A topological aspect of Sobolev mappings

Let be a connected open set, . We give a sufficient condition for a mapping , , to have the property that sgn is almost everywhere of one sign. Following the work of Müller, Spector, and Tang [MST], we give an application of our results to the theory of non-linear elasticity. Received: 13 October 2000 / Accepted: 23 January 2001 / Published online: 4 May 2001     

Aliasing Effects and Sampling Theorems of Spherical Random Fields when Sampled on a Finite Grid

Aliasing effects are investigated for spherical random fields sampled on a finite grid. Using the spherical harmonics expansion, it is shown that for a band-limited spherical random field its trend and spectrum can be uniquely reconstructed from the sampled field if the sampling points are judiciously designed. Analytical expressions are also obtained for aliasing errors in the trend and the spectrum when the field is not band-limited.     

An expanding cavity model incorporating strain-hardening and indentation size effects

An expanding cavity model (ECM) for determining indentation hardness of elastic strain-hardening plastic materials is developed. The derivation is based on a strain gradient plasticity solution for an internally pressurized thick-walled spherical shell of an elastic power-law hardening material. Closed-form formulas are provided for both conical and spherical indentations. The indentation radius enters these formulas with its own dimensional identity, unlike that in classical plasticity based ECMs where indentation geometrical parameters appear only in non-dimensional forms. As a result, the newly developed ECM can capture the indentation size effect. The formulas explicitly show that indentation hardness depends on Young’s modulus, yield stress, strain-hardening exponent and strain gradient coefficient of the indented material as well as on the geometry of the indenter. The new model reduces to existing classical plasticity based ECMs (including Johnson’s ECM for elastic–perfectly plastic materials) when the strain gradient effect is not considered. The numerical results obtained using the newly developed model reveal that the hardness is indeed indentation size dependent when the indentation radius is very small: the smaller the indentation, the larger the hardness. Also, the indentation hardness is seen to increase with the Young’s modulus and strain-hardening level of the indented material for both conical and spherical indentations. The strain-hardening effect on the hardness is observed to be significant for materials having strong strain-hardening characteristics. In addition, it is found that the indentation hardness increases with decreasing cone angle of the conical indenter or decreasing radius of the spherical indenter. These trends agree with existing experimental observations and model predictions.     

Sobolev bounds on functions with scattered zeros, with applications to radial basis function surface fitting

In this paper we discuss Sobolev bounds on functions that vanish at scattered points in a bounded, Lipschitz domain that satisfies a uniform interior cone condition. The Sobolev spaces involved may have fractional as well as integer order. We then apply these results to obtain estimates for continuous and discrete least squares surface fits via radial basis functions (RBFs). These estimates include situations in which the target function does not belong to the native space of the RBF.

     

Nonparametric estimation of distributions with categorical and continuous data

In this paper we consider the problem of estimating an unknown joint distribution which is defined over mixed discrete and continuous variables. A nonparametric kernel approach is proposed with smoothing parameters obtained from the cross-validated minimization of the estimator's integrated squared error. We derive the rate of convergence of the cross-validated smoothing parameters to their ‘benchmark’ optimal values, and we also establish the asymptotic normality of the resulting nonparametric kernel density estimator. Monte Carlo simulations illustrate that the proposed estimator performs substantially better than the conventional nonparametric frequency estimator in a range of settings. The simulations also demonstrate that the proposed approach does not suffer from known limitations of the likelihood cross-validation method which breaks down with commonly used kernels when the continuous variables are drawn from fat-tailed distributions. An empirical application demonstrates that the proposed method can yield superior predictions relative to commonly used parametric models.     

Computational and algorithmic aspects of cardinal spline-wavelets

Pascal triangles are formulated for computing the coefficients of the B-spline series representation of the compactly supported spline-wavelets with minimum support and their derivatives. It is shown that with the alternating signs removed, all these sequences are totally positive. On the other hand, truncations of the reciprocal Euler-Frobenius polynomials lead to finite sequences for orthogonal wavelet decompositions. For this purpose, sharp estimates are given in terms of the exact reconstruction of these approximate decomposed components. Research supported by NSF Grant DMS 89-0-01345 and ARO Contract No. DAAL 03-90-G-0091.     

Forcing Linearity Numbers of Semisimple Modules over Integral Domains

In this paper we determine the forcing linearity numbers for semisimple modules over integral domains.     

A study of the polymerization of styrene initiated by K-THF-GIC system

In this paper, the polymerization of styrene initiated by potassium (K)-tetrahydrofuran (THF)-graphite intercalation compound (GIC) (K-THF-GIC) was studied. The mechanism of the polymerization was determined to be anionic polymerization according to its characteristics. The effect of the concentration of the initiator and monomer was studied. It was found that the polymerization mainly occurred on the surface and edge of the intercalated graphite. It was also shown that the polarity of solvent has little effect on the polymerization yield in this system.     

Equivalence of regularity for the Bergman projection and the\bar \partial-neumann operator

A necessary and sufficient condition for regularity of the -Neumann operator on (0,q)-forms in a smooth bounded pseudoconvex domain in Cⁿ is that the orthogonal projections onto -closed forms of degrees (0,q−1), (0,q), and (0,q+1) all be regular. The first author partially supported by NSF Grant DMS-8701038