This volume has grown from a conference entitled Harmonic Maps, Minimal Sur- faces and Geometric Flows which was held at the Universite de Bretagne Occi- dentale from July 7th-12th, 2002, in the town of Brest in Brittany, France. We welcomed many distinguished mathematicians from around the world and a dy- namic meeting took place, with many fruitful exchanges of ideas. In order to produce a work that would have lasting value to the mathematical community, the organisers decided to invite a small number of participants to write in-depth articles around a common theme. These articles provide a balance between introductory surveys and ones that present the newest results that lie at the frontiers of research. We thank these mathematicians, all experts in their field, for their contributions. Such meetings depend on the support of national organisations and the local community and we would like to thank the following: the Ministere de l'Education Nationale, Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Centre National de Recherche Sci en- tifique (CNRS), Conseil Regional de Bretagne, Conseil General du Finistere, Com- munaute Urbaine de Brest, Universite de Bretagne Occidentale (UBO), Faculte des Sciences de l'UBO, Laboratoire de Mathematiques de l'UBO and the Departement de Mathematiques de l'UBO. Their support was generous and ensured the success of the meeting. We would also like to thank the members of the scientific committee for their advice and for their participation in the conception and composition of this volume: Pierre Berard, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Frederic Helein, Seiki Nishikawa and Franz Pedit.

The aim of" the present monograph is two-fold: (a) to give a short account of the main results concerning the theory of random systems with complete connections, and (b) to describe the general learning model by means of random systems with complete connections. The notion of chain with complete connections has been introduced in probability theory by ONICESCU and MIHOC (1935a). These authors have set themselves the aim to define a very broad type of dependence which takes into account the whole history of the evolution and thus includes as a special case the Markovian one. In a sequel of papers of the period 1935-1937, ONICESCU and MIHOC developed the theory of these chains for the homogeneous case with a finite set of states from differ ent points of view: ergodic behaviour, associated chain, limit laws. These results led to a chapter devoted to these chains, inserted by ONI CESCU and MIHOC in their monograph published in 1937. Important contributions to the theory of chains with complete connections are due to DOEBLIN and FORTET and refer to the period 1937-1940. They consist in the approach of chains with an infinite history (the so-called chains of infinite order) and in the use of methods from functional analysis."

This is the first monograph devoted to a fairly wide class of operators, namely band and band-dominated operators and their Fredholm theory. The main tool in studying this topic is limit operators. Applications are presented to several important classes of such operators: convolution type operators and pseudo-differential operators on bad domains and with bad coefficients.

This book highlights new, previously unpublished results obtained in the last years in integral geometry and theory of convolution equations on bounded domains. All results included here are definitive and include for example the definitive version of the two-radii theorem, the solution of the support problem for ball mean values, the extreme variants of the Pompeiu problem, the definitive versions of uniqueness theorems for multiple trigonometric series with gaps.

In order to make this book as self-contained as possible, we have gathered all prerequisites needed in the first part. In addition, each part of the book ends with comments in which not only other investigations are documented but also open problems dealing with a broader perspective are posed.

A great number of applications to various branches of mathematics are also considered, for example, applications to the theory of approximations, discrete geometry, harmonic analysis, measure-preserving transformations, harmonic functions.

Some of the material in this book has been the subject of lectures delivered by the author for advanced students, doctors and professors of mathematical faculty in various universities and so this book should be of interest to the graduate students and researchers in this area.

Scientists and engineers have been involved in medical radiology from the very beginning. At times advances in this field occur at a tremen dously fast pace. Developments in radiological diagnostics have - technologically and medically speaking - focused on morphology. At present, computer-aided tomography (CAT) is at a high point in deve1opment, medical application, and validation. The preconditions for this success were rapid advances in electronics and computer technology - in hardware and in software - and an unexpected cost reduction in these fields; the co operation of various scientific disci plines was also essential. Functional radiological diagnosis has been neglected in part, owing to the emphasis on morphology, but alone the synthesis of morphology and function prornises further advances. Apart from the limited capabilities ofuItrasonic techniques there is no way other than using X-rays to carry out functional studies of organs and their systems through an intact body surface. It is frequently necessary to do further processing and evaluation of image series which have been recorded from the morphological viewpoint. This further picture processing may be of selected points (pixels) in the image, of certain regions of interest (ROI), or of the overall picture. For the measure ment of rapid phenomena, such as the blood flow in the main arteries, high image-frame rates are required, and at the moment these can only be achieved with cinemascopic techniques. For slower processes, other techniques such as videography have some advan tages.

The first international conference on Probability in Banach Spaces was held at Oberwolfach, West Germany, in 1975. It brought together European researchers who, under the inspiration of the Schwartz Seminar in Paris, were using probabi listic methods in the study of the geometry of Banach spaces, a rather small number of probabilists who were already studying classical limit laws on Banach spaces, and a larger number of probabilists, specialists in various aspects of the study of Gaussian processes, whose results and techniques were of interest to the members of the first two groups. This first conference was very fruitful. It fos tered a continuing relationship among 50 to 75 probabilists and analysts working on probability on infinite-dimensional spaces, the geometry of Banach spaces, and the use of random methods in harmonic analysis. Six more international conferences were held since the 1975 meeting. Two of the meetings were held at Tufts University, one at Scentsnderborg, Denmark, and the others at Oberwolfach. This volume contains a selection of papers by the partici pants of the Seventh International Conference held at Oberwolfach, West Ger many, June 26-July 2, 1988. This exciting and provocative conference was at tended by more than 50 mathematicians from many countries. These papers demonstrate the range of interests of the conference participants. In addition to the ongoing study of classical and modern limit theorems in Banach spaces, a branching out has occurred among the members of this group."

This is the second volume of a set of two devoted to the operator approach to linear problems in hydrodynamics. It presents functional analytical methods applied to the study of small movements and normal oscillations of hydromechanical systems having cavities filled with either ideal or viscous fluids. The second part of the present volume collects nonself-adjoint problems on small motions and normal oscillations of a viscous fluid filling a bounded region.

This volume presents the lectures given during the second French-Uzbek Colloquium on Algebra and Operator Theory which took place in Tashkent in 1997, at the Mathematical Institute of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences. Among the algebraic topics discussed here are deformation of Lie algebras, cohomology theory, the algebraic variety of the laws of Lie algebras, Euler equations on Lie algebras, Leibniz algebras, and real K-theory. Some contributions have a geometrical aspect, such as supermanifolds. The papers on operator theory deal with the study of certain types of operator algebras. This volume also contains a detailed introduction to the theory of quantum groups. Audience: This book is intended for graduate students specialising in algebra, differential geometry, operator theory, and theoretical physics, and for researchers in mathematics and theoretical physics.

"This book covers some of the main aspects of nonlinear analysis. It concentrates on stressing the fundamental ideas instead of elaborating on the intricacies of the more esoteric ones it encompass es] many methods of dynamical systems in quite simple and original settings. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the main and essential concepts of nonlinear analysis as well as the relevant methodologies and applications." --MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS"

The present book is a collection of variations on a theme which can be summed up as follows: It is impossible for a non-zero function and its Fourier transform to be simultaneously very small. In other words, the approximate equalities x :::::: y and x :::::: fj cannot hold, at the same time and with a high degree of accuracy, unless the functions x and yare identical. Any information gained about x (in the form of a good approximation y) has to be paid for by a corresponding loss of control on x, and vice versa. Such is, roughly speaking, the import of the Uncertainty Principle (or UP for short) referred to in the title ofthis book. That principle has an unmistakable kinship with its namesake in physics - Heisenberg's famous Uncertainty Principle - and may indeed be regarded as providing one of mathematical interpretations for the latter. But we mention these links with Quantum Mechanics and other connections with physics and engineering only for their inspirational value, and hasten to reassure the reader that at no point in this book will he be led beyond the world of purely mathematical facts. Actually, the portion of this world charted in our book is sufficiently vast, even though we confine ourselves to trigonometric Fourier series and integrals (so that "The U. P. in Fourier Analysis" might be a slightly more appropriate title than the one we chose).

The theory of almost periodic functions was first developed by the Danish mathematician H. Bohr during 1925-1926. Then Bohr's work was substantially extended by S. Bochner, H. Weyl, A. Besicovitch, J. Favard, J. von Neumann, V. V. Stepanov, N. N. Bogolyubov, and oth ers. Generalization of the classical theory of almost periodic functions has been taken in several directions. One direction is the broader study of functions of almost periodic type. Related this is the study of ergodic ity. It shows that the ergodicity plays an important part in the theories of function spectrum, semigroup of bounded linear operators, and dynamical systems. The purpose of this book is to develop a theory of almost pe riodic type functions and ergodicity with applications-in particular, to our interest-in the theory of differential equations, functional differen tial equations and abstract evolution equations. The author selects these topics because there have been many (excellent) books on almost periodic functions and relatively, few books on almost periodic type and ergodicity. The author also wishes to reflect new results in the book during recent years. The book consists of four chapters. In the first chapter, we present a basic theory of four almost periodic type functions. Section 1. 1 is about almost periodic functions. To make the reader easily learn the almost periodicity, we first discuss it in scalar case. After studying a classical theory for this case, we generalize it to finite dimensional vector-valued case, and finally, to Banach-valued (including Hilbert-valued) situation."

This book introduces the notion of an E-semigroup, a generalization of the known concept of E_O-semigroup. These objects are families of endomorphisms of a von Neumann algebra satisfying certain natural algebraic and continuity conditions. Its thorough approach is ideal for graduate students and research mathematicians.

Probability limit theorems in infinite-dimensional spaces give conditions un der which convergence holds uniformly over an infinite class of sets or functions. Early results in this direction were the Glivenko-Cantelli, Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Donsker theorems for empirical distribution functions. Already in these cases there is convergence in Banach spaces that are not only infinite-dimensional but nonsep arable. But the theory in such spaces developed slowly until the late 1970's. Meanwhile, work on probability in separable Banach spaces, in relation with the geometry of those spaces, began in the 1950's and developed strongly in the 1960's and 70's. We have in mind here also work on sample continuity and boundedness of Gaussian processes and random methods in harmonic analysis. By the mid-70's a substantial theory was in place, including sharp infinite-dimensional limit theorems under either metric entropy or geometric conditions. Then, modern empirical process theory began to develop, where the collection of half-lines in the line has been replaced by much more general collections of sets in and functions on multidimensional spaces. Many of the main ideas from probability in separable Banach spaces turned out to have one or more useful analogues for empirical processes. Tightness became "asymptotic equicontinuity. " Metric entropy remained useful but also was adapted to metric entropy with bracketing, random entropies, and Kolchinskii-Pollard entropy. Even norms themselves were in some situations replaced by measurable majorants, to which the well-developed separable theory then carried over straightforwardly."

This volume brings readers up to date on different aspects of operator theory and its applications, including mathematical physics, hydrodynamics, magnetohydrodynamics, quantum mechanics, astrophysics as well as the theory of networks and systems. Of practical use to a wide readership in pure and applied mathematics, physics and engineering sciences.

The subject of the present book is sub differential calculus. The main source of this branch of functional analysis is the theory of extremal problems. For a start, we explicate the origin and statement of the principal problems of sub differential calculus. To this end, consider an abstract minimization problem formulated as follows: x E X, f(x) --+ inf. Here X is a vector space and f : X --+ iR is a numeric function taking possibly infinite values. In these circumstances, we are usually interested in the quantity inf f( x), the value of the problem, and in a solution or an optimum plan of the problem (i. e. , such an x that f(x) = inf f(X", if the latter exists. It is a rare occurrence to solve an arbitrary problem explicitly, i. e. to exhibit the value of the problem and one of its solutions. In this respect it becomes necessary to simplify the initial problem by reducing it to somewhat more manageable modifications formulated with the details of the structure of the objective function taken in due account. The conventional hypothesis presumed in attempts at theoretically approaching the reduction sought is as follows. Introducing an auxiliary function 1, one considers the next problem: x EX, f(x) -l(x) --+ inf. Furthermore, the new problem is assumed to be as complicated as the initial prob lem provided that 1 is a linear functional over X, i. e.

The book Partial Differential Equations through Examples and Exercises has evolved from the lectures and exercises that the authors have given for more than fifteen years, mostly for mathematics, computer science, physics and chemistry students. By our best knowledge, the book is a first attempt to present the rather complex subject of partial differential equations (PDEs for short) through active reader-participation. Thus this book is a combination of theory and examples. In the theory of PDEs, on one hand, one has an interplay of several mathematical disciplines, including the theories of analytical functions, harmonic analysis, ODEs, topology and last, but not least, functional analysis, while on the other hand there are various methods, tools and approaches. In view of that, the exposition of new notions and methods in our book is "step by step." A minimal amount of expository theory is included at the beginning of each section Preliminaries with maximum emphasis placed on well selected examples and exercises capturing the essence of the material. Actually, we have divided the problems into two classes termed Examples and Exercises (often containing proofs of the statements from Preliminaries). The examples contain complete solutions, and also serve as a model for solving similar problems, given in the exercises. The readers are left to find the solution in the exercises; the answers, and occasionally, some hints, are still given. The book is implicitly divided in two parts, classical and abstract.

These notes are based on lectures given at the University of Virginia over the past twenty years. They may be viewed as a course in function theory for nonspecialists. Chapters 1-6 give the function-theoretic background to Hardy Classes and Operator Theory, Oxford Mathematical Monographs, Oxford University Press, New York, 1985. These chapters were written first, and they were origi nally intended to be a part of that book. Half-plane function theory continues to be useful for applications and is a focal point in our account (Chapters 5 and 6). The theory of Hardy and Nevanlinna classes is derived from proper ties of harmonic majorants of subharmonic functions (Chapters 3 and 4). A selfcontained treatment of harmonic and subharmonic functions is included (Chapters 1 and 2). Chapters 7-9 present concepts from the theory of univalent functions and Loewner families leading to proofs of the Bieberbach, Robertson, and Milin conjectures. Their purpose is to make the work of de Branges accessible to students of operator theory. These chapters are by the second author. There is a high degree of independence in the chapters, allowing the material to be used in a variety of ways. For example, Chapters 5-6 can be studied alone by readers familiar with function theory on the unit disk. Chapters 7-9 have been used as the basis for a one-semester topics course."

The theory of mean periodic functions is a subject which goes back to works of Littlewood, Delsarte, John and that has undergone a vigorous development in recent years. There has been much progress in a number of problems concerning local - pects of spectral analysis and spectral synthesis on homogeneous spaces. The study oftheseproblemsturnsouttobecloselyrelatedtoavarietyofquestionsinharmonic analysis, complex analysis, partial differential equations, integral geometry, appr- imation theory, and other branches of contemporary mathematics. The present book describes recent advances in this direction of research. Symmetric spaces and the Heisenberg group are an active ?eld of investigation at 2 the moment. The simplest examples of symmetric spaces, the classical 2-sphere S 2 and the hyperbolic plane H , play familiar roles in many areas in mathematics. The n Heisenberg groupH is a principal model for nilpotent groups, and results obtained n forH may suggest results that hold more generally for this important class of Lie groups. The purpose of this book is to develop harmonic analysis of mean periodic functions on the above spaces.

This book is an elementary introduction to non-classical spectral theory. Mter the basic definitions and a reduction to the study of the functional model the discussion will be centered around the simplest variant of such a model which, formally speaking, comprises only the class of contraction operators with a one dimensional rank of non-unitarity (rank(I - T*T) = rank(I - TT*) = 1). The main emphasis is on the technical side of the subject, the book being mostly devoted to a development of the analytical machinery of spectral theory rather than to this discipline itself. The functional model of Sz. -Nagy and Foia re duces the study of general operators to an investigation of the . compression T=PSIK of the shift operator S, Sf = zf, onto coinvariant subspaces (i. e. subspaces in variant with respect to the adjoint shift S*). In the main body of the book (the "Lectures" in the proper meaning of the word) this operator acts on the Hardy space H2 and is itself a part of the operator of multiplication by the independent variable in the space L2 (in the case at hand L2 means L2(lf), If being the unit circle), this operator again being fundamental for classical spectral theory."

One service mathematici has rendered the 'Et moi, ... si j'avait IU comment en revenir. je n'y serais point alle.' human race. It has put common sense back Jules Verne where it belong., on the topmost shelf next to the dusty canister labelled 'discarded non- The series is divergent; therefore we may be sense', Eric T. Bell able to do something with it. O. H eaviside Mathematics is a tool for thought. A highly necessary tool in a world where both feedback and non linearities abound. Similarly, all kinds of parts of mathematics serve as tools for other pans and for other sciences. Applying a simple rewriting rule to the quote on the right above one finds such statements as: 'One service topology has rendered mathematical physics .. .'; 'One service logic has rendered com puter science .. .'; 'One service category theory has rendered mathematics .. .'. All arguably true. And all statements obtainable this way form part of the raison d'el;re of this series."

The axioms of a complex Banach algebra were very happily chosen. They are simple enough to allow wide ranging fields of application, notably in harmonic analysis, operator theory and function algebras. At the same time they are tight enough to allow the development of a rich collection of results, mainly through the interplay of the elementary parts of the theories of analytic functions, rings, and Banach spaces. Many of the theorems are things of great beauty, simple in statement, surprising in content, and elegant in proof. We believe that some of them deserve to be known by every mathematician. The aim of this book is to give an account of the principal methods and results in the theory of Banach algebras, both commutative and non commutative. It has been necessary to apply certain exclusion principles in order to keep our task within bounds. Certain classes of concrete Banach algebras have a very rich literature, namely C*-algebras, function algebras, and group algebras. We have regarded these highly developed theories as falling outside our scope. We have not entirely avoided them, but have been concerned with their place in the general theory, and have stopped short of developing their special properties. For reasons of space and time we have omitted certain other topics which would quite naturally have been included, in particular the theories of multipliers and of extensions of Banach algebras, and the implications for Banach algebras of some of the standard algebraic conditions on rings."

The fundamental problem of the theory of Fourier series consists of the investigation of the connections between the metric properties of the function expanded, the behavior of its Fourier coefficients {cn} with respect to an ortho normal system of functions {

This monograph is an account of some problems involving diffusion or diffusion with simultaneous reaction that can be illuminated by the use of variational principles. It was written during a period that included sabbatical leaves of one of us (W. S. ) at the University of Minnesota and the other (R. A. ) at the University of Cambridge and we are grateful to the Petroleum Research Fund for helping to support the former and the Guggenheim Foundation for making possible the latter. We would also like to thank Stephen Prager for getting us together in the first place and for showing how interesting and useful these methods can be. We have also benefitted from correspondence with Dr. A. M. Arthurs of the University of York and from the counsel of Dr. B. D. Coleman the general editor of this series. Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction and Preliminaries . 1. 1. General Survey 1 1. 2. Phenomenological Descriptions of Diffusion and Reaction 2 1. 3. Correlation Functions for Random Suspensions 4 1. 4. Mean Free Path Statistics . 8 1. 5. Void Point-Surface Statistics . 11 1. 6. Variational Principles Applied to the Diffusion Equation. 12 1. 7. Notation. 16 Chapter 2. Diffusion Through a Porous Medium . 18 2. 1. Introduction 18 2. 2. Diffusion Through an Isotropic Porous Medium 18 2. 3. Variational Formulation for De . 20 2. 4. Bounds on De for an Isotropic Suspension 22 2. 5.

It was our intention to make the book seIf-contained and accessible to a large number of readerso To achieve this in Chapter I we have summarized with or without proofs some basic results in functional analysis and non-linear operator equations in Banach spaces. The list of references is not intended to be complete. It refers only to papers which were used or are directly connected with the subjects treated in this book. V. BARBU Jassy, July 1974 TH. PRECUPANU x Pre tace to the English edition This English edition differs from the Romanian version in that several ehanges have been made. Several seetions in Chapters III and IV have been entirely rewritten and several errors and inaccuracies in the first edition were correeted. The authors wish to express their gratitude to Dr. V. Popescu, from the Jassy University, who kindly assisted them in reading various parts of the manuseript, eorreeting errors and improv- ing the presentation.

The author of this book made an attempt to create the general theory of optimization of linear systems (both distributed and lumped) with a singular control. The book touches upon a wide range of issues such as solvability of boundary values problems for partial differential equations with generalized right-hand sides, the existence of optimal controls, the necessary conditions of optimality, the controllability of systems, numerical methods of approximation of generalized solutions of initial boundary value problems with generalized data, and numerical methods for approximation of optimal controls. In particular, the problems of optimization of linear systems with lumped controls (pulse, point, pointwise, mobile and so on) are investigated in detail.