A family of subsets of an n-set is k-locally thin if, for every k-tuple of its members, the ground set has at least one element contained in exactly one of them. For k = 5 we derive a new exponential upper bound for the maximum size of these families. This implies the same bound for all odd values of k > 3. Our proof uses the graph entropy bounding technique to exploit a self-similarity in the structure of the hypergraph associated with such set families.

In this paper we investigate a partitioning problem, setting the existence problem for all group-divisible designs with first and second associates in which the blocks are 4-cycles.

The number of excluded minors for the class of graphs with path-width at most two is very large. To give a practical characterization of the obstructions, we introduce some operations which preserve path-width at most two. We give a list of ten graphs such that any graph with path-width more than two can be reduced – by taking minors and applying our operations – to one of the graphs on our list. We think that our operations and excluded substructures give a far more transparent description of the class of graphs with path-width at most two than Kinnersley and Langston's characterization by 110 excluded minors (see [4]).

In this paper, we conclude the construction of all the matroids having circumference at most five. We use this result to prove a conjecture of Hochstättler and Jackson, in a special case.

We investigate the following problem of Erdős:

Determine the minimum number of k-cliques in a graph of order n with independence number [ges ] l.

We disprove the original conjecture of Erdős which was stated in 1962 for all but a finite number of pairs k, l, and give asymptotic estimates for l = 3, k [ges ] 4, and l = 4, k [ges ] 4.

Let k be a positive integer and let G be a graph. Suppose a list S(v) of positive integers is assigned to each vertex v, such that

(1) [mid ]S(v)[mid ] = 2k for each vertex v of G, and

(2) for each vertex v, and each c ∈ S(v), the number of neighbours w of v for which c ∈ S(w) is at most k.

Then we prove that there exists a proper vertex colouring f of G such that f(v) ∈ S(v) for each v ∈ V(G). This proves a weak version of a conjecture of Reed.

Let X1, …, Xn be a sequence of r.v.s produced by a stationary Markov chain with state space an alphabet Ω = {ω1, …, ωq}, q [ges ] 2. We consider a set of words {A1, …, Ar}, r [ges ] 2, with letters from the alphabet Ω. We allow the words to have self-overlaps as well as overlaps between them. Let [Escr] denote the event of the appearance of a word from the set {A1, …, Ar} at a given position. Moreover, define by N the number of non-overlapping (competing renewal) appearances of [Escr] in the sequence X1, …, Xn. We derive a bound on the total variation distance between the distribution of N and a Poisson distribution with parameter []N. The Stein–Chen method and combinatorial arguments concerning the structure of words are employed. As a corollary, we obtain an analogous result for the i.i.d. case. Furthermore, we prove that, under quite general conditions, the r.v. N converges in distribution to a Poisson r.v. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the performance of the bound in the Markov case.

This paper concerns the reaction-diffusion equation ut = uxx + u2(1 − u). Previous numerical solutions of this equation have demonstrated various different types of wave front solutions, generated by different initial conditions. In this paper, the authors use a phase-plane form of comparison theorems for partial differential equations (PDEs) to confirm analytically these numerical results. In particular, they show that initial conditions with an exponentially decaying tail evolve to the unique exponentially decaying travelling wave, while initial conditions with algebraically decaying tails evolve either to an algebraically decaying travelling wave, or to the exponentially decaying wave, or to a perpetually accelerating wave, dependent upon the exact form of the decay of the initial conditions. We then focus on the case of accelerating waves and investigate their form in more detail, by approximating the full equation in this case with a hyperbolic PDE, which we solve using the method of characteristics. We use this approximate solution to derive a leading-order approximation to the wave speed.

This paper presents a sufficient condition for a one-dimensional Dirac operator with a potential tending to infinity at infinity to have no eigenvalues. It also provides a quick proof (and suggests variations) of a related criterion given by Evans and Harris.

We develop a spectral theory for the equation (∇ + ieA) × u = ±mu on Minkowski 3-space (one time variable and two space variables); here, A is a real vector potential and the vector product is defined with respect to the Minkowski metric. This equation was formulated by Elton and Vassiliev, who conjectured that it should have properties similar to those of the two-dimensional Dirac equation. Our equation contains a large parameter c (speed of light), and this motivates the study of the asymptotic behaviour of its spectrum as c → +∞. We show that the essential spectrum of our equation is the same as that of Dirac (theorem 3.1), whereas the discrete spectrum agrees with Dirac to a relative accuracy δλ/mc2 ~ O(c−4) (theorem 3.3). In other words, we show that our equation has the same accuracy as the two-dimensional Pauli equation, its advantage over Pauli being relativistic invariance.

If f is an entire function of order ρ, 0 < ρ < 2−11, it is shown that the Nevanlinna deficiency d(0, f′/f) of the logarithmic derivative of f satisfiesFor small positive ρ, this result strengthens an earlier estimate of Eremenko et al. concerning a conjecture of Fuchs.

We are concerned with the following minimization problems,where Ω ⊂ RN, N > 4, is a smooth bounded domain, qc = 2N/(N − 4), ϕ ∈ C(Ω) ∩ Lqc(Ω) and . We show that, for ϕ ≢ 0, each infimum is achieved. Under suitable conditions on ϕ, we establish the following gap phenomenon,for q ≤ qc.

Moreover, we study the limit behaviour of the minimizers, as q goes to qc, in the case ϕ ∈ H(Ω).

In this paper we consider quasilinear hemivariational inequalities at resonance. We obtain existence theorems using Landesman-Lazer-type conditions and multiplicity theorems for problems with strong resonance at infinity. Our method of proof is based on the non-smooth critical point theory for locally Lipschitz functions and on a generalized version of the Ekeland variational principle.

We define the deformation multiplicity of a map germ f: (Cn, 0) → (Cp, 0) with respect to a Boardman symbol i of codimension less than or equal to n and establish a geometrical interpretation of this number in terms of the set of Σi points that appear in a generic deformation of f. Moreover, this number is equal to the algebraic multiplicity of f with respect to i when the corresponding associated ring is Cohen-Macaulay. Finally, we study how algebraic multiplicity behaves with weighted homogeneous map germs.

We obtain some new exact multiplicity results for the Dirichlet boundary-value problemon a unit ball Bn in Rn. We consider several classes of nonlinearities f(u), including both positive and sign-changing cases. A crucial part of the proof is to establish positivity of solutions for the corresponding linearized problem. As an application we obtain exact multiplicity results for the Holling-Tanner population model.

Giving as answer to Bergman's question, Cohen and Montgomery proved that, for every finite group G with identity e and each G-graded ring R = ⊕g∈GRg, the Jacobson radical J(Re) of the initial component Re is equal to Re ∩ J(R). We describe all semigroups S, which satisfy the following natural analogue of this property: J(Re) = Re ∩ J(R) for each S-graded ring R = ⊕s∈SRs and every idempotent e ∈ S.

We prove existence results for semilinear elliptic boundary-value problems in both the resonance and non-resonance cases. What sets our results apart is that we impose sufficient conditions for solvability in terms of the (asymptotic) average values of the nonlinearities, thus allowing the nonlinear term to have significant oscillations outside the given spectral gap as long as it remains within the interval on the average in some sense. This work generalizes the results of a previous paper, which dealt exclusively with the ordinary differential equation (ODE) case and relied on ODE techniques.