging in the vertical plane perpendicular to its axis. The data are processed to form acoustic backscatter images of the seafloor, sea surface, and horizontal and vertical planes in the volume, which are used to attribute nonhomogeneous spatial distributions of zooplankton, fish, bubbles and bubble clouds, and multiple boundary interactions to the observed backscatter amplitude statistics. Three component Rayleigh mixture probability distribution functions (PDFs) provided the best fit to the empirical distribution functions of seafloor acoustic backscatter. Sea surface and near-surface volume acoustic backscatter PDFs are better described by Rayleigh mixture or log-normal distributions, with the high density portion of the distributions arising from boundary reverberation, and the tails arising from nonhomogeneously distributed scatterers such as bubbles, fish, and zooplankton. PDF fits to the volume and near-surface acoustic backscatter data are poor compared to PDF fits to the boundary backscatter, suggesting that these data may be better described by mixture distributions with component densities from different parametric families. For active sonar target detection, the results demonstrate that threshold detectors which assume Rayleigh distributed envelope fluctuations will experience significantly higher false alarm rates in shallow water environments which are influenced by near-surface microbubbles, aggregations of zooplankton and fish, and boundary reverberation.     

Global Convergence of a Nonlinear Programming Method Using Convex Approximations

The method of moving asymptotes (MMA) and its globally convergent extension SCP (sequential convex programming) are known to work well for certain problems arising in structural optimization. In this paper, the methods are extended for a general mathematical programming framework and a new scheme to update certain penalty parameters is defined, which leads to a considerable improvement in the performance. Properties of the approximation functions are outlined in detail. All convergence results of the traditional methods are preserved.