With contributions by leading experts in geometric analysis, this volume is documenting the material presented in the John H. Barrett Memorial Lectures held at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, on May 29 - June 1, 2018. The central topic of the 2018 lectures was mean curvature flow, and the material in this volume covers all recent developments in this vibrant area that combines partial differential equations with differential geometry.

Gian-Carlo Rota was born in Vigevano, Italy, in 1932. He died in Cambridge, Mas sachusetts, in 1999. He had several careers, most notably as a mathematician, but also as a philosopher and a consultant to the United States government. His mathe matical career was equally varied. His early mathematical studies were at Princeton (1950 to 1953) and Yale (1953 to 1956). In 1956, he completed his doctoral thesis under the direction of Jacob T. Schwartz. This thesis was published as the pa per "Extension theory of differential operators I", the first paper reprinted in this volume. Rota's early work was in analysis, more specifically, in operator theory, differ ential equations, ergodic theory, and probability theory. In the 1960's, Rota was motivated by problems in fluctuation theory to study some operator identities of Glen Baxter (see [7]). Together with other problems in probability theory, this led Rota to study combinatorics. His series of papers, "On the foundations of combi natorial theory", led to a fundamental re-evaluation of the subject. Later, in the 1990's, Rota returned to some of the problems in analysis and probability theory which motivated his work in combinatorics. This was his intention all along, and his early death robbed mathematics of his unique perspective on linkages between the discrete and the continuous. Glimpses of his new research programs can be found in [2,3,6,9,10].

Classical boundary integral equations arising from the potential theory and acoustics (Laplace and Helmholtz equations) are derived. Using the parametrization of the boundary these equations take a form of periodic pseudodifferential equations. A general theory of periodic pseudodifferential equations and methods of solving are developed, including trigonometric Galerkin and collocation methods, their fully discrete versions with fast solvers, quadrature and spline based methods. The theory of periodic pseudodifferential operators is presented in details, with preliminaries (Fredholm operators, periodic distributions, periodic Sobolev spaces) and full proofs. This self-contained monograph can be used as a textbook by graduate/postgraduate students. It also contains a lot of carefully chosen exercises.

This is a collection of original and review articles on recent advances and new directions in a multifaceted and interconnected area of mathematics and its applications. It encompasses many topics in theoretical developments in operator theory and its diverse applications in applied mathematics, physics, engineering, and other disciplines. The purpose is to bring in one volume many important original results of cutting edge research as well as authoritative review of recent achievements, challenges, and future directions in the area of operator theory and its applications. The intended audience are mathematicians, physicists, electrical engineers in academia and industry, researchers and graduate students, that use methods of operator theory and related fields of mathematics, such as matrix theory, functional analysis, differential and difference equations, in their work.

The approximation of functions by linear positive operators is an important research topic in general mathematics and it also provides powerful tools to application areas suchas computer-aided geometric design, numerical analysis, and solutions of differential equations. q-Calculus is a generalization of many subjects, such as hypergeometric series, complex analysis, and particle physics. This monograph is an introduction to combining approximation theory and q-Calculus with applications, by usingwell- known operators. The presentation is systematic and the authors include a brief summary of the notations and basicdefinitions ofq-calculus before delving into more advanced material. Themany applications of q-calculus in the theory of approximation, especially onvariousoperators, which includes convergence of operators to functions in real and complex domain forms the gist of the book.

This book is suitable for researchers andstudents in mathematics, physics andengineering, and forprofessionals who would enjoy exploring the host of mathematicaltechniques and ideas that are collected and discussedin thebook."

Multivariate polynomials are a main tool in approximation. The book begins with an introduction to the general theory by presenting the most important facts on multivariate interpolation, quadrature, orthogonal projections and their summation, all treated under a constructive view, and embedded in the theory of positive linear operators. On this background, the book gives the first comprehensive introduction to the recently developped theory of generalized hyperinterpolation. As an application, the book gives a quick introduction to tomography. Several parts of the book are based on rotation principles, which are presented in the beginning of the book, together with all other basic facts needed.

This work is based on the lecture notes of the course M742: Topics in Partial Dif- ferential Equations, which I taught in the Spring semester of 1997 at Indiana Univer- sity. My main intention in this course was to give a concise introduction to solving two-dimensional compressibleEuler equations with Riemann data, which are special Cauchy data. This book covers new theoretical developments in the field over the past decade or so. Necessary knowledge of one-dimensional Riemann problems is reviewed and some popularnumerical schemes are presented. Multi-dimensional conservation laws are more physical and the time has come to study them. The theory onbasicone-dimensional conservation laws isfairly complete providing solid foundation for multi-dimensional problems. The rich theory on ellip- tic and parabolic partial differential equations has great potential in applications to multi-dimensional conservation laws. And faster computers make itpossible to reveal numerically more details for theoretical pursuitin multi-dimensional problems. Overview and highlights Chapter 1is an overview ofthe issues that concern us inthisbook. It lists theEulersystemandrelatedmodelssuch as theunsteady transonic small disturbance, pressure-gradient, and pressureless systems. Itdescribes Mach re- flection and the von Neumann paradox. In Chapters 2-4, which form Part I of the book, we briefly present the theory of one-dimensional conservation laws, which in- cludes solutions to the Riemann problems for the Euler system and general strictly hyperbolic and genuinely nonlinearsystems, Glimm's scheme, and large-time asymp- toties.

Covering some of the key areas of optimal control theory (OCT), a rapidly expanding field, the authors use new methods to set out a version of OCT's more refined'maximum principle.' The results obtainedhave applicationsin production planning, reinsurance-dividend management, multi-model sliding mode control, and multi-model differential games.

This book" "explores material that will be of great interest to post-graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in applied mathematics and engineering, particularly in the area of systems and control."

This book proposes representations of multicast rate regions in wireless networks based on the mathematical concept of submodular functions, e.g., the submodular cut model and the polymatroid broadcast model. These models subsume and generalize the graph and hypergraph models. The submodular structure facilitates a dual decomposition approach to network utility maximization problems, which exploits the greedy algorithm for linear programming on submodular polyhedra. This approach yields computationally efficient characterizations of inner and outer bounds on the multicast capacity regions for various classes of wireless networks.

With contributions by specialists in optimization and practitioners in the fields of aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, and fluid and solid mechanics, the major themes include an assessment of the state of the art in optimization algorithms as well as challenging applications in design and control, in the areas of process engineering and systems with partial differential equation models.

While there are many excellent books available on fundamental and applied electromagnetics, most introduce operator concepts in an ad hoc manner, and few discuss the subject within the general framework of operator theory. This is in contrast to quantum theory, where the use of operators and concepts from functional analysis is common. However, casting electromagnetic problems in terms of operator theory produces useful insights into the mathematical properties and physical characteristics of solutions. For instance, the commonly used modal expansion of fields in waveguides are immediately justified upon identifying the differential operators as being of the appropriate Sturm-Liouville type. As another example, existence, uniqueness and solvability of integral formulations can often be settled by appealing to the theory of Fredholm operators. Many other examples that illustrate the value of abstracting problems to an operator level are provided. Although the book focuses on mathematical fundamentals, it is written from the perspective of engineers and applied scientists working in electromagnetics. The book begins with a review of electromagnetic theory, including a discussion of singular integral operators commonly encountered in applications. It then turns to a self-contained introduction to operator theory, including basic functional analysis, linear operators, Green¿s functions and Green¿s operators, spectral theory, and Sturm-Liouville operators. The discussion is at an introductory mathematical level, presenting definitions and theorems, as well as proofs of the theorems when these are particularly simple or enlightening. The tools developed in this first part of the book are then applied to problems in classical electromagnetic theory: boundary-value problems and potential theory, transmission lines, waves in layered media, scattering problems in waveguides, and electromagnetic cavities.

This monograph has grown out of research we started in 1987, although the foun dations were laid in the 1970's when both of us were working on our doctoral theses, trying to generalize the now classic paper of Oleinik, Kalashnikov and Chzhou on nonlinear degenerate diffusion. Brian worked under the guidance of Bert Peletier at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, and, later at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands on extending the earlier mathematics to include nonlinear convection; while Robert worked at Lomonosov State Univer sity in Moscow under the supervision of Anatolii Kalashnikov on generalizing the earlier mathematics to include nonlinear absorption. We first met at a conference held in Rome in 1985. In 1987 we met again in Madrid at the invitation of Ildefonso Diaz, where we were both staying at 'La Residencia'. As providence would have it, the University 'Complutense' closed down during this visit in response to student demonstra tions, and, we were very much left to our own devices. It was natural that we should gravitate to a research topic of common interest. This turned out to be the characterization of the phenomenon of finite speed of propagation for nonlin ear reaction-convection-diffusion equations. Brian had just completed some work on this topic for nonlinear diffusion-convection, while Robert had earlier done the same for nonlinear diffusion-absorption. There was no question but that we bundle our efforts on the general situation.

Real-life problems are often quite complicated in form and nature and, for centuries, many different mathematical concepts, ideas and tools have been developed to formulate these problems theoretically and then to solve them either exactly or approximately.

This book aims to gather a collection of papers dealing with several different problems arising from many disciplines and some modern mathematical approaches to handle them. In this respect, the book offers a wide overview on many of the current trends in Mathematics as valuable formal techniques in capturing and exploiting the complexity involved in real-world situations.

Several researchers, colleagues, friends and students of Professor Maria Luisa Menendez have contributed to this volume to pay tribute to her and to recognize the diverse contributions she had made to the fields of Mathematics and Statistics and to the profession in general. She had a sweet and strong personality, and instilled great values and work ethics in her students through her dedication to teaching and research. Even though the academic community lost her prematurely, she would continue to provide inspiration to many students and researchers worldwide through her published work."

The articles in this volume are an outgrowth of an international conference entitled Variational and Topological Methods in the Study of Nonlinear Phe- nomena, held in Pisa in January-February 2000. Under the framework of the research project Differential Equations and the Calculus of Variations, the conference was organized to celebrate the 60th birthday of Antonio Marino, one of the leaders of the research group and a significant contrib- utor to the mathematical activity in this area of nonlinear analysis. The volume highlights recent advances in the field of nonlinear functional analysis and its applications to nonlinear partial and ordinary differential equations, with particular emphasis on variational and topological meth- ods. A broad range of topics is covered, including: concentration phenomena in PDEs, variational methods with applications to PDEs and physics, pe- riodic solutions of ODEs, computational aspects in topological methods, and mathematical models in biology. Though well-differentiated, the topics covered are unified through a com- mon perspective and approach. Unique to the work are several chapters on computational aspects and applications to biology, not usually found with such basic studies on PDEs and ODEs. The volume is an excellent reference text for researchers and graduate students in the above mentioned fields. Contributors are M. Clapp, M.J. Esteban, P. Felmer, A. Ioffe, W. Marzan- towicz, M. Mrozek, M. Musso, R. Ortega, P. Pilarczyk, M. del Pino, E. Sere, E. Schwartzman, P. Sintzoff, R. Turner, and I\f. Willem.

Psychophysics is by definition mappings between events in the environment and levels of human sensory responses. In this text the methods of nonlinear dynamics, employing trajectories developed for simpler sensory modelling, are extended to classes of problems which lie at the interface between sensation and perception. A diversity of topics for which extensive empirical evidence exists are reformulated by writing their dynamics in terms of complex trajectories put into coupled lattices and into cascades of such lattices. Fundamental relationships between core processes of psychophysics in time and space, and recurrent quantitative or topological distortions of the physical world which arise in perception, are given a treatment which contrasts fundamentally with traditional linear equations in use since the 19th century.

In the modern theory of boundary value problems the following ap proach to investigation is agreed upon (we call it the functional approach): some functional spaces are chosen; the statements of boundary value prob the basis of these spaces; and the solvability of lems are formulated on the problems, properties of solutions, and their dependence on the original data of the problems are analyzed. These stages are put on the basis of the correct statement of different problems of mathematical physics (or of the definition of ill-posed problems). For example, if the solvability of a prob lem in the functional spaces chosen cannot be established then, probably, the reason is in their unsatisfactory choice. Then the analysis should be repeated employing other functional spaces. Elliptical problems can serve as an example of classical problems which are analyzed by this approach. Their investigations brought a number of new notions and results in the theory of Sobolev spaces W;(D) which, in turn, enabled us to create a sufficiently complete theory of solvability of elliptical equations. Nowadays the mathematical theory of radiative transfer problems and kinetic equations is an extensive area of modern mathematical physics. It has various applications in astrophysics, the theory of nuclear reactors, geophysics, the theory of chemical processes, semiconductor theory, fluid mechanics, etc. 25,29,31,39,40, 47, 52, 78, 83, 94, 98, 120, 124, 125, 135, 146]."

This monograph develops a generalised energy flow theory to investigate non-linear dynamical systems governed by ordinary differential equations in phase space and often met in various science and engineering fields. Important nonlinear phenomena such as, stabilities, periodical orbits, bifurcations and chaos are tack-led and the corresponding energy flow behaviors are revealed using the proposed energy flow approach. As examples, the common interested nonlinear dynamical systems, such as, Duffing's oscillator, Van der Pol's equation, Lorenz attractor, Roessler one and SD oscillator, etc, are discussed. This monograph lights a new energy flow research direction for nonlinear dynamics. A generalised Matlab code with User Manuel is provided for readers to conduct the energy flow analysis of their nonlinear dynamical systems. Throughout the monograph the author continuously returns to some examples in each chapter to illustrate the applications of the discussed theory and approaches. The book can be used as an undergraduate or graduate textbook or a comprehensive source for scientists, researchers and engineers, providing the statement of the art on energy flow or power flow theory and methods.

This is the first book to comprehensively cover quantum probabilistic approaches to spectral analysis of graphs, an approach developed by the authors. The book functions as a concise introduction to quantum probability from an algebraic aspect. Here readers will learn several powerful methods and techniques of wide applicability, recently developed under the name of quantum probability. The exercises at the end of each chapter help to deepen understanding.

This book aims at restructuring some fundamentals in measure and integration theory. It centers around the ubiquitous task to produce appropriate contents and measures from more primitive data like elementary contents and elementary integrals. It develops the new approach started around 1970 by Topsoe and others into a systematic theory. The theory is much more powerful than the traditional means and has striking implications all over measure theory and beyond.

The student of calculus is entitled to ask what calculus is and what it can be used for. This short book provides an answer.The author starts by demonstrating that calculus provides a mathematical tool for the quantitative analysis of a wide range of dynamical phenomena and systems with variable quantities.He then looks at the origins and intuitive sources of calculus, its fundamental methodology, and its general framework and basic structure, before examining a few typical applications.The author's style is direct and pedagogical. The new student should find that the book provides a clear and strong grounding in this important technique.

This book collects recent research papers by respected specialists in the field. It presents advances in the field of geometric properties for parabolic and elliptic partial differential equations, an area that has always attracted great attention. It settles the basic issues (existence, uniqueness, stability and regularity of solutions of initial/boundary value problems) before focusing on the topological and/or geometric aspects. These topics interact with many other areas of research and rely on a wide range of mathematical tools and techniques, both analytic and geometric. The Italian and Japanese mathematical schools have a long history of research on PDEs and have numerous active groups collaborating in the study of the geometric properties of their solutions.

Many special functions occuring in physics and partial differential equations can be represented by integral transformatIons: the fundamental solutions of many PDE's, Newton-Coulomb potentials, hypergeometric functions, Feynman integrals, initial data of (inverse) tomography problems, etc. The general picture of such transfor- mations is as follows. There is an analytic fibre bundle E --+ T, a differential form w on E, whose restrictions on the fibres are closed, and a family of cycles in these fibres, parametrized by the points of T and depending continuously on these points. Then the integral of the form w along these cycles is a function on the base. The analytic properties of such functions depend on the monodromy action, i.e., on the natural action of the fundamental group of the base in the homology of the fibre: this action on the integration cycles defines the ramification of the analytic continuation of our function. The study of this action (which is a purely topological problem) can answer questions about the analytic behaviour of the integral function, for instance, is this function single-valued or at least algebraic, what are the singular points of this function, and what is its asymptotics close to these points. In this book, we study such analytic properties of three famous classes of func- tions: the volume functions, which appear in the Archimedes-Newton problem on in- tegrable bodies; the Newton-Coulomb potentials, and the Green functions of hyperbolic equations (studied, in particular, in the Hada- mard-Petrovskii-Atiyah-Bott-Garding lacuna theory).

The aim of this monograph is to give a unified account fo the classical topics in fixed point theory that lie on the border-line of topology and non-linear functional analysis, emphasizing the topological developments related to the Leray-Schauder theory. The first part of this book is based on "Fixed Point Theory I" which was published by PWN, Warsaw in 1982. The second part follows the outline conceived by Andrzej Granas and the late James Dugunji. The completionof this work has been awaited for many years by researchers in this area. "If the authors do equally well with the second volume they will have produced the best monograph in this particular field."Math Reviews