Detecting Incompressibility of Boundary in 3-Manifolds

A construction is presented which can be utilized to prove incompressibility of boundary in a 3-manifold W. One constructs a new 3-manifold DW by doubling W along a subsurface in its boundary. If DW is hyperbolic, and if W has compressible boundary, then DW must have a longitude of 'length' less than 4. This can be applied to show that an arc that is a candidate for an unknotting tunnel in a 3-manifold cannot be an unknotting tunnel. It can also be used to show that a 'tubed surface' is incompressible. For knot and link complements in S ³, and an unknotting tunnel, DW is almost always hyperbolic. Empirically, this construction appears to provide a surprisingly effective procedure for demonstrating that specific arcs are not unknotting tunnels.     

Some Properties for the Euclidean Distance Matrix and Positive Semidefinite Matrix Completion Problems

The Euclidean distance matrix (EDM) completion problem and the positive semidefinite (PSD) matrix completion problem are considered in this paper. Approaches to determine the location of a point in a linear manifold are studied, which are based on a referential coordinate set and a distance vector whose components indicate the distances from the point to other points in the set. For a given referential coordinate set and a corresponding distance vector, sufficient and necessary conditions are presented for the existence of such a point that the distance vector can be realized. The location of the point (if it exists) given by the approaches in a linear manifold is independent of the coordinate system, and is only related to the referential coordinate set and the corresponding distance vector. An interesting phenomenon about the complexity of the EDM completion problem is described. Some properties about the uniqueness and the rigidity of the conformation for solutions to the EDM and PSD completion problems are presented.     

On Fučik Spectra and Periodic Solutions

In this paper, we continue extending the theory of boundary-value problems to ordinary differential equations and inclusions with discontinuous right-hand side. To this end, we construct a new version of the method of shifts along trajectories. We compare the results obtained by the new approach and those obtained by the method of Fuik spectra.     

Problems, Models and Complexity. Part II: Application to the DLSP

In Part I of this study, we suggest to identify an operations research (OR) problem with the equivalence class of models describing the problem and enhance the standard computer-science theory of computational complexity to be applicable to this situation of an often model-based OR context. The Discrete Lot-sizing and Scheduling Problem (DLSP) is analysed here in detail to demonstrate the difficulties which can arise if these aspects are neglected and to illustrate the new theoretical concept. In addition, a new minimal model is introduced for the DLSP which makes this problem eventually amenable to a rigorous analysis of its computational complexity.     

Constructing Solutions of an Ill-Posed Nonlinear Singularly Perturbed Problem for an Equation of Elliptic Type

Mathematical Notes -     

Heuristic Methods for Large Centroid Clustering Problems

This article presents new heuristic methods for solving a class of hard centroid clustering problems including the p-median, the sum-of-squares clustering and the multi-source Weber problems. Centroid clustering is to partition a set of entities into a given number of subsets and to find the location of a centre for each subset in such a way that a dissimilarity measure between the entities and the centres is minimized. The first method proposed is a candidate list search that produces good solutions in a short amount of time if the number of centres in the problem is not too large. The second method is a general local optimization approach that finds very good solutions. The third method is designed for problems with a large number of centres; it decomposes the problem into subproblems that are solved independently. Numerical results show that these methods are efficient—dozens of best solutions known to problem instances of the literature have been improved—and fast, handling problem instances with more than 85,000 entities and 15,000 centres—much larger than those solved in the literature. The expected complexity of these new procedures is discussed and shown to be comparable to that of an existing method which is known to be very fast.     

Nonlinear Diffusion Processes

We study elliptic systems of strongly nonlinear first-order differential equations in complex form on the plane. For such systems we develop the theory of Hilbert boundary value problems which is very much similar to the well-known theory for a holomorphic vector. Systems of nonlinear elliptic equations describe problems of interaction of several nonlinear stationary processes in the diffusive and convective mass and heat transport by hydrodynamic fluid flows.     

Vector Equilibrium Problems Under Asymptotic Analysis

Given a closed convex set K in Rⁿ; a vector function F:K×K R^m; a closed convex (not necessarily pointed) cone P(x) in ^m with non-empty interior, PP(x) Ø, various existence results to the problemfind xK such that F(x,y)- int P(x) y K under P(x)-convexity/lower semicontinuity of F(x,) and pseudomonotonicity on F, are established. Moreover, under a stronger pseudomonotonicity assumption on F (which reduces to the previous one in case m=1), some characterizations of the non-emptiness of the solution set are given. Also, several alternative necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the solution set to be non-empty and compact are presented. However, the solution set fails to be convex in general. A sufficient condition to the solution set to be a singleton is also stated. The classical case P(x)=^m ₊ is specially discussed by assuming semi-strict quasiconvexity. The results are then applied to vector variational inequalities and minimization problems. Our approach is based upon the computing of certain cones containing particular recession directions of K and F.     

Shape Optimization and Fictitious Domain Approach for Solving Free Boundary Problems of Bernoulli Type

This contribution deals with an efficient method for the numerical realization of the exterior and interior Bernoulli free boundary problems. It is based on a shape optimization approach. The state problems are solved by a fictitious domain solver using boundary Lagrange multipliers.