Nielsen realization for 3-manifolds containing two-sided projective planes

For compact irreducible sufficiently large 3-manifolds containing 2-sided projective planes, we consider the following Realization Problem: Given a finite subgroup of the outer automorphism group of the fundamental group, is there a finite group of homeomorphisms, which induces this subgroup? Received: 16 November 1999; in final form: 18 January 2001 / Published online: 8 November 2002     

Rehabilitation of the Gauss-Jordan algorithm

Summary In this paper a Gauss-Jordan algorithm with column interchanges is presented and analysed. We show that, in contrast with Gaussian elimination, the Gauss-Jordan algorithm has essentially differing properties when using column interchanges instead of row interchanges for improving the numerical stability. For solutions obtained by Gauss-Jordan with column interchanges, a more satisfactory bound for the residual norm can be given. The analysis gives theoretical evidence that the algorithm yields numerical solutions as good as those obtained by Gaussian elimination and that, in most practical situations, the residuals are equally small. This is confirmed by numerical experiments. Moreover, timing experiments on a Cyber 205 vector computer show that the algorithm presented has good vectorisation properties.     

Fibrations of bigroupoids

Using Brown's construction (J. Algebra 15 (1970) 103) of an exact 6-term sequence for a fibration of groupoids we show how an exact 9-term sequence can be associated to a fibration of bigroupoids. Applications to topology and algebra are given.     

Spatial design matrices and associated quadratic forms: structure and properties

The paper provides significant simplifications and extensions of results obtained by Gorsich, Genton, and Strang (J. Multivariate Anal. 80 (2002) 138) on the structure of spatial design matrices. These are the matrices implicitly defined by quadratic forms that arise naturally in modelling intrinsically stationary and isotropic spatial processes. We give concise structural formulae for these matrices, and simple generating functions for them. The generating functions provide formulae for the cumulants of the quadratic forms of interest when the process is Gaussian, second-order stationary and isotropic. We use these to study the statistical properties of the associated quadratic forms, in particular those of the classical variogram estimator, under several assumptions about the actual variogram.     

Pentadiagonal Oscillatory Matrices with Two Spectrum in Common

We denote the spectrum of an square matrix A by σ(A), and that of the matrix obtained by deleting the first i rows and columns of A by σ_i(A). It is known that a symmetric pentadiagonal oscillatory (SPO) matrix may be constructed from σ, σ₁ and σ₂. The pairs σ, σ₁ and σ₁, σ₂ must interlace; the construction is not unique; and the conditions on the data which ensure that A is oscillatory are extremely complicated. Given one SPO matrix A, the paper shows that operations may be applied to A to construct a family of such matrices with σ and σ₁ in common. Moreover, given one totally positive (TP) matrix A, we construct a family of TP matrices with σ, σ₁ and σ₂ in common.     

On the Computational Complexity of the Rooted Subtree Prune and Regraft Distance

The graph-theoretic operation of rooted subtree prune and regraft is increasingly being used as a tool for understanding and modelling reticulation events in evolutionary biology. In this paper, we show that computing the rooted subtree prune and regraft distance between two rooted binary phylogenetic trees on the same label set is NP-hard. This resolves a longstanding open problem. Furthermore, we show that this distance is fixed parameter tractable when parameterised by the distance between the two trees.Received March 16, 2004     

Cochran's statistical theorem for outer inverses of matrices and matrix quadratic forms

We extend the matrix version of Cochran's statistical theorem to outer inverses of a matrix. As applications, we investigate the Wishartness and independence of matrix quadratic forms for Kronecker product covariance structures.     

Long Abelian ideals

We study Abelian ideals of a Borel subalgebra consisting of long roots. It is shown that methods of Cellini and Papi can be extended to this situation. A uniform expression for the number of long Abelian ideals is given. We also show that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the long Abelian ideals and B-stable commutative subalgebras in the little adjoint representation of the Langlands dual Lie algebra.     

From a Nonlinear, Nonconvex Variational Problem to a Linear, Convex Formulation

   Abstract. We propose a general approach to deal with nonlinear, nonconvex variational problems based on a reformulation of the problem resulting in an optimization problem with linear cost functional and convex constraints. As a first step we explicitly explore these ideas to some one-dimensional variational problems and obtain specific conclusions of an analytical and numerical nature.