Organisms adapt to fluctuating environments by regulating their dynamics, and by adjusting their phenotypes to environmental changes. We model population growth using multitype branching processes in random environments, where the offspring distribution of some organism having trait t ∈ in environment e ∈ ε is given by some (fixed) distribution ϒt,e on ℕ. Then, the phenotypes are attributed using a distribution (strategy) πt,e on the trait space . We look for the optimal strategy πt,e, t ∈ , e ∈ ε, maximizing the net growth rate or Lyapounov exponent, and characterize the set of optimal strategies. This is considered for various models of interest in biology: hereditary versus nonhereditary strategies and strategies involving or not involving a sensing mechanism. Our main results are obtained in the setting of nonhereditary strategies: thanks to a reduction to simple branching processes in a random environment, we derive an exact expression for the net growth rate and a characterization of optimal strategies. We also focus on typical genealogies, that is, we consider the problem of finding the typical lineage of a randomly chosen organism.

For a given bivariate Lévy process (Ut, Lt)t≥0, distributional properties of the stationary solutions of the stochastic differential equation dVt = Vt-dUt + dLt are analysed. In particular, the expectation and autocorrelation function are obtained in terms of the process (U, L) and in several cases of interest the tail behavior is described. In the case where U has jumps of size −1, necessary and sufficient conditions for the law of the solutions to be (absolutely) continuous are given.

In this paper we study the fighter problem with discrete ammunition. An aircraft (fighter) equipped with n anti-aircraft missiles is intercepted by enemy airplanes, the appearance of which follows a homogeneous Poisson process with known intensity. If j of the n missiles are spent at an encounter, they destroy an enemy plane with probability a(j), where a(0) = 0 and {a(j)} is a known, strictly increasing concave sequence, e.g. a(j) = 1 - qj, 0 < q < 1. If the enemy is not destroyed, the enemy shoots the fighter down with known probability 1 - u, where 0 ≤ u ≤ 1. The goal of the fighter is to shoot down as many enemy airplanes as possible during a given time period [0, T]. Let K(n, t) be the smallest optimal number of missiles to be used at a present encounter, when the fighter has flying time t remaining and n missiles remaining. Three seemingly obvious properties of K(n, t) have been conjectured: (A) the closer to the destination, the more of the n missiles one should use; (B) the more missiles one has; the more one should use; and (C) the more missiles one has, the more one should save for possible future encounters. We show that (C) holds for all 0 ≤ u ≤ 1, that (A) and (B) hold for the ‘invincible fighter’ (u = 1), and that (A) holds but (B) fails for the ‘frail fighter’ (u = 0); the latter is shown through a surprising counterexample, which is also valid for small u > 0 values.

In this paper we study a general class of population genetic models where the total population is divided into a number of subpopulations or types. Migration between subpopulations is fast. Extending the results of Nordborg and Krone (2002) and Sagitov and Jagers (2005), we prove, as the total population size N tends to ∞, weak convergence of the joint ancestry of a given sample of haploid individuals in the Skorokhod topology towards Kingman's coalescent with a constant change of time scale c. Our framework includes age-structured models, geographically structured models, and combinations thereof. We also allow each individual to have offspring in several subpopulations, with general dependency structures between the number of offspring of various types. As a byproduct, explicit expressions for the coalescent effective population size N/c are obtained.

We analyze a class of signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) random graphs. These random graphs arise in the modeling packet transmissions in wireless networks. In contrast to previous studies on SINR graphs, we consider both a space and a time dimension. The spatial aspect originates from the random locations of the network nodes in the Euclidean plane. The time aspect stems from the random transmission policy followed by each network node and from the time variations of the wireless channel characteristics. The combination of these random space and time aspects leads to fluctuations of the SINR experienced by the wireless channels, which in turn determine the progression of packets in space and time in such a network. In this paper we study optimal paths in such wireless networks in terms of first passage percolation on this random graph. We establish both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ results on the associated time constant. The latter determines the asymptotics of the minimum delay required by a packet to progress from a source node to a destination node when the Euclidean distance between the two tends to ∞. The main negative result states that this time constant is infinite on the random graph associated with a Poisson point process under natural assumptions on the wireless channels. The main positive result states that, when adding a periodic node infrastructure of arbitrarily small intensity to the Poisson point process, the time constant is positive and finite.

This paper is concerned with a stochastic model for the spread of an epidemic with a contact tracing scheme, in which diagnosed individuals may name some of their infectious contacts, who are then removed if they have not been already. Traced individuals may or may not also be asked to name their own contacts. The epidemic is studied by considering an approximating, modified birth-death process with intersibling dependencies, for which a threshold parameter and expressions from which extinction probabilities may be calculated are derived. When all individuals can name their contacts, it is shown that this threshold parameter depends on the infectious period distribution only through its mean. Numerical studies show that the infectious period distribution choice can have a material effect on the threshold behaviour of an epidemic, while the dependencies help reduce spread.

This paper is concerned with the behaviour of a Lévy process when it crosses over a positive level, u, starting from 0, both as u becomes large and as u becomes small. Our main focus is on the time, τu, it takes the process to transit above the level, and in particular, on the stability of this passage time; thus, essentially, whether or not τu behaves linearly as u ↓ 0 or u → ∞. We also consider the conditional stability of τu when the process drifts to -∞ almost surely. This provides information relevant to quantities associated with the ruin of an insurance risk process, which we analyse under a Cramér condition.

Mixed-level orthogonal arrays are basic structures in experimental design. We develop three algorithms that compute Rao- and Gilbert-Varshamov-type bounds for mixed-level orthogonal arrays. The computational complexity of the terms involved in the original combinatorial representations of these bounds can grow fast as the parameters of the arrays increase and this justifies the construction of these algorithms. The first is a recursive algorithm that computes the bounds exactly, the second is based on an asymptotic analysis, and the third is a simulation algorithm. They are all based on the representation of the combinatorial expressions that appear in the bounds as expectations involving a symmetric random walk. The Markov property of the underlying random walk gives the recursive formula to compute the expectations. A large deviation (LD) analysis of the expectations provides the asymptotic algorithm. The asymptotically optimal importance sampling (IS) of the same expectation provides the simulation algorithm. Both the LD analysis and the construction of the IS algorithm use a representation of these problems as a sequence of stochastic optimal control problems converging to a limit calculus of a variations problem. The construction of the IS algorithm uses a recently discovered method of using subsolutions to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations associated with the limit problem.

We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the asymptotic normality of Nn, the number of records among the first n observations from a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables, with general distribution F. In the case of normality we identify the centering and scaling sequences. Also, we characterize distributions for which the limit is not normal in terms of their discrete and continuous components.

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the sampling formula and Laplace transform associated with the two-parameter Poisson-Dirichlet distribution. We conclude that they are equivalent to determining the corresponding infinite-dimensional distribution. With these tools, a central limit theorem is established associated with the infinitely-many-neutral-alleles model at any fixed time. We also obtain the probability generating function of random sampling from a generalized two-parameter diffusion process. At the end of the paper a selection case is considered.

In this paper we study the number of random records in an arbitrary split tree (or, equivalently, the number of random cuttings required to eliminate the tree). We show that a classical limit theorem for the convergence of sums of triangular arrays to infinitely divisible distributions can be used to determine the distribution of this number. After normalization the distributions are shown to be asymptotically weakly 1-stable. This work is a generalization of our earlier results for the random binary search tree in Holmgren (2010), which is one specific case of split trees. Other important examples of split trees include m-ary search trees, quad trees, medians of (2k + 1)-trees, simplex trees, tries, and digital search trees.

We present a new perfect simulation algorithm for stationary chains having unbounded variable length memory. This is the class of infinite memory chains for which the family of transition probabilities is represented by a probabilistic context tree. We do not assume any continuity condition: our condition is expressed in terms of the structure of the context tree. More precisely, the length of the contexts is a deterministic function of the distance to the last occurrence of some determined string of symbols. It turns out that the resulting class of chains can be seen as a natural extension of the class of chains having a renewal string. In particular, our chains exhibit a visible regeneration scheme.

We supply some relations that establish intertwining from duality and give a probabilistic interpretation. This is carried out in the context of discrete Markov chains, fixing up the background of previous relations established for monotone chains and their Siegmund duals. We revisit the duality for birth-and-death chains and the nonneutral Moran model, and we also explore the duality relations in an ultrametric-type dual that extends the Siegmund kernel. Finally, we discuss the sharp dual, following closely the Diaconis-Fill study.

We analyze the mean cost of the partial match queries in random two-dimensional quadtrees. The method is based on fragmentation theory. The convergence is guaranteed by a coupling argument of Markov chains, whereas the value of the limit is computed as the fixed point of an integral equation.

In this paper we establish an extension of the method of approximating optimal discrete-time stopping problems by related limiting stopping problems for Poisson-type processes. This extension allows us to apply this method to a larger class of examples, such as those arising, for example, from point process convergence results in extreme value theory. Furthermore, we develop new classes of solutions of the differential equations which characterize optimal threshold functions. As a particular application, we give a fairly complete discussion of the approximative optimal stopping behavior of independent and identically distributed sequences with discount and observation costs.

We consider the problem of maximizing the probability of stopping on any of the last m successes in independent Bernoulli trials with random horizon of length N, where m is a predetermined integer. A prior is given for N. It is known that, when N is degenerate, i.e. P{N = n} = 1 for a given n > m, the sum-the-multiplicative-odds theorem gives the solution and shows that the optimal rule is a threshold rule, i.e. it stops on the first success appearing after a given stage. However, when N is nondegenerate, the optimal rule is not necessarily a threshold rule. So our main concern in Section 2 is to give a sufficient condition for the optimal rule to be a threshold rule when N is a bounded random variable such that P{N ≤ n} = 1. Application will be made to the usual (discrete arrival time) secretary problem with a random number N of applicants in Section 3. When N is uniform or curtailed geometric, the optimal rules are shown to be threshold rules and their asymptotic results are obtained. We also examine, as a nonhomogeneous Poisson process model, an intermediate prior that allows N to be uniform or degenerate. In Section 4 we consider a continuous arrival time version of the secretary problem with a random number M of applicants. It is shown that, whatever the distribution of M, we can win with probability greater than or equal to um*, where um* is, as given in (1.4), the asymptotic win probability of the usual secretary problem when N degenerates to n and n → ∞.

In this paper we consider the scaled limit of a continuous-time random walk (CTRW) based on a Markov chain {Xn, n ≥ 0} and two observables, τ(∙) and V(∙), corresponding to the renewal times and jump sizes. Assuming that these observables belong to the domains of attraction of some stable laws, we give sufficient conditions on the chain that guarantee the existence of the scaled limits for CTRWs. An application of the results to a process that arises in quantum transport theory is provided. The results obtained in this paper generalize earlier results contained in Becker-Kern, Meerschaert and Scheffler (2004) and Meerschaert and Scheffler (2008), and the recent results of Henry and Straka (2011) and Jurlewicz, Kern, Meerschaert and Scheffler (2010), where {Xn, n ≥ 0} is a sequence of independent and identically distributed random variables.

Multivariate Lévy-driven mixed moving average (MMA) processes of the type Xt = ∬f(A, t - s)Λ(dA, ds) cover a wide range of well known and extensively used processes such as Ornstein-Uhlenbeck processes, superpositions of Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (supOU) processes, (fractionally integrated) continuous-time autoregressive moving average processes, and increments of fractional Lévy processes. In this paper we introduce multivariate MMA processes and give conditions for their existence and regular variation of the stationary distributions. Furthermore, we study the tail behavior of multivariate supOU processes and of a stochastic volatility model, where a positive semidefinite supOU process models the stochastic volatility.

We show how the extremal behavior of d-variate Archimedean copulas can be deduced from their stochastic representation as the survival dependence structure of an ℓ1-symmetric distribution (see McNeil and Nešlehová (2009)). We show that the extremal behavior of the radial part of the representation is determined by its Williamson d-transform. This leads in turn to simple proofs and extensions of recent results characterizing the domain of attraction of Archimedean copulas, their upper and lower tail-dependence indices, as well as their associated threshold copulas. We outline some of the practical implications of their results for the construction of Archimedean models with specific tail behavior and give counterexamples of Archimedean copulas whose coefficient of lower tail dependence does not exist.

Max-stable random fields play a central role in modeling extreme value phenomena. We obtain an explicit formula for the conditional probability in general max-linear models, which include a large class of max-stable random fields. As a consequence, we develop an algorithm for efficient and exact sampling from the conditional distributions. Our method provides a computational solution to the prediction problem for spectrally discrete max-stable random fields. This work offers new tools and a new perspective to many statistical inference problems for spatial extremes, arising, for example, in meteorology, geology, and environmental applications.