Associated to every plane curve there is the locus of centres of circles bitangent to that curve, the so-called symmetry set of the curve. We can view this set as the spine of our curve, which can be recovered by taking the envelope of circles of varying radii along this spine. Varying the symmetry set in some isotopy while keeping the radius function fixed may be viewed as crudely modelling motion of the original curve viewed as a biological object. Fixing the symmetry set and varying the radius function can be considered to model growth crudely. In this paper we shall describe the generic changes in the curves which take place in the process of growth and motion, and outline the corresponding results for spheres centred on a space curve. We also use the idea of a stratified Morse function to describe the generic changes which occur in one parameter families of (full) bifurcation sets in the plane. Applying this to the bifurcation set of distance squared functions we find all the transitions of a symmetry set (and evolute) which occur in a generic isotopy of a plane curve.

We consider a cylinder with arbitrary cross section moving in a viscous incompressible fluid parallel to a plane wall. Formal asymptotic expansions of the solution for small Reynolds numbers are constructed by using boundary integral equations of the first kind. In contrast to the problem without a wall, we show that there exists a unique solution to the zeroth order problem. However, the problem considered here is still singular in the sense that we find the Stokes paradox in the next higher order problem. A justification of the formal asymptotic expansion for the first two terms is established rigorously.

Some second order ordinary differential equations of the form ξ2ϕ″ + ξ2(N − 1)″′/r + ½(ϕ − ϕ3) + ½k = 0 are studied. Properties such as existence and monotonicity of solutions are considered for N ≧ 1, ξ > 0 and two sets of boundary conditions. For N = 1, some explicit results are obtained for small ξ. These ODE's arise from a phase field approach to free boundary problems involving a phase transition.

Upper bounds are obtained for the Hausdorff dimension of compact invariant sets of ordinary differential equations which are periodic in the independent variable. From these are derived sufficient conditions for dissipative analytic n-dimensional ω-periodic differential equations to have only a finite number of ω-periodic solutions. For autonomous equations the same conditions ensure that each bounded semi-orbit converges to a critical point. These results yield some information about the Lorenz equation and the forced Duffing equation.

Various physical problems in diffraction theory lead us to study modifications of the Sommerfeld half-plane problem governed by two proper elliptic partial differential equations in complementary ℝ3 half-spaces Ω± and we allow different boundary or transmission conditions on two half-planes, which together form the common boundary of Ω±.

In this paper we consider Hopf bifurcation in the presence of O(2) symmetry. The system of reaction diffusion equations ut, = D(µ)uxx + f(µ, u) provided with periodic boundary conditions may serve as a model problem. We prove the bifurcation of a torus of standing waves and two circles of travelling waves and we compute the stability (with asymptotic phase) of these periodic solutions, giving explicit formulae. Finally we demonstrate how a small perturbation which breaks part of the symmetry leads to secondary bifurcation.

We study the initial value problem for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation

Under suitable regularity assumptions on f and ø and growth and sign conditions on f, it is shown that the maximum norms of solutions to (*) decay as t→² ∞ at the same rate as that of solutions to the free Schrödinger equation.

We consider a class of non-linear evolution equations subject to a periodic forcing term. Using bifurcation theory we obtain results on the existence and number of periodic solutions. The theory applies to semi-linear diffusion equations defined on bounded or unbounded domains.

This paper discusses a few problems on the size of the set of invariant means of an amenable semigroup posed by Maria M. Klawe, Alan L. T. Paterson and M. Rajagopalan and P. V. Ramakrishnan ([4], [5], [8] and [9]).

Professor R. D. Brown has brought to our attention an error in our Theorem 4.2. This would, in turn, invalidate Theorem 3.6 which depends on Theorem 4.2. The basic flaw is that the alignment hypothesis of Proposition 4.1 is not satisfied by the product space projections, Qn. Interestingly, such product space constructions are a common computational device in applications of the T*T method, but apparently seldom satisfy the alignment hypothesis of Proposition 4.1. We wish here to correct these theorems, and comment on the resulting implications for Example 6.1. In independent and as yet unpublished work, Professor Brown has obtained further new results on convergence of the method of intermediate problems.