This paper deals with the existence, uniqueness and qualitative properties of nonnegative and nontrivial solutions of a spatially heterogeneous Lotka-Volterra competition model with nonlinear diffusion. We give conditions in terms of the coefficients involved in the setting of the problem which assure the existence of nonnegative solutions as well as the uniqueness of a positive solution. In order to obtain these results we employ monotonicity methods, singular spectral theory and a fixed point index.

The authors derive a general theorem on partly bilateral and partly unilateral generating functions involving multiple series with essentially arbitrary coefficients. By appropriately specialising these coefficients, a number of (known or new) results are shown to follow as applications of the theorem.

In this paper, a gradient method is developed for the optimal shape design in a nozzle problem described by variational inequalities. It is known that this method can be used for the optimal shape design for systems described by partial differential equations (Pironneau [6]); it is used here for differential inequalities by taking limits of the expression resulting from an approximations scheme. The computations are done by the finite element method; the gradient of the criteria as a function of the coordinates nodes is computed, and the performance criterion is then minimised by the gradient method.

We consider a nonlinear second-order elliptic boundary value problem in a bounded domain Ω ⊂ RN with mixed boundary conditions. The solution is found via linearisation. We design a robust and efficient approximation scheme. Error estimates for the linearisation algorithm are derived in L2(Ω), H1(Ω) and L∞(Ω) spaces under the minimal regularity assumptions of the exact solution.

This paper is concerned with surface water waves produced by small oscillations of a thin vertical plate submerged in deep water. Green's integral theorem in the fluid region is used in a suitable manner to obtain the amplitude for the radiated waves at infinity. Particular results for roll and sway of the plate, and for a line source in the presence of a fixed vertical plate, are deduced.

Here we discuss the stability and convergence of a quadrature method for Symm's integral equation on an open smooth arc. The method is an adaptation of an approach considered by Sloan and Burn for closed curves. Before applying the quadrature scheme, we use a cosine substitution to remove the endpoint singularity of the solution. The family of methods includes schemes with any order O(hp) of convergence.

We study the problem of choosing the best subset of $p$ features in linear regression, given $n$ observations. This problem naturally contains two objective functions including minimizing the amount of bias and minimizing the number of predictors. The existing approaches transform the problem into a single-objective optimization problem. We explain the main weaknesses of existing approaches and, to overcome their drawbacks, we propose a bi-objective mixed integer linear programming approach. A computational study shows the efficacy of the proposed approach.

We assume that human carrying capacity is determined by food availability. We propose three classes of human population dynamical models of logistic type, where the carrying capacity is a function of the food production index. We also employ an integration-based parameter estimation technique to derive explicit formulas for the model parameters. Using actual population and food production index data, numerical simulations of our models suggest that an increase in food availability implies an increase in carrying capacity, but the carrying capacity is “self-limiting” and does not increase indefinitely.

Mixing rules model how the physical properties of a polymer, such as its relaxation modulus G(t), depend on the distribution w(m) of its molecular weights m. They are of practical importance because, among other things, they allow estimates of the molecular weight distribution (MWD) w(m) of a polymer to be determined from measurements of its physical properties including the relaxation modulus. The two most common mixing rules are “single” and “double” reptation. Various derivations for these rules have been published. In this paper, a conditional probability formulation is given which identifies that the fundamental essence of “double” reptation is the discrete binary nature of the “entanglements”, which are assumed to occur in the corresponding topological model of the underlying polymer dynamics. In addition, various methods for determining the MWD are reviewed, and the computation of linear functionals of the MWD motivated and briefly examined.

There is increasing interest in the cost of railway infrastructure access as a variety of private companies operate trains with different lengths over a common rail network. It is important to have a method for evaluating the cost of adding an additional train to a railway timetable. This is particularly so for single line track with occasional passing loops. The concept of a fixed loop capacity is extended to one that is dependent on the trains. We develop a model for scheduling a heterogeneous set of trains on single line systems with loops. Our method minimizes the total weighted delay. A Lagrangian relaxation technique is used that relaxes the capacity constraints for track segments and super segments. We measure the delay for each train and the total weighted delay for the heterogeneous set of trains. Our model allows us to investigate the robustness of the weighted delay to variation in the departure time of individual trains. The paper demonstrates that a Lagrangian relaxation heuristic provides optimal train schedules for instances of small heterogeneous train sets. The method is used primarily to check the effectiveness of heuristic algorithms commonly used to find schedules for practical problems.

In order to use the method of asymptotic matching for low frequencies, the equations of plane elastostatics are reformulated in terms of the two scalar potentials commonly used in plane elastodynamics. It is shown that the resulting equations of plane elastostatics can be reduced to those first obtained by Muskhelishvili. The use of the formulation is illustrated by considering the case of the plane diffraction of a P wave by a circular, cylindrical cavity of small radius. The results agree with those obtained from the exact solution of the problem.

For an optimal control problem with an infinite time horizon, assuming various terminal state conditions (or none), terminal conditions for the costate are obtained when the state and costate tend to limits with a suitable convergence rate. Under similar hypotheses, the sensitivity of the optimum to small perturbations is analysed, and in particular the stability of the optimum when the infinite horizon is truncated to a large finite horizon. An infinite horizon version of Pontryagin's principle is also obtained. The results apply to various economic models.

The resolution of many problems in probability depends on being able to provide sufficiently good upper or lower bounds to certain moments of distributions. A striking example from the literature of a result that can offer such bounds was given by Pó1ya over sixty years ago as the following theorem (see [7, Vol. II, p. 144] and [7, Vol. I, p. 94]).

The parameters describing the trapping kinetics of a linear model for diffusion, in solids involving a captured immobile phase of the diffusing entity, can be determined by measuring mean residence times for matter in the systems and evaluating the exponents for the final exponential decay rates of the diffusing entity from various shaped solids. The mean residence time for matter in a given region can be expressed in terms of a “torsion parameter” S which in the case of Dirichlet boundary conditions and cylindrical geometries, coincides with the torsional rigidity of the cylinder. The final decay rate is given by the first eigenvalue μ of a Helmholtz problem. Expressions and inequalities are derived for these parameters S and μ for general linear boundary conditions and for geometries relevant to diffusion experiments.

In this paper we shall develop existence-uniqueness as well as constructive theory for the solutions of systems of nonlinear boundary value problems when only approximations of the fundamental matrix of the associated homogeneous linear differential systems are known. To make the analysis widely applicable, all the results are proved component-wise. An illustration which dwells upon the sharpness as well as the importance of the obtained results is also presented.

In this article we study the dilation equation f(x) = ∑h ch f (2x − h) in ℒ2(R) using a wavelet approach. We see that the structure of Multiresolution Analysis adapts very well to the study of scaling functions. The equation is reduced to an equation in a subspace of ℒ2(R) of much lower resolution. This simpler equation is then “wavelet transformed” to obtain a discrete dilation equation. In particular we study the case of compactly supported solutions and we see that conditions for the existence of solutions are given by convergence of infinite products of matrices. These matrices are of the type obtained by Daubechies, and, when the analyzing wavelet is the Haar wavelet, they are exactly the same.

Recently, considerable interest has been shown in the connection between smoothing splines and a particular class of stochastic processes. Here the connection with an equivalent class of least squares problems is used to develop algorithms, and properties of the solution are examined. We give an estimate of the condition number of the solution process and compare this with an estimate for the condition number of the Reinsch algorithm in its conventional implementation.

A predator-prey model in which the prey population is subdivided into nine genotypes corresponding to a two-locus, two-allele problem is considered. Sufficient conditions are given which lead to extinction of all the prey allele types except one, as well as conditions which guarantee the persistence of all the allele types.

Knowledge about the foliage angle density g(α) of the leaves in the canopy of trees is crucial in foresty mangement, modelling canopy reflectance, and environmental monitoring. It is usually determined from observations of the contact frequency f(β) by solving a version of the first kind Fredholm integral equation derived by Reeve (Appendix in Warren Wilson [22]). However, for inference purposes, the practitioner uses functionals defined on g(α), such as the leaf area index F, rather than g(α) itself. Miller [12] has shown that F can be computed directly from f(β) without solving the integral equation. In this paper, we show that his result is a special case of a general transformation for linear functionals defined on g(α). The key is the existence of an alternative inversion formula for the integral equation to that derived by Miller [11].

The problem of passing from an L∞ function to a Wiener-Hopf factorization is considered. It is shown that a small L∞ perturbation which does not change the factorization indices will lead to small Lp (1 < p < ∞) perturbations in the Wiener-Hopf factors, but can lead to large L∞ perturbations, unless the derivatives are controlled during the perturbation.