The shape of large densest sphere packings in a lattice L ⊂ Ed (d ≥ 2), measured by parametric density, tends asymptotically not to a sphere but to a polytope, the Wulff-shape, which depends only on L and the parameter. This is proved via the density deviation, derived from parametric density and diophantine approximation. In crystallography the Wulff-shape describes the shape of ideal crystals. So the result further indicates that the shape of ideal crystals can be described by dense lattice packings of spheres in E3.

The prototype of isoperimetric problems is to minimize the surface area of a convex body with given volume. The minimal body is naturally the suitable ball. The solution to this problem in the planar case was already known to the ancient Greeks. In the higher dimensional cases, the first proofs were provided with the help of Steiner's symmetrization method towards the end of the last century. Important later contributors are, among others, Minkowski, Blaschke, Hadwiger. By their work, the optimality of the ball has been also verified for a much wider class of sets (see [14]).

C. M. Petty has conjectured the minimum value for a certain affine-invariant functional denned on the class of convex bodies. We give sharp bounds for this functional on a certain subclass of convex bodies, and we give a counterexample to an upper bound proposed by R. Schneider for the class of centrally symmetric convex bodies. We conjecture that the simplex provides the maximum on the class of all convex bodies, while the largest centrally symmetric subset of a simplex gives a sharp upper bound on the class of all centrally symmetric convex bodies.

The sum or Minkowski addition of two subsets, A, B ⊂ En is defined by:

We recall that if S is a d - simplex then each facet and each vertex figure of S is a (d − 1)-simplex and S is a self-dual. We introduce a d-polytope P, called a d-multiplex, with the property that each facet and each vertex figure of P is a (d − 1)-multiplex and P is self-dual.

In this paper we prove that a maximal common summand of two compact convex sets in R2 is unique up to translation.

In [3] the authors introduced the notion of a completely 0-simple semigroup of quotients. This definition has since been extended to the class of all semigroups giving a definition of semigroups of quotients which may be regarded as an analogue of the classical ring of quotients. When Q is a semigroup of quotients of a semigroup S, we also say that S is an order in Q.

In 1984 Heath-Brown [5] proved the following conjecture of Erdős and Mirsky [2] (which seemed at one time as hard as the twin prime problem):

“There exist infinitely many integers n for which d(n) = d(n + 1).”

On Waring's problem for cubes, it is conjectured that every sufficiently large natural number can be represented as a sum of four cubes of natural numbers. Denoting by E(N) the number of the natural numbers up to N that cannot be written as a sum of four cubes, we may express the conjecture as E(N)≪1.

In 1973, Montgomery [12] introduced, in order to study the vertical distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function, the pair correlation function

where w(u) = 4/(4 + u2) and γjj = 1, 2, run over the imaginary part of the nontrivial zeros of ζ(s). It is easy to see that, for T → ∞,

uniformly in X, and Montgomery [12], see also Goldston-Montgomery [7], proved that under the Riemann Hypothesis (RH)

uniformly for X ≤ T ≤ XA, for any fixed A > 1. He also conjectured, under RH, that (1) holds uniformly for Xε ≤ T ≤ X, for every fixed ε > 0. We denote by MC the above conjecture.

We show that if the derivative of a convex function on c0 is locally uniformly continuous, then every point x ∈ c0, has a neighbourhood O such that f′(O) is relatively compact in ℓ1.

The equation

where ℱ is a certain complex-valued function of the given real periodic function λ, is studied analytically and numerically. The equation is motivated physically by a boundary-layer stability problem in which λ represents the skin-friction of the undisturbed basic flow profile. It is proved that no periodic neutral solutions exist for any attached basic flow and the implications of this result for certain vortex-wave interactions are discussed.

A class of mixed type functional differential equations with piecewise constant arguments is studied. The initial value problem is discussed and necessary and sufficient conditions for existence and uniqueness are obtained.

This paper is a contribution to the general problem of differentiability of Lipschitz functions between Banach spaces. We establish here a result concerning the existence of derivatives which are in some sense between the notions of Gâteaux and Frechet differentiability.

Sharp extensions of some classical polynomial inequalities of Bernstein are established for rational function spaces on the unit circle, on K = r (mod 2 π), on [-1, 1 ] and on ℝ. The key result is the establishment of the inequality

for every rational function f=pn/qn, where pn is a polynomial of degree at most n with complex coefficients and

with | aj | ≠ 1 for each j and for every zo∈ δ D, where δ D,= {z∈ ℂ: |z| = l}. The above inequality is sharp at every z0∈δD.