A complexity approach to sustainability – Stafford Beer revisited

There is wide acceptance of the need for a more holistic approach to sustainability. However, practical solutions remain elusive and tend to exhibit underlying conflicts between different paradigms and their associated methodologies. This paper argues the need to wield analytical tools that themselves embody the principles of systemic, ecological thinking. We present here a theoretical framework based on complexity science – focused on organisational and second order cybernetics – that highlights our understanding of the concept of sustainability. The paper goes on to reflect upon how current practice would benefit from such an approach.     

Chordal bipartite completion of colored graphs

Golumbic, Kaplan, and Shamir [Graph sandwich problems, J. Algorithms 19 (1995) 449-473], in their paper on graph sandwich problems published in 1995, left the status of the sandwich problems for strongly chordal graphs and chordal bipartite graphs open. It was recently shown [C.M.H. de Figueiredo, L. Faria, S. Klein, R. Sritharan, On the complexity of the sandwich problems for strongly chordal graphs and chordal bipartite graphs, Theoret. Comput. Sci., accepted for publication] that the sandwich problem for strongly chordal graphs is NP-complete. We show that given graph G with a proper vertex coloring c, determining whether there is a supergraph of G that is chordal bipartite and also is properly colored by c is NP-complete. This implies that the sandwich problem for chordal bipartite graphs is also NP-complete.     

Increasing efficiency of inverse iteration

Inverse iteration is simple but not very efficient method for computing few eigenvalues with minimal absolute values and corresponding eigenvectors of a symmetric matrix. The idea is to increase its efficiency by technique similar to multigrid methods used for solving linear systems. This approach is not new, but until now multigrid was mostly used for solving linear system which appear in Rayleigh quotient iteration, inverse iteration and related iterative methods. Instead of choosing appropriate coordinates (grids), our algorithm performs inverse iteration on a sequence of subspaces with decreasing dimensions (multispace). Block Lanczos method is used for the selection of a smaller subspace. This will produce a banded matrix, which makes inverse iteration even faster in the smaller dimensions.      

Large deviations: An introduction to 2007 Abel prize

2007 Abel prize has been awarded to S R S Varadhan for creating a unified theory of large deviations. We attempt to give a flavour of this branch of probability theory, highlighting the role of Varadhan.     

一般非线性渗流方程广义解的存在唯一性与Blow-up

In this paper,we consider nonnegative solutions to Cauchy problem for the general nonlinear filtration equations ut-Dj(aij(x,t,u)Diφ(u))+bi(t,u)Diu+C(x,t,u)=0,and obtain the existence,uniqueness and blow-up in finite time of these solutions under some structure conditions.     

On strong and total Lagrange duality for convex optimization problems

We give some necessary and sufficient conditions which completely characterize the strong and total Lagrange duality, respectively, for convex optimization problems in separated locally convex spaces. We also prove similar statements for the problems obtained by perturbing the objective functions of the primal problems by arbitrary linear functionals. In the particular case when we deal with convex optimization problems having infinitely many convex inequalities as constraints the conditions we work with turn into the so-called Farkas-Minkowski and locally Farkas-Minkowski conditions for systems of convex inequalities, recently used in the literature. Moreover, we show that our new results extend some existing ones in the literature.     

Semianalytic wave functions for highly rotational states of antiprotonic He

The structural and magnetic evolution in magnesium ferrite (MgFe₂O₄) caused by high-energy milling is investigated by Mössbauer spectroscopy.     

A note on the second problem of Stokes for Maxwell fluids

New exact solutions corresponding to the second problem of Stokes for Maxwell fluids have been established by means of Laplace transforms. For large times, these solutions reduce to the well-known steady-state solutions which are periodic in time and independent of the initial conditions. Furthermore, the transient solutions are in accordance with the previous solutions obtained using the Fourier sine transform. The required time to get the steady-state is determined by graphical illustrations. This time decreases if the frequency of the velocity increases. The effects of the material parameters on the decay of the transients in time are also investigated by graphs.     

波动方程反演问题的一种新的逼近方法

本文给出了一种求解波动方程反演问题的“多目标函数法”.这种方法简单、有效,并具有明确的物理意义.对于三维问题的程序化它有很强的优越性.