We show that the Hausdorff dimension of any slice of the graph of the Takagi function is bounded above by the Assouad dimension of the graph minus one, and that the bound is sharp. The result is deduced from a statement on more general self-affine sets, which is of independent interest. We also prove that Marstrand’s slicing theorem on the graph of the Takagi function extends to all slices if and only if the upper pointwise dimension of every projection of the length measure on the x-axis lifted to the graph is at least one.

In this paper, we study the dimension of planar self-affine sets, of which generating iterated function system (IFS) contains non-invertible affine mappings. We show that under a certain separation condition the dimension equals to the affinity dimension for a typical choice of the linear-parts of the non-invertible mappings, furthermore, we show that the dimension is strictly smaller than the affinity dimension for certain choices of parameters.

Navigators have been taught for centuries to estimate the location of their craft on a map from three lines of position, for redundancy. The three lines typically form a triangle, called a cocked hat. How is the location of the craft related to the triangle? For more than 80 years navigators have also been taught that, if each line of position is equally likely to pass to the right and to the left of the true location, then the likelihood that the craft is in the triangle is exactly 1/4. This is stated in numerous reputable sources, but was never stated or proved in a mathematically formal and rigorous fashion. In this paper we prove that the likelihood is indeed 1/4 if we assume that the lines of position always intersect pairwise. We also show that the result does not hold under weaker (and more reasonable) assumptions, and we prove a generalisation to $n$ lines.

This paper considers self-conformal iterated function systems (IFSs) on the real line whose first level cylinders overlap. In the space of self-conformal IFSs, we show that generically (in topological sense) if the attractor of such a system has Hausdorff dimension less than 1 then it has zero appropriate dimensional Hausdorff measure and its Assouad dimension is equal to 1. Our main contribution is in showing that if the cylinders intersect then the IFS generically does not satisfy the weak separation property and hence, we may apply a recent result of Angelevska, Käenmäki and Troscheit. This phenomenon holds for transversal families (in particular for the translation family) typically, in the self-similar case, in both topological and in measure theoretical sense, and in the more general self-conformal case in the topological sense.

This paper is devoted to the study of the normal (tangential) regularity of a closed set and the subdifferential (directional) regularity of its distance function in the context of Riemannian manifolds. The Clarke, Fréchet and proximal subdifferentials of the distance function from a closed subset in a Riemannian manifold are represented by corresponding normal cones of the set.

Let ${\mathcal{A}}$ be a star-shaped polygon in the plane, with rational vertices, containing the origin. The number of primitive lattice points in the dilate $t{\mathcal{A}}$ is asymptotically $\frac{6}{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}^{2}}\text{Area}(t{\mathcal{A}})$ as $t\rightarrow \infty$. We show that the error term is both $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FA}_{\pm }(t\sqrt{\log \log t})$ and $O(t(\log t)^{2/3}(\log \log t)^{4/3})$. Both bounds extend (to the above class of polygons) known results for the isosceles right triangle, which appear in the literature as bounds for the error term in the summatory function for Euler’s $\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}(n)$.

The Guarded Negation Fragment (GNFO) is a fragment of first-order logic that contains all positive existential formulas, can express the first-order translations of basic modal logic and of many description logics, along with many sentences that arise in databases. It has been shown that the syntax of GNFO is restrictive enough so that computational problems such as validity and satisfiability are still decidable. This suggests that, in spite of its expressive power, GNFO formulas are amenable to novel optimizations. In this article we study the model theory of GNFO formulas. Our results include effective preservation theorems for GNFO, effective Craig Interpolation and Beth Definability results, and the ability to express the certain answers of queries with respect to a large class of GNFO sentences within very restricted logics.

As a continuation of a recent work [Bárány et al, On the dimension of self-affine sets and measures with overlaps. Proc. Amer. Math. Soc.144 (2016) 4427–4440] of the same authors, in this note we study the dimension theory of diagonally homogeneous triangular planar self-affine iterated function systems.

Ledrappier and Young introduced a relation between entropy, Lyapunov exponents and dimension for invariant measures of diffeomorphisms on compact manifolds. In this paper, we show that a self-affine measure on the plane satisfies the Ledrappier–Young formula if the corresponding iterated function system (IFS) satisfies the strong separation condition and the linear parts satisfy the dominated splitting condition. We give sufficient conditions, inspired by Ledrappier and by Falconer and Kempton, that the dimensions of such a self-affine measure is equal to the Lyapunov dimension. We show some applications, namely, we give another proof for Hueter–Lalley's theorem and we consider self-affine measures and sets generated by lower triangular matrices.

The objective of this paper is to reconstruct both the Kursk incident and especially the reaction to it by Russian military and political authorities with the aim of gauging the extent of continuity and change of Soviet-era practices in three key areas of contemporary Russia's public institutional life: (1) the organizational behaviour and institutional culture of the Russian military; (2) the behaviour of Russia's executive political leadership, i.e. President Vladimir Putin; and (3) the media of mass communication. Reaction to such crises, the author argues, can shed much light on the actual behavioural patterns and operating assumptions of relevant institutions and leaders. The method employed is essentially a detailed forensic reconstruction of the incident and its aftermath from three angles: the reactions of the military authorities; the reactions of Putin; and the reactions of the mass media (and of the authorities to the mass media).

The individual is nonsense, the individual is zero.

Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1921

Human life still costs nothing here.

Leonid Radzikhovskii, 2000

This paper identifies ‘savage numbers’ – number-like or number-replacing concepts and practices attributed to peoples viewed as civilizationally inferior – as a crucial and hitherto unrecognized body of evidence in the first two decades of the Victorian science of prehistory. It traces the changing and often ambivalent status of savage numbers in the period after the 1858–1859 ‘time revolution’ in the human sciences by following successive reappropriations of an iconic 1853 story from Francis Galton's African travels. In response to a fundamental lack of physical evidence concerning prehistoric men, savage numbers offered a readily available body of data that helped scholars envisage great extremes of civilizational lowliness in a way that was at once analysable and comparable, and anecdotes like Galton's made those data vivid and compelling. Moreover, they provided a simple and direct means of conceiving of the progressive scale of civilizational development, uniting societies and races past and present, at the heart of Victorian scientific racism.