On the invariant translation approximation property for discrete groups

Recently J.Roe considered the question of whether for a discrete group the reduced group -algebra is the fixed point algebra of Ad acting on the uniform Roe algebra . is said to have the invariant translation approximation property in this case. We consider a slight generalization of this property which, for exact , is equivalent to the operator space approximation property of . We also give a new characterization of exactness and a short proof of the equivalence of exactness of and exactness of for discrete groups.

     

How useful are closed captions for learning mathematics via online video?

Closed captioning of instructional videos is a topic that has not seen much discussion despite its importance for hearing-impaired students and recent legal ramifications if videos are not appropriately captioned. In particular, it is unclear what best practice in captioning videos should be to benefit all learners in disciplines such as mathematics with a reliance on the development of visual explanation while providing audio narration. In this paper, we report on a study undertaken at an Australian university, to investigate the perceived level of usefulness of captions and their automatic translations in a mathematics course. We discovered that students broadly agreed that captions are a useful learning feature: to allow flexibility of where and when a video is watched, but also to help understand speaker accents, and clarify explanations that are difficult to hear in the recording. Due to the high levels of use and perceived educational benefits of closed captions in online video but limited literature, there is a significant need for new research in this area. An urgent discussion is needed to explore how students engage with closed captions, how they may support learning, and to investigate implications on instructional design of mathematical videos.     

Traveling waves for a reaction–diffusion–advection predator–prey model

In this paper we study a reaction–diffusion–advection predator–prey model in a river. The existence of predator-invasion traveling wave solutions and prey-spread traveling wave solutions in the upstream and downstream directions is established and the corresponding minimal wave speeds are obtained. While some crucial improvements in theoretical methods have been established, the proofs of the existence and nonexistence of such traveling waves are based on Schauder’s fixed-point theorem, LaSalle’s invariance principle and Laplace transform. Based on theoretical results, we investigate the effect of the hydrological and biological factors on minimal wave speeds and hence on the spread of the prey and the invasion of the predator in the river. The linear determinacy of the predator–prey Lotka–Volterra system is compared with nonlinear determinacy of the competitive Lotka–Volterra system to investigate the mechanics of linear and nonlinear determinacy.     

Graph-based Lexicalized Reordering Models for Statistical Machine Translation

Lexicalized reordering models are very important components of phrasebased translation systems.By examining the reordering relationships between adjacent phrases,conventional methods learn these models from the word aligned bilingual corpus,while ignoring the effect of the number of adjacent bilingual phrases.In this paper,we propose a method to take the number of adjacent phrases into account for better estimation of reordering models.Instead of just checking whether there is one phrase adjacent to a given phrase,our method firstly uses a compact structure named reordering graph to represent all phrase segmentations of a parallel sentence,then the effect of the adjacent phrase number can be quantified in a forward-backward fashion,and finally incorporated into the estimation of reordering models.Experimental results on the NIST Chinese-English and WMT French-Spanish data sets show that our approach significantly outperforms the baseline method.     

On the Stability of the O(N)-Invariant and the Cubic-Invariant Three-Dimensional N-Component Renormalization-Group Fixed Points in the Hierarchical Approximation

We compute renormalization-group fixed points and their spectrum in an ultralocal approximation. We study a case of two competing nontrivial fixed points for a three-dimensional real N-component field: the O(N)-invariant fixed point vs. the cubic-invariant fixed point. We compute the critical value N _c of the cubic ⁴-perturbation at the O(N)-fixed point. The O(N)-fixed point is stable under a cubic ⁴-perturbation below N _c; above N _c it is unstable. The Critical value comes out as 2.219435<N _c<2.219436 in the ultralocal approximation. We also compute the critical value of N at the cubic invariant fixed point. Within the accuracy of our computations, the two values coincide.     

Energy as a Fifth Dimension

A recent analysis of the experimental data on some physical phenomena ruled by the four fundamental interactions (electromagnetic, weak, strong and gravitational) seems to show the possibility of describing such interactions in terms of a deformation of the usual Minkowski spacetime, with a metric whose coefficients do depend on the energy of the process considered. In this paper, we show that such results can be accounted for in terms of a Kaluza-Klein-like scheme, based on a five-dimensional Riemannian space in which energy plays the role of the fifth dimension. The corresponding five-dimensional Einstein equations in vacuum are solved in some cases of physical relevance and it is shown that all the phenomenological metrics describing the four fundamental forces are recovered as special cases of the classes of solutions found. Possible developments of the formalism are also briefly outlined.     

Higher-order streamfunction-vorticity formulation of 2D steady-state Navier-Stokes equations

Based on regular boundary element method and a kind of linearity invariance under homotopy, a kind of numerical scheme of 2D steady-state Navier-Stokes equation in streamfunction-vorticity formulation is described. The flow inside a square cavity is used to illustrate this numerical scheme.     

Affine-Invariant Distances, Envelopes and Symmetry Sets

Affine invariant symmetry sets of planar curves are introduced and studied in this paper. Two different approaches are investigated. The first one is based on affine invariant distances, and defines the symmetry set as the closure of the locus of points on (at least) two affine normals and affine-equidistant from the corresponding points on the curve. The second approach is based on affine bitangent conics. In this case the symmetry set is defined as the closure of the locus of centers of conics with (at least) 3-point contact with the curve at two or more distinct points on the curve. This is equivalent to conic and curve having, at those points, the same affine tangent, or the same Euclidean tangent and curvature. Although the two analogous definitions for the classical Euclidean symmetry set are equivalent, this is not the case for the affine group. We present a number of properties of both affine symmetry sets, showing their similarities with and differences from the Euclidean case. We conclude the paper with a discussion of possible extensions to higher dimensions and other transformation groups, as well as to invariant Voronoi diagrams.     

Stochastic approximation and the final value theorem

The aim here is to show how to obtain many of the well-known limit results (i.e., central limit theorem, law of the iterated logarithm, invariance principle) of stochastic approximation (SA) by a shorter argument and under weaker conditions. The idea is to introduce an artificial sequence, related to the SA scheme, and which clearly obeys the limit law. This sequence is subtracted from the SA scheme and then simple deterministic limit theory is used to show the remainder is negligible. As a consequence of this approach proofs are shorter and the meaning of conditions becomes clearer. Because the difference equations are not summed up it is simple to state results for general a_n, c_n sequences.