A family of κ-sized sets is said to be almost disjoint if each pair of sets from the family intersect in a set of power less than κ. Such an almost disjoint family ℋ is defined to be κ-maximally almost disjoint (κ-MAD) if |∪ℋ| = κ and each κ-sized subset of ∪ ℋ intersects some member of ℋ in a set of cardinality κ. A set T is called a representing set of a family if T ⊆ ∪ and T has non-empty intersection with each member of .

The thickness of a graph is a measure of its nonplanarity and has applications in the theory of printed circuits. To determine the thickness of an arbitrary graph is a seemingly intractable problem. This is made precise in this paper where we answer an open problem of Garey and Johnson (2) by proving that it is NP-complete to decide whether a graph has thickness two.

We let K1 and K2 be two convex bodies in Ed (d ≥ 3) and consider translates of K2 for which ∂K1 ∩ ∂ ≠ ø and K1 ≠ . We show that if, for all such translates,∂K1 ∩ is contained in a hyperplane then K1 and K2 are homothetic ellipsoids.

If K1 and K2 are two planar non-coincident convex sets whose interiors intersect we define α(K1, K2) to be the number of connected components of ∂K1 ∩ ∂K2. The starting point for our investigations is the result of Fujiwara(S) and Bol(2) to the effect that K is a circular disc if and only if α(K, K′) = 2 for all congruent copies K′ of K. An easy extension of this result is the observation that K1 and K2 are congruent circular discs if and only if for all congruent copies of K2. When working with such results it is natural to look for analogues in the situation where only translates are allowed rather than all possible congruences. The appropriate analogue was obtained in (7) and we state it here for completeness.

Let A be a local ring with maximal ideal m. Let M be a finitely generated module over A. Let a1 …, ar be a sequence of elements of m. Let qi denote the ideal (a1,…, ai), i = 1, …, r, and set q0 = 0A (the zero ideal of A), q = qr.

Since the foundational paper (10) by Northcott and Rees in 1954 there have been quite a few papers concerning reductions of ideals and the analytic spread of an ideal. One particular line of investigation concerning the analytic spread l(I) of an ideal I in a local ring (R, M) was begun in 1972 by Burch in (5), where it was shown that l(I) ≤ altitude R – min (grade R/In; n ≥ 1). This result was sharpened in 1980–81 by Brodmann in three papers, (2, 3, 4). Therein he showed that the sets {grade R/In; n ≥ 1} and {grade In−1/In; n ≥ 1} stabilize for all large n, and calling the stable values t and t*, respectively, it holds that t ≤ t* and l(I) ≤ altitude R – t* when I is not nilpotent. He then gave a case (involving R being quasi-unmixed) when equality holds. In 1981 in (20) Rees used two new approaches to Burch's inequality, and he proved two nice results which may both be stated as: l(I) ≤ altitude R – s(I) with equality holding when R is quasi-unmixed; here, s(I) = min {height P; P is a minimal prime divisor of (M, u) R[tI, u]}– 1 (in the first theorem), and s(I) is the length of a maximal asymptotic sequence over I (in the second theorem).

In considering the geometric invariant theory of linear systems (pencils, nets, …) of geometrical objects (quadrics, cubic curves, binary forms,…) there are several ways to apply the basic theory. The object of this note is to point out the equivalence of different approaches and to apply this remark to a number of special cases.

Kirby and Lickorish have introduced the idea of prime tangle (5) where the term ‘tangle’ is borrowed from Conway (3). While exploring this notion, Lickorish has shown in ((6), theorem 3): A tangle, which is the Conway sum of two tangles, one of which is prime and connected to both arcs of the other one which itself is prime or untangle, is prime.

This paper addresses the question of how well the exterior of a knot determines the knot. It is well known that for a knotted sphere pair (Sn+2, Sn), n ≥ 2, a given exterior corresponds to at most two distinct knots (1), (4), (10); examples of distinct knots with the same exterior are given in (2), (6). For a knotted ball pair (Bn+2, Bn), n ≥ 2, the situation may be more complicated. In fact, given an arbitrary positive integer N, Hitt-Sumners (7), (8) constructed N distinct ball pairs with the same exterior, n ≥ 4.

In (5), we and Fred Cohen gave some quite general splitting theorems. These described how to decompose the suspension spectra of certain filtered spaces CX as wedges of the suspension spectra of their successive filtration quotients Dq X. The spaces CX were of the form Cr × Xr/(˜) for suitable sequences of spaces {Cr} and {Xr}, and the construction CX was intended to be a reworking in ‘proper generality’ of the constructions introduced in (9).

Let K be a cohomology theory. Axioms are given which uniquely characterize the transfer in K-cohomology for bundles with structure group a compact Lie group and fibre a finite C.W. complex. Also, a family of generalized transfers is defined which includes both the standard transfer and Atiyah's holomorphic transfer.

Classical bifurcation theorems for a 1 -parameter family of plane dynamical systems

assert the presence of closed orbits clustering at some distinguished parameter value (∈ = 0, say). Here, for any ∈, the origin is the only stationary point. The topological content of the mostly analytic hypotheses imposed is some change in the stability behaviour of the origin at ∈ = 0, roughly the passing of a kind of stability to a kind of instability. Topologically speaking, e.g. some of the conditions demanded are asymptotic stability of the origin for the negative system at ∈ > 0 and asymptotic stability of the origin for at ∈ < 0 (Hopf (8), Ruelle and Takens(11)) or ∈ = 0 (Chafee(2)).

In (2), indefinite Kählerian manifolds have been examined from the point of view of holomorphic sectional curvature. Examples in (2) show that the analogue of Kulkarni's theorem (see (4), p. 173) for the holomorphic sectional curvature is false and the best possible result in the direction is:

Theorem 1 (known, (2)). Let M be a connected indefinite Kählerian manifold with complex dimension n ≥ 2. If the holomorphic sectional curvature of M is bounded above and bounded below, then M is an indefinite complex space form.

A real Banach space (X, ‖ · ‖) is said to be uniformly convex (UC) (or uniformly rotund) if for all ∈ > 0 there is a δ > 0 such that if ‖x| ≤ 1, ‖y‖ ≤ 1 and ‖x−y‖ ≥ ∈, then ‖(x + y)/2‖ ≤ 1− δ.

The following interesting result on strongly summable sequences is due to Kuttner (2).

Theorem 1. Let 0 < p < 1. Then given any Toeplitz matrix A there is a sequence summable wp which is not summable A.

As usual, for 0 < p < ∞, we denote by wp the space of strongly summable sequences with index p. Thus x = (xk) ∈ wp if and only if there is a number l such that

Strongly summable sequences arise in the theory of Fourier series, see e.g. (8), Chapter X, in Ergodic theory, see e.g. (1), as well as in summability theory.

Asymptotic estimates are obtained for the eigen-values of symmetric kernels which satisfy a Lipschitz condition of order α, where 0 < α ≤ 1, on a bounded region. For 0 < α < 1, the eigen-values are shown to be O(1/nα+½) for general kernels, and O(1/nα+1) for positive definite kernels. For α = 1, the eigen-values are shown to be O(1/n+3/2) in general, but only O(1/n2) when the kernel is positive definite. Examples are given to show these estimates are best possible for powers of n.

The estimates for general kernels are known. In 1931, Hille and Tamarkin used infinite determinants to obtain weaker estimates in the case 0 < α < 1, but the same estimates as ours for α = 1. In 1937, Smithies sharpened the estimates for 0 < α < 1 to the ones we give by a variant of the method used by Weyl in 1912 for smooth kernels. Cochran obtained the same estimates in 1972 using Fredholm determinants. Our proof uses Weyl's method in its original form for 0 < α < 1, and in Smithies' variant for α = 1, so in all cases simplifies previous proofs.

The estimates for positive definite kernels are, as far as we know, new. The proofs use the method of our recent paper on smooth positive definite kernels.

A simple and elegant method of treating one-sided Hilbert transforms

has recently been described by Wong (7). This method immediately gives the form of the expansion but some of the coefficients in the expansion are in an inconvenient form for either analytical or numerical calculation. In the present paper it is shown that these coefficients can be readily determined when the Mellin transform of f(t) is known. The case is treated as an example.

Let pc(d) be the critical probability for oriented percolation in ℤd and let μ(d) be the time constant for the first passage process based on the exponential distribution. In this paper we show that as d → ∞,dpc(d) and dμ,(d) → γ where γ is a constant in [e−1, 2−1] which we conjecture to be e−1. In the case of pc(d) we have made some progress toward obtaining an asymptotic expansion in powers of d−1. Our results show

The left hand side agrees, up to O(d−3), with a (nonrigorous) series expansion of Blease (1, 2):

We derive a two-term Edgeworth expansion for the distribution of Stein's double sampling statistic in the case of a non-normal parent population. The first term describes the main effect of skewness, while the second describes the main effect of kurtosis and the secondary effect of skewness. The remainder is shown to be uniformly negligible in comparison with these effects. Explicit conditions are given for the expansion to be valid. These conditions are considerably weaker than those which were imposed in an earlier derivation of the ‘exact’ distribution of Stein's statistic.

The classical specification of elastic/plastic or rigid/plastic response in metals is reformulated in generalized variables. The allowed measures of strain are sets of any geometric magnitudes that jointly determine the shape of a material element; the allowed measures of stress are generated by work-conjugacy. The choice of variables affects the parameters and qualitative features of the constitutive framework; these dependences are made explicit by concise formulae of transformation.

Eigenstates intrinsic to the material are considered wherein the strain can change while the conjugate stress is either stationary or coupled differentially with the strain. Such configurations are associated with incipient branching of the strain response to a prescribed variation of the conjugate stress. Sensitivity to the loading environment is evaluated for both elastic/plastic and rigid/plastic materials. This synoptic approach to eigenproblems is illustrated in the context of materials testing.