Professor Dominic Welsh has made significant contributions to the fields of combinatorics and discrete probability, including matroids, complexity, and percolation, and has taught, influenced and inspired generations of students and researchers in mathematics. This volume summarizes and reviews the consistent themes from his work through a series of articles written by renowned experts. These articles contain original research work, set in a broader context by the inclusion of review material. As a reference text in its own right, this book will be valuable to academic researchers, research students, and others seeking an introduction to the relevant contemporary aspects of these fields.

The projective and polar geometries that arise from a vector space over a finite field are particularly useful in the construction of combinatorial objects, such as latin squares, designs, codes and graphs. This book provides an introduction to these geometries and their many applications to other areas of combinatorics. Coverage includes a detailed treatment of the forbidden subgraph problem from a geometrical point of view, and a chapter on maximum distance separable codes, which includes a proof that such codes over prime fields are short. The author also provides more than 100 exercises (complete with detailed solutions), which show the diversity of applications of finite fields and their geometries. Finite Geometry and Combinatorial Applications is ideal for anyone, from a third-year undergraduate to a researcher, who wishes to familiarise themselves with and gain an appreciation of finite geometry.

Transportation problems belong to the domains mathematical program ming and operations research. Transportation models are widely applied in various fields. Numerous concrete problems (for example, assignment and distribution problems, maximum-flow problem, etc. ) are formulated as trans portation problems. Some efficient methods have been developed for solving transportation problems of various types. This monograph is devoted to transportation problems with minimax cri teria. The classical (linear) transportation problem was posed several decades ago. In this problem, supply and demand points are given, and it is required to minimize the transportation cost. This statement paved the way for numerous extensions and generalizations. In contrast to the original statement of the problem, we consider a min imax rather than a minimum criterion. In particular, a matrix with the minimal largest element is sought in the class of nonnegative matrices with given sums of row and column elements. In this case, the idea behind the minimax criterion can be interpreted as follows. Suppose that the shipment time from a supply point to a demand point is proportional to the amount to be shipped. Then, the minimax is the minimal time required to transport the total amount. It is a common situation that the decision maker does not know the tariff coefficients. In other situations, they do not have any meaning at all, and neither do nonlinear tariff objective functions. In such cases, the minimax interpretation leads to an effective solution."

As the first book of a three-part series, this book is offered as a tribute to pioneers in vision, such as Bela Julesz, David Marr, King-Sun Fu, Ulf Grenander, and David Mumford. The authors hope to provide foundation and, perhaps more importantly, further inspiration for continued research in vision. This book covers David Marr's paradigm and various underlying statistical models for vision. The mathematical framework herein integrates three regimes of models (low-, mid-, and high-entropy regimes) and provides foundation for research in visual coding, recognition, and cognition. Concepts are first explained for understanding and then supported by findings in psychology and neuroscience, after which they are established by statistical models and associated learning and inference algorithms. A reader will gain a unified, cross-disciplinary view of research in vision and will accrue knowledge spanning from psychology to neuroscience to statistics.

In the past two decades, convex analysis and optimization have been developed in Hadamard spaces. This book represents a first attempt to give a systematic account on the subject. Hadamard spaces are complete geodesic spaces of nonpositive curvature. They include Hilbert spaces, Hadamard manifolds, Euclidean buildings and many other important spaces. While the role of Hadamard spaces in geometry and geometric group theory has been studied for a long time, first analytical results appeared as late as in the 1990s. Remarkably, it turns out that Hadamard spaces are appropriate for the theory of convex sets and convex functions outside of linear spaces. Since convexity underpins a large number of results in the geometry of Hadamard spaces, we believe that its systematic study is of substantial interest. Optimization methods then address various computational issues and provide us with approximation algorithms which may be useful in sciences and engineering. We present a detailed description of such an application to computational phylogenetics. The book is primarily aimed at both graduate students and researchers in analysis and optimization, but it is accessible to advanced undergraduate students as well.

This monograph discusses decision making methods under bipolar fuzzy graphical models with the aim of overcoming the lack of mathematical approach towards bipolar information-positive and negative. It investigates the properties of bipolar fuzzy graphs, their distance functions, and concept of their isomorphism. It presents certain notions, including irregular bipolar fuzzy graphs, domination in bipolar fuzzy graphs, bipolar fuzzy circuits, energy in bipolar fuzzy graphs, bipolar single-valued neutrosophic competition graphs, and bipolar neutrosophic graph structures. This book also presents the applications of mentioned concepts to real-world problems in areas of product manufacturing, international relations, psychology, global terrorism and more, making it valuable for researchers, computer scientists, social scientists and alike.

This book offers a holistic framework to study behavior and evolutionary dynamics in large-scale, decentralized, and heterogeneous crowd networks. In the emerging crowd cyber-ecosystems, millions of deeply connected individuals, smart devices, government agencies, and enterprises actively interact with each other and influence each other's decisions. It is crucial to understand such intelligent entities' behaviors and to study their strategic interactions in order to provide important guidelines on the design of reliable networks capable of predicting and preventing detrimental events with negative impacts on our society and economy. This book reviews the fundamental methodologies to study user interactions and evolutionary dynamics in crowd networks and discusses recent advances in this emerging interdisciplinary research field. Using information diffusion over social networks as an example, it presents a thorough investigation of the impact of user behavior on the network evolution process and demonstrates how this can help improve network performance. Intended for graduate students and researchers from various disciplines, including but not limited to, data science, networking, signal processing, complex systems, and economics, the book encourages researchers in related research fields to explore the many untouched areas in this domain, and ultimately to design crowd networks with efficient, effective, and reliable services.

Visualization research aims to provide insight into large, complicated data sets and the phenomena behind them. While there are di?erent methods of reaching this goal, topological methods stand out for their solid mathem- ical foundation, which guides the algorithmic analysis and its presentation. Topology-based methods in visualization have been around since the beg- ning of visualization as a scienti?c discipline, but they initially played only a minor role. In recent years,interest in topology-basedvisualization has grown andsigni?cantinnovationhasledto newconceptsandsuccessfulapplications. The latest trends adapt basic topological concepts to precisely express user interests in topological properties of the data. This book is the outcome of the second workshop on Topological Methods in Visualization, which was held March 4-6, 2007 in Kloster Nimbschen near Leipzig,Germany.Theworkshopbroughttogethermorethan40international researchers to present and discuss the state of the art and new trends in the ?eld of topology-based visualization. Two inspiring invited talks by George Haller, MIT, and Nelson Max, LLNL, were accompanied by 14 presentations by participants and two panel discussions on current and future trends in visualization research. This book contains thirteen research papers that have been peer-reviewed in a two-stage review process. In the ?rst phase, submitted papers where peer-reviewed by the international program committee. After the workshop accepted papers went through a revision and a second review process taking into account comments from the ?rst round and discussions at the workshop. Abouthalfthepapersconcerntopology-basedanalysisandvisualizationof ?uid?owsimulations;twopapersconcernmoregeneraltopologicalalgorithms, while the remaining papers discuss topology-based visualization methods in application areas like biology, medical imaging and electromagnetism.

This book highlights cutting-edge research in the field of network science, offering scientists, researchers, students and practitioners a unique update on the latest advances in theory and a multitude of applications. It presents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the IX International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2020). The carefully selected papers cover a wide range of theoretical topics such as network models and measures; community structure, network dynamics; diffusion, epidemics and spreading processes; resilience and control as well as all the main network applications, including social and political networks; networks in finance and economics; biological and neuroscience networks and technological networks.

This book gives a detailed survey of the main results on bent functions over finite fields, presents a systematic overview of their generalizations, variations and applications, considers open problems in classification and systematization of bent functions, and discusses proofs of several results. This book uniquely provides a necessary comprehensive coverage of bent functions.It serves as a useful reference for researchers in discrete mathematics, coding and cryptography. Students and professors in mathematics and computer science will also find the content valuable, especially those interested in mathematical foundations of cryptography. It can be used as a supplementary text for university courses on discrete mathematics, Boolean functions, or cryptography, and is appropriate for both basic classes for under-graduate students and advanced courses for specialists in cryptography and mathematics.

This book gives the state-of-the-art on transversals in linear uniform hypergraphs. The notion of transversal is fundamental to hypergraph theory and has been studied extensively. Very few articles have discussed bounds on the transversal number for linear hypergraphs, even though these bounds are integral components in many applications. This book is one of the first to give strong non-trivial bounds on the transversal number for linear hypergraphs. The discussion may lead to further study of those problems which have not been solved completely, and may also inspire the readers to raise new questions and research directions. The book is written with two readerships in mind. The first is the graduate student who may wish to work on open problems in the area or is interested in exploring the field of transversals in hypergraphs. This exposition will go far to familiarize the student with the subject, the research techniques, and the major accomplishments in the field. The photographs included allow the reader to associate faces with several researchers who made important discoveries and contributions to the subject. The second audience is the established researcher in hypergraph theory who will benefit from having easy access to known results and latest developments in the field of transversals in linear hypergraphs.

This volume presents some of the research topics discussed at the 2014-2015 Annual Thematic Program Discrete Structures: Analysis and Applications at the Institute for Mathematics and its Applications during Fall 2014, when combinatorics was the focus. Leading experts have written surveys of research problems, making state of the art results more conveniently and widely available. The three-part structure of the volume reflects the three workshops held during Fall 2014. In the first part, topics on extremal and probabilistic combinatorics are presented; part two focuses on additive and analytic combinatorics; and part three presents topics in geometric and enumerative combinatorics. This book will be of use to those who research combinatorics directly or apply combinatorial methods to other fields.

Sri Gopal Mohanty has made pioneering contributions to lattice path counting and its applications to probability and statistics. This is clearly evident from his lifetime publications list and the numerous citations his publications have received over the past three decades. My association with him began in 1982 when I came to McMaster Univer sity. Since then, I have been associated with him on many different issues at professional as well as cultural levels; I have benefited greatly from him on both these grounds. I have enjoyed very much being his colleague in the statistics group here at McMaster University and also as his friend. While I admire him for his honesty, sincerity and dedication, I appreciate very much his kindness, modesty and broad-mindedness. Aside from our common interest in mathematics and statistics, we both have great love for Indian classical music and dance. We have spent numerous many different subjects associated with the Indian music and hours discussing dance. I still remember fondly the long drive (to Amherst, Massachusetts) I had a few years ago with him and his wife, Shantimayee, and all the hearty discussions we had during that journey. Combinatorics and applications of combinatorial methods in probability and statistics has become a very active and fertile area of research in the recent past."

Succinct representation and fast access to large amounts of data are challenges of our time. This unique book suggests general approaches of 'complexity of descriptions'. It deals with a variety of concrete topics and bridges between them, while opening new perspectives and providing promising avenues for the 'complexity puzzle'.

Model theory is the meta-mathematical study of the concept of mathematical truth. After Afred Tarski coined the term Theory of Models in the early 1950's, it rapidly became one of the central most active branches of mathematical logic. In the last few decades, ideas that originated within model theory have provided powerful tools to solve problems in a variety of areas of classical mathematics, including algebra, combinatorics, geometry, number theory, and Banach space theory and operator theory. The two volumes of Beyond First Order Model Theory present the reader with a fairly comprehensive vista, rich in width and depth, of some of the most active areas of contemporary research in model theory beyond the realm of the classical first-order viewpoint. Each chapter is intended to serve both as an introduction to a current direction in model theory and as a presentation of results that are not available elsewhere. All the articles are written so that they can be studied independently of one another. This second volume contains introductions to real-valued logic and applications, abstract elementary classes and applications, interconnections between model theory and function spaces, nonstucture theory, and model theory of second-order logic. Features A coherent introduction to current trends in model theory. Contains articles by some of the most influential logicians of the last hundred years. No other publication brings these distinguished authors together. Suitable as a reference for advanced undergraduate, postgraduates, and researchers. Material presented in the book (e.g, abstract elementary classes, first-order logics with dependent sorts, and applications of infinitary logics in set theory) is not easily accessible in the current literature. The various chapters in the book can be studied independently.

The contributions included in the volume are drawn from presentations at ODS2019 - International Conference on Optimization and Decision Science, which was the 49th annual meeting of the Italian Operations Research Society (AIRO) held at Genoa, Italy, on 4-7 September 2019. This book presents very recent results in the field of Optimization and Decision Science. While the book is addressed primarily to the Operations Research (OR) community, the interdisciplinary contents ensure that it will also be of very high interest for scholars and researchers from many scientific disciplines, including computer sciences, economics, mathematics, and engineering. Operations Research is known as the discipline of optimization applied to real-world problems and to complex decision-making fields. The focus is on mathematical and quantitative methods aimed at determining optimal or near-optimal solutions in acceptable computation times. This volume not only presents theoretical results but also covers real industrial applications, making it interesting for practitioners facing decision problems in logistics, manufacturing production, and services. Readers will accordingly find innovative ideas from both a methodological and an applied perspective.

Phylogenetic combinatorics is a branch of discrete applied mathematics concerned with the combinatorial description and analysis of phylogenetic trees and related mathematical structures such as phylogenetic networks and tight spans. Based on a natural conceptual framework, the book focuses on the interrelationship between the principal options for encoding phylogenetic trees: split systems, quartet systems and metrics. Such encodings provide useful options for analyzing and manipulating phylogenetic trees and networks, and are at the basis of much of phylogenetic data processing. This book highlights how each one provides a unique perspective for viewing and perceiving the combinatorial structure of a phylogenetic tree and is, simultaneously, a rich source for combinatorial analysis and theory building. Graduate students and researchers in mathematics and computer science will enjoy exploring this fascinating new area and learn how mathematics may be used to help solve topical problems arising in evolutionary biology.

This book highlights cutting-edge research in the field of network science, offering scientists, researchers, students and practitioners a unique update on the latest advances in theory and a multitude of applications. It presents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the IX International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications (COMPLEX NETWORKS 2020). The carefully selected papers cover a wide range of theoretical topics such as network models and measures; community structure, network dynamics; diffusion, epidemics and spreading processes; resilience and control as well as all the main network applications, including social and political networks; networks in finance and economics; biological and neuroscience networks and technological networks.

This book presents a printed testimony for the fact that George Andrews, one of the world's leading experts in partitions and q-series for the last several decades, has passed the milestone age of 80. To honor George Andrews on this occasion, the conference "Combinatory Analysis 2018" was organized at the Pennsylvania State University from June 21 to 24, 2018. This volume comprises the original articles from the Special Issue "Combinatory Analysis 2018 - In Honor of George Andrews' 80th Birthday" resulting from the conference and published in Annals of Combinatorics. In addition to the 37 articles of the Andrews 80 Special Issue, the book includes two new papers. These research contributions explore new grounds and present new achievements, research trends, and problems in the area. The volume is complemented by three special personal contributions: "The Worlds of George Andrews, a daughter's take" by Amy Alznauer, "My association and collaboration with George Andrews" by Krishna Alladi, and "Ramanujan, his Lost Notebook, its importance" by Bruce Berndt. Another aspect which gives this Andrews volume a truly unique character is the "Photos" collection. In addition to pictures taken at "Combinatory Analysis 2018", the editors selected a variety of photos, many of them not available elsewhere: "Andrews in Austria", "Andrews in China", "Andrews in Florida", "Andrews in Illinois", and "Andrews in India". This volume will be of interest to researchers, PhD students, and interested practitioners working in the area of Combinatory Analysis, q-Series, and related fields.

Lie theory is a mathematical framework for encoding the concept of symmetries of a problem, and was the central theme of an INdAM intensive research period at the Centro de Giorgi in Pisa, Italy, in the academic year 2014-2015. This book gathers the key outcomes of this period, addressing topics such as: structure and representation theory of vertex algebras, Lie algebras and superalgebras, as well as hyperplane arrangements with different approaches, ranging from geometry and topology to combinatorics.

This volume is comprised of articles providing new results on variational and hemivariational inequalities with applications to Contact Mechanics unavailable from other sources. The book will be of particular interest to graduate students and young researchers in applied and pure mathematics, civil, aeronautical and mechanical engineering, and can be used as supplementary reading material for advanced specialized courses in mathematical modeling. New results on well posedness to stationary and evolutionary inequalities and their rigorous proofs are of particular interest to readers. In addition to results on modeling and abstract problems, the book contains new results on the numerical methods for variational and hemivariational inequalities.

This open access book offers an innovative account of how relief organizations' visual depiction of Syrian displacement contributes to reproduce and reinforce a securitized account of refugees. Through visual analysis, the book demonstrates how the securitization process takes place in three different ways. First of all, even if marginally, it occurs through the reproduction of mainstream media and political accounts that have depicted refugees in terms of threats. Secondly, and more consistently, through a representation of Syrian displaced people that, despite the undeniable innovative aesthetic patterns focusing on dignity and empowerment, continue to reinforce a visual narrative around refugees in terms of victimhood and passivity. The reproduction of a securitized account takes also place through the dialectic between what is made visible in the pictures and what is not. At the same time the book identifies visual glimmers and minor displacements in the humanitarian discourse that have the potentiality to produce alternative discourses on refugees and displacement beyond the mainstream securitized ones. By showing how relief organizations' visual representation contributes to the securitization of the refugee issue, this book provides a great resource to students and academics in migration, visuality, humanitarianism and securitization, as well as social scientists and policy-makers.

This book discusses the origin of graph theory from its humble beginnings in recreational mathematics to its modern setting or modeling communication networks, as is evidenced by the World Wide Web graph used by many Internet search engines. The second edition of the book includes recent developments in the theory of signed adjacency matrices involving the proof of sensitivity conjecture and the theory of Ramanujan graphs. In addition, the book discusses topics such as Pick's theorem on areas of lattice polygons and Graham-Pollak's work on addressing of graphs. The concept of graph is fundamental in mathematics and engineering, as it conveniently encodes diverse relations and facilitates combinatorial analysis of many theoretical and practical problems. The text is ideal for a one-semester course at the advanced undergraduate level or beginning graduate level.

With the advent of approximation algorithms for NP-hard combinatorial optimization problems, several techniques from exact optimization such as the primal-dual method have proven their staying power and versatility. This book describes a simple and powerful method that is iterative in essence, and similarly useful in a variety of settings for exact and approximate optimization. The authors highlight the commonality and uses of this method to prove a variety of classical polyhedral results on matchings, trees, matroids, and flows. The presentation style is elementary enough to be accessible to anyone with exposure to basic linear algebra and graph theory, making the book suitable for introductory courses in combinatorial optimization at the upper undergraduate and beginning graduate levels. Discussions of advanced applications illustrate their potential for future application in research in approximation algorithms.

Lying at the intersection of education, art, and cultural heritage, visualization is a powerful tool for representing and interpreting complex information.

This unique text/reference reviews the evolution of the field of visualization, providing innovative examples of applied knowledge visualization from disciplines as varied as law, business management, the arts and humanities. With coverage of theoretical and practical aspects of visualization from ancient Sumerian tablets through to twenty-first century legal contracts, this work underscores the important role that the process of visualization plays in extracting, organizing, and crystallizing the concepts found in complex data.

Topics and features: contains contributions from an international selection of preeminent authorities; presents a thorough introduction to the discipline of knowledge visualization, its current state of affairs and possible future developments; examines how tables have been used for information visualization in historical textual documents; discusses the application of visualization techniques for knowledge transfer in business relationships, and for the linguistic exploration and analysis of sensory descriptions; investigates the use of visualization to understand orchestral music scores, the optical theory behind Renaissance art, and to assist in the reconstruction of an historic church; describes immersive 360 degree stereographic visualization, knowledge-embedded embodied interaction, and a novel methodology for the analysis of architectural forms.

This interdisciplinary collection of the state of the art in knowledge visualization will be of considerable interest to researchers from a broad spectrum of backgrounds in both industry and academia.