For the solubility of an inhomogeneous polynomial Diophantine equation, there is one well-known necessary, but not sufficient condition; namely the necessary congruence condition (NCC) explained in §2, below. Till recently, no progress had been made with the general cubic equation, because no one knew what else to assume. Examples given here, see (4.3), (5.4), indicate that some rather subtle hypothesis is needed. The first such hypothesis, see Davenport and Lewis [1], was very far from being necessary for the solubility of the equation. It would seem that any supplementary hypothesis which (loosely) is somewhere near necessary and also (together with the NCC) somewhere near sufficient deserves separate detailed investigation before one proceeds to use it.

Write ‖θ‖ for the distance from the real number θ to the nearest integer. An n-tuple of real numbers (β1, …, βn) will be called badly approximable, if there is constant C > 0 such that

for all positive integers q. As is well known, a single number β is badly approximable if and only if the partial quotients in its continued fraction are bounded.

In many investigations into the properties of convex bodies, authors have made use of distance functions ρ(K1K2) which give a measure of the “nearness” of two convex bodies K1 and K2. Sometimes they have introduced new functions to deal with particular problems. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the properties of four of these functions, namely all those (so far as we are aware) which occur in the literature and have the property that they are metrics on the set of all convex bodies of some given dimension.

Throughout this paper a ring will mean a commutative ring with identity element. If A is an ideal of the ring R and P is a minimal prime ideal of A, then the intersection Q of all P-primary ideals which contain A is called the isolated primary component of A belonging to P. The ideal Q can also be described as the set of all elements x∈R such that xr∈A for some r∈R\P. If {Pα} is the collection of all minimal prime ideals of A and Qα is the isolated primary component of A belonging to Pα, then is called the kernel of A.

A general theory of an elastic-plastic continuum which is valid for non-isothermal deformation and which includes explicit restrictions derived from thermodynamics has been given recently by Green and Naghdi [2]. In the development of this theory, the analysis was carried out for a symmetric plastic strain tensor, although it was noted that it is possible to use instead a plastic strain tensor which is nonsymmetric and this would require only a slight modification of the results.

The paper discusses the advantages of solving boundaryvalue problems by the use of eigen-function expansions of suitable fourth order differential equations instead of those of second order equations. Some such expansions are constructed, their convergence properties studied and their use in different types of boundary-value problems are discussed.

A graph consists of a set of vertices some pairs of which are joined by a single edge. A tree is a graph with the property that each pair of vertices is connected by precisely one path, i.e., a sequence of distinct vertices joined consecutively by edges. The complexity c of a graph G(n, k) with n vertices and k edges is the number of trees with n vertices which are subgraphs of G(n, k). The distribution of c over the class of all graphs G(n, k) is of physical interest because it throws light on the classical many-body problem. (See, e.g. [9].) Ford and Uhlenbeck [3] gave numerical data which suggested that the distribution of c tends to normality for increasing n if k is near No moments higher than the first were known in general and they remarked in [4] that even “the second would be worth knowing”. The main object in this paper is to derive a formula for the second moment of c.

Summary. This paper is concerned with an infinite plate of homogeneous isotropic elastic material in a state of generalised plane stress and having a circular hole with boundary γ divided into two parts. Over one part of γ the stresses are zero; over the other the shear stress is zero and the normal displacement is specified. The problem corresponds to a smooth loose rigid pin pressed against the edge of a circular hole in an infinite plate.

1. Throughout this note p is a prime and θ = θ(x1, …, xn) a polynomial of degree 3, with integral coefficients and an integral constant term. The object is to study, by elementary methods, the cubic congruence θ(x1, … xn)≡0 (mod p). (1)

A famous problem of Littlewood is whether or not inf u¬¬ux ¬¬u⬬=0, (1) for all real numbers α, β, where the infimum is taken over all positive integers u, and ¬¬ε¬¬, as usual, denotes the distance from ε to the nearest integer. By a well-known transference principle (see [2, p. 78], with an obvious modification), problem (1) is equivalent to whether or not inf ¬xy¬ ¬¬xx+y⬬=0 (2) for all real numbers α, β, with 1, α, β linearly independent over the rationals, where the infimum is taken over all non-zero integers x, y.

Summary. A rigid circular inclusion, or peg, is symmetrically fixed in an infinite elastic strip of finite width. A simple tension acts on the ends of the strip while the edges are stress free, and no slip takes place between peg and strip. The system is in a state of generalized plane stress.

This note is a continuation of the articles [6] and [2]. In [1], trees with a given partition α = (a1; a2, …), where ai is the number of vertices (points) of valency (degree) i were enumerated. After the determination of the number of plane trees in [2], the number of planted plane trees with a given partition α was found explicitly in [6]. In the present note, the number of plane trees with a given partition is expressed as a function of the number of planted trees with a given partition. The method, which is not new, consists of an application of the enumeration techniques of Otter [3] and Pólya [4]; it was used in [1] and also by Riordan [5].

We say that a system ∑ of equal spheres S1S2, … covers a proportion θ of n-dimensional space, if the limit, as the side of the cube C tends to infinity, of the ratio

of the volume of C covered by the spheres to the volume of C, exists and has the value θ. We say that such a system ∑ has density δ, if the corresponding ratio

has the limit δ as the side of the cube C tends to infinity. We confine our attention to systems ∑ for which both limits exist. It is clear that δ = θ, if no two spheres of the system overlap, i.e. if we have a. packing; and that, in general, the difference δ-θ is a measure of the amount of overlapping.

The n-th roots of unity 1, ω, …, ωn-1, where ω = exp (2πi\n), are linearly dependent in the field Q of rationals since, for instance, their sum vanishes. We are here concerned with the linearrelations between them with integral coefficients. Let U denote the vector space of elements u = (u0, …, un−1) over Q and let N be the subspace of elements u defined by the relation u0+u1ω+…+un−1ωn−1=0. (1)

This paper is concerned with diffusion into a turbulent atmosphere from an infinite ground level line source at right angles to the direction of the mean wind velocity. A solution is obtained for a mechanism which takes into account diffusion in the direction of the velocity, and the predictions of the solution are found to be in good agreement with experimental data in adiabatic atmospheric conditions.

In engineering practice an important class of problems concerns the evaluation of the thermal stresses set up in a heated elastic solid containing cracks. The calculation of the thermal stresses in an infinite space, in which an axially symmetric heat flux across the faces of a penny-shaped crack is prescribed, was first carried out by Olesiak and Sneddon [1], using integral transform techniques. Their solution of the statical equations of thermoelasticity is appropriate to the case of a crack whose faces are stress free and gives zero shear stress on the plane containing the crack. Williams [2] has subsequently shown that the displacement vector in [1 ] can be written in terms of two harmonic functions, one of which is directly related to the temperature field, and has indicated how the analysis of [1] can be reduced to certain simple potential boundary value problems.

Criteria for 2 to be an e-th power residue of a prime

p ≡ 1 (mod e = ef+1,

have been obtained in various forms for e = 2, 3, 5. Euler proved the well known result that 2 is a quadratic residue of a prime p ≡ ± l (mod 8). Dickson [1] showed that 2 is a cubic residue of p ≡ 1 (mod 3) if and only if p = L2+27M2 is soluble in integers L, M.