It is because mathematics is often misunderstood, it is commonly believed it has nothing to say about politics. The high school experience with mathematics, for so many the lasting impression of the subject, suggests that mathematics is the study of numbers, operations, formulas, and manipulations of symbols. Those believing this is the extent of mathematics might conclude mathematics has no relevance to politics. This book counters this impression. The second edition of this popular book focuses on mathematical reasoning about politics. In the search for ideal ways to make certain kinds of decisions, a lot of wasted effort can be averted if mathematics can determine that finding such an ideal is actually impossible in the first place. In the first three parts of this book, we address the following three political questions: (1) Is there a good way to choose winners of elections? (2) Is there a good way to apportion congressional seats? (3) Is there a good way to make decisions in situations of conflict and uncertainty? In the fourth and final part of this book, we examine the Electoral College system that is used in the United States to select a president. There we bring together ideas that are introduced in each of the three earlier parts of the book.

G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are heptahelical transmembrane receptors that convert extra-cellular stimuli into intra-cellular signaling, and ultimately into biological responses. Since GPCRs are natural targets for approximately 40% of all modern medicines, it is not surprising that they have been the subject of intense research. Notwithstanding the amount of data generated over the years, discovering ligands of these receptors with optimal therapeutic properties is not straightforward and has certainly been hampered for years by the lack of high-resolution structural information about these receptors. Luckily, there has been a steady increase of high-resolution crystal structures of these receptors since 2007, and this information, integrated with dynamic inferences from computational and experimental methods, holds great potential for the discovery of new, improved drugs. This book, which provides, for the first time, state-of-the-art views on modeling and simulation of GPCRs, is divided into 4 parts. In the first part, the impact of currently available GPCR crystal structures on structural modeling is discussed extensively as are critical insights from simulations in the second part of the book. The third part reports recent progress in rational ligand discovery and mathematical modeling, whereas the fourth part provides an overview of bioinformatics tools and resources that are available for GPCRs.

Many recent advances in modelling within the applied sciences and engineering have focused on the increasing importance of sensitivity analyses. For a given physical, financial or environmental model, increased emphasis is now placed on assessing the consequences of changes in model outputs that result from small changes or errors in both the hypotheses and parameters. The approach proposed in this book is entirely new and features two main characteristics. Even when extremely small, errors possess biases and variances. The methods presented here are able, thanks to a specific differential calculus, to provide information about the correlation between errors in different parameters of the model, as well as information about the biases introduced by non-linearity. The approach makes use of very powerful mathematical tools (Dirichlet forms), which allow one to deal with errors in infinite dimensional spaces, such as spaces of functions or stochastic processes. The method is therefore applicable to non-elementary models along the lines of those encountered in modern physics and finance. This text has been drawn from presentations of research done over the past ten years and that is still ongoing. The work was presented in conjunction with a course taught jointly at the Universities of Paris 1 and Paris 6. The book is intended for students, researchers and engineers with good knowledge in probability theory.

The topic of this book is finite group actions and their use in order to approach finite unlabeled structures by defining them as orbits of finite groups of sets. Well-known examples are graph, linear codes, chemical isomers, spin configurations, isomorphism classes of combinatorial designs etc.The second edition is an extended version and puts more emphasis on applications to the constructive theory of finite structures. Recent progress in this field, in particular in design and coding theory, is described.This book will be of great use to researchers and graduate students.

This new edition of the near-legendary textbook by Schlichting and revised by Gersten presents a comprehensive overview of boundary-layer theory and its application to all areas of fluid mechanics, with particular emphasis on the flow past bodies (e.g. aircraft aerodynamics). The new edition features an updated reference list and over 100 additional changes throughout the book, reflecting the latest advances on the subject.

The presence of considerable time delays in the dynamics of many industrial processes, leading to difficult problems in the associated closed-loop control systems, is a well-recognized phenomenon. The performance achievable in conventional feedback control systems can be significantly degraded if an industrial process has a relatively large time delay compared with the dominant time constant. Under these circumstances, advanced predictive control is necessary to improve the performance of the control system significantly.The book is a focused treatment of the subject matter, including the fundamentals and some state-of-the-art developments in the field of predictive control. Three main schemes for advanced predictive control are addressed in this book:- Smith Predictive Control;- Generalised Predictive Control;- a form of predictive control based on Finite Spectrum Assignment.A substantial part of the book addresses application issues in predictive control, providing several interesting case studies for more application-oriented readers. Thus, while the book is written to serve as an advanced control reference on predictive control for researchers, postgraduates and senior undergraduates, it should be equally useful to those industrial practitioners who are keen to explore the use of advanced predictive control in real problems. The prerequisite for gaining maximum benefit from this book is a basic knowledge of control systems, such as that imparted by a first undergraduate course on control systems engineering.

Optimum envelope-constrained filter design is concerned with time-domain synthesis of a filter such that its response to a specific input signal stays within prescribed upper and lower bounds, while minimizing the impact of input noise on the filter output or the impact of the shaped signal on other systems depending on the application. In many practical applications, such as in TV channel equalization, digital transmission, and pulse compression applied to radar, sonar and detection, the soft least square approach, which attempts to match the output waveform with a specific desired pulse, is not the most suitable one. Instead, it becomes necessary to ensure that the response stays within the hard envelope constraints defined by a set of continuous inequality constraints. The main advantage of using the hard envelope-constrained filter formulation is that it admits a whole set of allowable outputs. From this set one can then choose the one which results in the minimization of a cost function appropriate to the application at hand. The signal shaping problems so formulated are semi-infinite optimization problems. This monograph presents in a unified manner results that have been generated over the past several years and are scattered in the research literature. The material covered in the monograph includes problem formulation, numerical optimization algorithms, filter robustness issues and practical examples of the application of envelope constrained filter design. Audience: Postgraduate students, researchers in optimization and telecommunications engineering, and applied mathematicians.

This book sheds light on the large-scale engineering systems that shape and guide our everyday lives. It does this by bringing together the latest research and practice defining the emerging field of Complex Engineered Systems. Understanding, designing, building and controlling such complex systems is going to be a central challenge for engineers in the coming decades. This book is a step toward addressing that challenge.

This is an undergraduate textbook on the basic aspects of personal savings and investing with a balanced mix of mathematical rigor and economic intuition. It uses routine financial calculations as the motivation and basis for tools of elementary real analysis rather than taking the latter as given. Proofs using induction, recurrence relations and proofs by contradiction are covered. Inequalities such as the Arithmetic-Geometric Mean Inequality and the Cauchy-Schwarz Inequality are used. Basic topics in probability and statistics are presented. The student is introduced to elements of saving and investing that are of life-long practical use. These include savings and checking accounts, certificates of deposit, student loans, credit cards, mortgages, buying and selling bonds, and buying and selling stocks.
The book is self contained and accessible. The authors follow a systematic pattern for each chapter including a variety of examples and exercises ensuring that the student deals with realities, rather than theoretical idealizations. It is suitable for courses in mathematics, investing, banking, financial engineering, and related topics.

This is Volume 4 of the book series of the Body and Soul mathematics education reform program. It presents a unified new approach to computational simulation of turbulent flow starting from the general basis of calculus and linear algebra of Vol 1-3. The book puts the Body and Soul computational finite element methodology in the form of General Galerkin (G2) up against the challenge of computing turbulent solutions of the inviscid Euler equations and the Navier-Stokes equations with small viscosity. This is an outstanding textbook presenting plenty of new material with an excellent pedagogical approach.

Homological Mirror Symmetry, the study of dualities of certain quantum field theories in a mathematically rigorous form, has developed into a flourishing subject on its own over the past years. The present volume bridges a gap in the literature by providing a set of lectures and reviews that both introduce and representatively review the state-of-the art in the field from different perspectives. With contributions by K. Fukaya, M. Herbst, K. Hori, M. Huang, A. Kapustin, L. Katzarkov, A. Klemm, M. Kontsevich, D. Page, S. Quackenbush, E. Sharpe, P. Seidel, I. Smith and Y. Soibelman, this volume will be a reference on the topic for everyone starting to work or actively working on mathematical aspects of quantum field theory.

This book features selected papers from The Seventh International Conference on Research and Education in Mathematics that was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia from 25 - 27th August 2015. With chapters devoted to the most recent discoveries in mathematics and statistics and serve as a platform for knowledge and information exchange between experts from academic and industrial sectors, it covers a wide range of topics, including numerical analysis, fluid mechanics, operation research, optimization, statistics and game theory. It is a valuable resource for pure and applied mathematicians, statisticians, engineers and scientists, and provides an excellent overview of the latest research in mathematical sciences.

Provides a digest of the current developments, open questions and unsolved problems likely to determine a new frontier for future advanced study and research in the rapidly growing areas of wavelets, wavelet transforms, signal analysis, and signal and image processing. Ideal reference work for advanced students and practitioners in wavelets, and wavelet transforms, signal processing and time-frequency signal analysis. Professionals working in electrical and computer engineering, applied mathematics, computer science, biomedical engineering, physics, optics, and fluid mechanics will also find the book a valuable resource.

Cities can be considered to be among the largest and most complex artificial networks created by human beings. Due to the numerous and diverse human-driven activities, urban network topology and dynamics can differ quite substantially from that of natural networks and so call for an alternative method of analysis.

The intent of the present monograph is to lay down the theoretical foundations for studying the topology of compact urban patterns, using methods from spectral graph theory and statistical physics. These methods are demonstrated as tools to investigate the structure of a number of real cities with widely differing properties: medieval German cities, the webs of city canals in Amsterdam and Venice, and a modern urban structure such as found in Manhattan.

Last but not least, the book concludes by providing a brief overview of possible applications that will eventually lead to a useful body of knowledge for architects, urban planners and civil engineers.

Completion problems for operator matrices are concerned with the question of whether a partially specified operator matrix can be completed to form an operator of a desired type. The research devoted to this topic provides an excellent means to investigate the structure of operators. This book provides an overview of completion problems dealing with completions to different types of operators and can be considered as a natural extension of classical results concerned with matrix completions. The book assumes some basic familiarity with functional analysis and operator theory. It will be useful for graduate students and researchers interested in operator theory and the problem of matrix completions.

The book presents an updated state-of-the-art overview of the general aspects and practical applications of the theories of thin structures, through the interaction of several topics, ranging from non-linear thin-films, shells, junctions, beams of different materials and in different contexts (elasticity, plasticity, etc.). Advanced problems like the optimal design and the modeling of thin films made of brittle or phase-transforming materials will be presented as well.

Butterfly in the Quantum World by Indu Satija, with contributions by Douglas Hofstadter, is the first book ever to tell the story of the "Hofstadter butterfly", a beautiful and fascinating graph lying at the heart of the quantum theory of matter. The butterfly came out of a simple-sounding question: What happens if you immerse a crystal in a magnetic field? What energies can the electrons take on? From 1930 onwards, physicists struggled to answer this question, until 1974, when graduate student Douglas Hofstadter discovered that the answer was a graph consisting of nothing but copies of itself nested down infinitely many times. This wild mathematical object caught the physics world totally by surprise, and it continues to mesmerize physicists and mathematicians today. The butterfly plot is intimately related to many other important phenomena in number theory and physics, including Apollonian gaskets, the Foucault pendulum, quasicrystals, the quantum Hall effect, and many more. Its story reflects the magic, the mystery, and the simplicity of the laws of nature, and Indu Satija, in a wonderfully personal style, relates this story, enriching it with a vast number of lively historical anecdotes, many photographs, beautiful visual images, and even poems, making her book a great feast, for the eyes, for the mind and for the soul.

The book presents topics in discrete biomathematics. Mathematics has been widely used in modeling biological phenomena. However, the molecular and discrete nature of basic life processes suggests that their logic follow principles that are intrinsically based on discrete and informational mechanisms. The ultimate reason of polymers, as key element of life, is directly based on the computational power of strings, and the intrinsic necessity of metabolism is related to the mathematical notion of multiset. The switch of the two roots of bioinformatics suggests a change of perspective. In bioinformatics, the biologists ask computer scientists to assist them in processing biological data. Conversely, in infobiotics mathematicians and computer scientists investigate principles and theories yielding new interpretation keys of biological phenomena. Life is too important to be investigated by biologists alone, and though computers are essential to process data from biological laboratories, many fundamental questions about life can be appropriately answered by a perspicacious intervention of mathematicians, computer scientists, and physicists, who will complement the work of chemists, biochemists, biologists, and medical investigators. The volume is organized in seven chapters. The first part is devoted to research topics (Discrete information and life, Strings and genomes, Algorithms and Biorhythms, Life Strategies), the second one to mathematical backgrounds (Numbers and Measures, Languages and Grammars, Combinations and Chances).

Bayesian analyses have made important inroads in modern clinical research due, in part, to the incorporation of the traditional tools of noninformative priors as well as the modern innovations of adaptive randomization and predictive power. Presenting an introductory perspective to modern Bayesian procedures, Elementary Bayesian Biostatistics explores Bayesian principles and illustrates their application to healthcare research. Building on the basics of classic biostatistics and algebra, this easy-to-read book provides a clear overview of the subject. It focuses on the history and mathematical foundation of Bayesian procedures, before discussing their implementation in healthcare research from first principles. The author also elaborates on the current controversies between Bayesian and frequentist biostatisticians. The book concludes with recommendations for Bayesians to improve their standing in the clinical trials community. Calculus derivations are relegated to the appendices so as not to overly complicate the main text. As Bayesian methods gain more acceptance in healthcare, it is necessary for clinical scientists to understand Bayesian principles. Applying Bayesian analyses to modern healthcare research issues, this lucid introduction helps readers make the correct choices in the development of clinical research programs.

Decision & Control in Management Science analyzes emerging decision problems in the management and engineering sciences. It is divided into five parts. The first part explores methodological issues involved in the optimization of deterministic and stochastic dynamical systems. The second part describes approaches to the model energy and environmental systems and draws policy implications related to the mitigation of pollutants. The third part applies quantitative techniques to problems in finance and economics, such as hedging of options, inflation targeting, and equilibrium asset pricing. The fourth part considers a series of problems in production systems. Optimization methods are put forward to provide optimal policies in areas such as inventory management, transfer-line, flow-shop and other industrial problems. The last part covers game theory. Chapters range from theoretical issues to applications in politics and interactions in franchising systems. Decision & Control in Management Science is an excellent reference covering methodological issues and applications in operations research, optimal control, and dynamic games.

Impurities, disorder or amorphous systems - ill-condensed matter - are mostly considered inconveniences in the study of materials, which is otherwise heavily based on idealized perfect crystals. The Kondo effect and the scaling theory of localization are among the fundamental and early discoveries which revealed the novelty hidden in impure or disordered systems. Recent advances in condensed matter physics have emphasized the role of topology, spin-orbit coupling, and certain discrete symmetries such as time reversal in many physical phenomena. These have irreversibly transformed the essential ideas and purview of condensed matter physics, both in theoretical and experimental directions. However, many of these recent developments and their implications are limited to, or by, ideas that pertain to clean systems. This thesis deals with various aspects of these new developments, but in the case of unclean systems. The author introduces new ideas such as amorphous topological insulators, fractalized metals and fractionalized spins.