This monograph contains papers that were delivered at the special session on Geometric Potential Analysis, that was part of the Mathematical Congress of the Americas 2021, virtually held in Buenos Aires. The papers, that were contributed by renowned specialists worldwide, cover important aspects of current research in geometrical potential analysis and its applications to partial differential equations and mathematical physics.

This volume contains the edited texts of the lectures presented at the workshop on Nonlinear Optimization: Theory and Applications, held in Erice at the "G. Stampacchia" School of Mathematics of the "E. Majorana" International Centre for Scientific Culture June 13-21, 1995. The meeting was conceived to review and discuss recent advances and promising research trends concerning theory, algorithms, and innovative applications in the field This is a field of mathematics which is providing viable of Nonlinear Optimization. tools in engineering, in economics and in other applied sciences, and which is giving a great contribution also in the solution of the more practiced linear optimization prob lems. The meeting was attended by approximately 70 people from 18 countries. Besides the lectures, several formal and informal discussions took place. The result was a broad exposure providing a wide and deep understanding of the present research achievements in the field. We wish to express our appreciation for the active contributions of all the partici pants in the meeting. Our gratitude is due to the Ettore Majorana Center in Erice, which offered its facilities and stimulating environment: its staff was certainly instrumental for the success of the meeting. Our gratitude is also due to Francisco Facchinei and Massino Roma for the time spent in the organization of the workshop, and to Giuliana Cai for the careful typesetting of this volume."

This book discusses the study and analysis of the physical aspects of social systems and models, inspired by the analogy with familiar models of physical systems and possible applications of statistical physics tools. Unlike the traditional analysis of the physics of macroscopic many-body or condensed matter systems, which is now an established and mature subject, the upsurge in the physical analysis and modelling of social systems, which are clearly many-body dynamical systems, is a recent phenomenon. Though the major developments in sociophysics have taken place only recently, the earliest attempts of proposing "Social Physics" as a discipline are more than one and a half centuries old. Various developments in the mainstream physics of condensed matter systems have inspired and induced the recent growth of sociophysical analysis and models. In spite of the tremendous efforts of many scientists in recent years, the subject is still in its infancy and major challenges are yet to be taken up. An introduction to these challenges is the main motivation for this book.

The XV-th International Congress on Mathematical Physics took place in Rio de Janeiro, on August 5-11, 2006. I believe it was a very successful and enjoyable meeting. It is very fortunate for our community that Latin America, and especially Brazil, in decades has become the place where all ?elds of intellectual activity which are traditionally regarded as part of Mathematical Physics are developing with steady pace and remarkable quality. Another important aspect of this devel- mentis thatbesidesareaswhichalreadyhaveworldwiderecognitionandlongsta- ing tradition in Brazil such as Dynamical Systems, Statistical Mechanics, Probab- ity Theory, etc. , there is intensive growth in other directions such as String Theory and Algebraic Geometry. Brazil's major universities and research institutes such as IMPA and CBPF are successfully bringing up a new generation of researchers in our ?eld. Thus it was especially pleasant to see that among more than 500 participants of the Congress, the majority was constituted by young researchers and graduate students. Given the enormous range of subjects covered during the Congress, and the - versity of scienti?c contributions, it would be pointless to summarize the contents here-the quality is re? ected in these pages. Traditionally, besides its very intense scienti?c program, the Congress was the occasion for the award of the Henri Poincare Prizes of the IAMP, sponsored by the Daniel Iagolnitzer Foundation. The Laureates for the year 2006 were Ludwig Faddeev, David Ruelle and Edward Witten.

These days, the nature of services and the volume of demand in the telecommu nication industry is changing radically, with the replacement of analog transmis sion and traditional copper cables by digital technology and fiber optic transmis sion equipment. Moreover, we see an increasing competition among providers of telecommunication services, and the development of a broad range of new services for users, combining voice, data, graphics and video. Telecommunication network planning has thus become an important problem area for developing and applying optimization models. Telephone companies have initiated extensive modeling and planning efforts to expand and upgrade their transmission facilities, which are, for most national telecommunication networks, divided in three main levels (see Balakrishnan et al. 5]), namely, l. the long-distance or backbone network that typically connects city pairs through gateway nodes; 2. the inter-office or switching center network within each city, that interconnects switching centers in different subdivisions (clusters of customers) and provides access to the gateway(s) node(s); 1 2 DESIGN OF SURVNABLE NETWORKS WITH BOUNDED RINGS 3. the local access network that connects individual subscribers belonging to a cluster to the corresponding switching center. These three levels differ in several ways including their design criteria. Ideally, the design of a telecommunication network should simultaneously account for these three levels. However, to simplify the planning task, the overall planning problem is decomposed by considering each level separately."

This book presents the high-precision analysis of ground states and low-energy excitations in fractional quantum Hall states formed by Dirac electrons, which have attracted a great deal of attention. In particular the author focuses on the physics of fractional quantum Hall states in graphene on a hexagonal boron nitride substrate, which was recently implemented in experiments. The numerical approach employed in the book, which uses an exact numerical diagonalization of an effective model Hamiltonian on a Haldane's sphere based on pseudopotential representation of electron interaction, provides a better understanding of the recent experiments. The book reviews various aspects of quantum Hall effect: a brief history, recent experiments with graphene, and fundamental theories on integer and fractional Hall effects. It allows readers to quickly grasp the physics of quantum Hall states of Dirac fermions, and to catch up on latest research on the quantum Hall effect in graphene.

This book is an outgrowth of the sixth international conference on integral methods in science and engineering. The chapters focus on the solution of mathematical models from various physical domains, using integral methods in conjunction with approximation schemes.

Integral Methods in Science and Engineering describes the construction and application of various analytic and numerical integration techniques. Problem solving in areas such as solid mechanics, fluid dynamics, thermoelasticity, plates and shells, liquid crystals, diffusion and diffraction theory, Hamiltonian systems, resonance, nonlinear waves, plasma, flight dynamics, and structural networks are presented in an accessible manner. The book offers a vehicle for the quick dissemination of new results in these domains, and will help create an ideal environment for investigative interdisciplinary study among a variety of research areas.

Topics:

* Offers an illustration by prominent researchers of efficient methods of solution with numerical results and rigorous analytic methods

* Presents applications of integral methods to a wide variety of mathematical and physical problems

* Provides new results in the study of various physical and mechanical models

* A clear, concise focus on a class of methodologies rather than a specific field of study

This book is a practical resource for a broad audience of professionals, researchers, and practitioners in applied mathematics, mechanical engineering, and theoretical physics, who are interested in current research in ordinary and partial differential equations, integral equations, numerical analysis, mechanics of solids, fluid mechanics, and mathematical physics.Graduate students will find this a helpful guide to the wide range of applications that integral methods have in science and engineering.

This book gives an introduction to the classical, well-known special functions which play a role in mathematical physics, especially in boundary value problems. Calculus and complex function theory form the basis of the book and numerous formulas are given. Particular attention is given to asymptomatic and numerical aspects of special functions, with numerous references to recent literature provided.

This book presents improved numerical techniques and applied computer-aided simulations as a part of emerging trends in mechatronics in all areas related to complex fluids, with particular focus on using a combination of modeling, theory, and simulation to study systems that are complex due to the rheology of fluids (i.e., ceramic pastes, polymer solutions and melts, colloidal suspensions, emulsions, foams, micro-/nanofluids, etc.) and multiphysics phenomena in which the interactions of various effects (thermal, chemical, electric, magnetic, or mechanical) lead to complex dynamics. The areas of applications span materials processing, manufacturing, and biology.

During the past two decades the gravitational asymptotic safety scenario has undergone a major transition from an exotic possibility to a serious contender for a realistic theory of quantum gravity. It aims at a mathematically consistent quantum description of the gravitational interaction and the geometry of spacetime within the realm of quantum field theory, which keeps its predictive power at the highest energies. This volume provides a self-contained pedagogical introduction to asymptotic safety, and introduces the functional renormalization group techniques used in its investigation, along with the requisite computational techniques. The foundational chapters are followed by an accessible summary of the results obtained so far. It is the first detailed exposition of asymptotic safety, providing a unique introduction to quantum gravity and it assumes no previous familiarity with the renormalization group. It serves as an important resource for both practising researchers and graduate students entering this maturing field.

This book presents novel and advanced topics in Medical Image Processing and Computational Vision in order to solidify knowledge in the related fields and define their key stakeholders. It contains extended versions of selected papers presented in VipIMAGE 2013 - IV International ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Vision and Medical Image, which took place in Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, 14-16 October 2013. The twenty-two chapters were written by invited experts of international recognition and address important issues in medical image processing and computational vision, including: 3D vision, 3D visualization, colour quantisation, continuum mechanics, data fusion, data mining, face recognition, GPU parallelisation, image acquisition and reconstruction, image and video analysis, image clustering, image registration, image restoring, image segmentation, machine learning, modelling and simulation, object detection, object recognition, object tracking, optical flow, pattern recognition, pose estimation, and texture analysis. Different applications are addressed and described throughout the book, comprising: biomechanical studies, bio-structure modelling and simulation, bone characterization, cell tracking, computer-aided diagnosis, dental imaging, face recognition, hand gestures detection and recognition, human motion analysis, human-computer interaction, image and video understanding, image processing, image segmentation, object and scene reconstruction, object recognition and tracking, remote robot control, and surgery planning. This volume is of use to researchers, students, practitioners and manufacturers from several multidisciplinary fields, such as artificial intelligence, bioengineering, biology, biomechanics, computational mechanics, computational vision, computer graphics, computer science, computer vision, human motion, imagiology, machine learning, machine vision, mathematics, medical image, medicine, pattern recognition, and physics.

This book presents generalized heat-conduction laws which, from a mesoscopic perspective, are relevant to new applications (especially in nanoscale heat transfer, nanoscale thermoelectric phenomena, and in diffusive-to-ballistic regime) and at the same time keep up with the pace of current microscopic research. The equations presented in the book are compatible with generalized formulations of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, going beyond the local-equilibrium. The book includes six main chapters, together with a preface and a final section devoted to the future perspectives, as well as an extensive bibliography.

This proceedings is focused on the emerging concept of Collaborative Innovation Networks (COINs). COINs are at the core of collaborative knowledge networks, distributed communities taking advantage of the wide connectivity and the support of communication technologies, spanning beyond the organizational perimeter of companies on a global scale. The book presents the refereed conference papers from the 7th International Conference on COINs, October 8-9, 2019, in Warsaw, Poland. It includes papers for both application areas of COINs, (1) optimizing organizational creativity and performance, and (2) discovering and predicting new trends by identifying COINs on the Web through online social media analysis. Papers at COINs19 combine a wide range of interdisciplinary fields such as social network analysis, group dynamics, design and visualization, information systems and the psychology and sociality of collaboration, and intercultural analysis through the lens of online social media. They will cover most recent advances in areas from leadership and collaboration, trend prediction and data mining, to social competence and Internet communication.

This fourth edition of selecta of my work on the stability of matter contains recent work on two topics that continue to fascinate me: Quantum electrodynamics (QED) and the Bose gas. Three papers have been added to Part VII on QED. As I mentioned in the preface to the third edition, there must be a way to formulate a non-perturbative QED, presumably with an ultraviolet cutoff, that correctly describes low energy physics, i.e., ordinary matter and its interaction with the electromagnetic field. The new paper VII.5, which quantizes the results in V.9, shows that the elementary no-pair version of relativistic QED (using the Dirac operator) is unstable when many-body effects are taken into account. Stability can be restored, however, if the Dirac operator with the field, instead of the bare Dirac operator, is used to define an electron. Thus, the notion of a bare electron without its self-field is physically questionable."

This book covers two major classes of mixed effects models, linear mixed models and generalized linear mixed models. It presents an up-to-date account of theory and methods in analysis of these models as well as their applications in various fields. The book offers a systematic approach to inference about non-Gaussian linear mixed models. Furthermore, it includes recently developed methods, such as mixed model diagnostics, mixed model selection, and jackknife method in the context of mixed models. The book is aimed at students, researchers and other practitioners who are interested in using mixed models for statistical data analysis.

Many areas of continuum physics pose a challenge to physicists. What are the most general, admissible statistically homogeneous and isotropic tensor-valued random fields (TRFs)? Previously, only the TRFs of rank 0 were completely described. This book assembles a complete description of such fields in terms of one- and two-point correlation functions for tensors of ranks 1 through 4. Working from the standpoint of invariance of physical laws with respect to the choice of a coordinate system, spatial domain representations, as well as their wavenumber domain counterparts are rigorously given in full detail. The book also discusses, an introduction to a range of continuum theories requiring TRFs, an introduction to mathematical theories necessary for the description of homogeneous and isotropic TRFs, and a range of applications including a strategy for simulation of TRFs, ergodic TRFs, scaling laws of stochastic constitutive responses, and applications to stochastic partial differential equations. It is invaluable for mathematicians looking to solve problems of continuum physics, and for physicists aiming to enrich their knowledge of the relevant mathematical tools.

This book is aimed at students making the transition from a first course on general relativity to a specialized subfield. It presents a variety of topics under the general headings of gravitational waves in vacuo and in a cosmological setting, equations of motion, and black holes, all having a clear physical relevance and a strong emphasis on space-time geometry. Each chapter could be used as a basis for an early postgraduate project for those who are exploring avenues into research in general relativity and who have already accumulated the required technical knowledge. The presentation of each chapter is research monograph style, rather than text book style, in order to impress on interested students the need to present their research in a clear and concise format. Students with advanced preparation in general relativity theory might find a treasure trove here.

This textbook on Feynman integrals starts from the basics, requiring only knowledge of special relativity and undergraduate mathematics. Feynman integrals are indispensable for precision calculations in quantum field theory. At the same time, they are also fascinating from a mathematical point of view. Topics from quantum field theory and advanced mathematics are introduced as needed. The book covers modern developments in the field of Feynman integrals. Topics included are: representations of Feynman integrals, integration-by-parts, differential equations, intersection theory, multiple polylogarithms, Gelfand-Kapranov-Zelevinsky systems, coactions and symbols, cluster algebras, elliptic Feynman integrals, and motives associated with Feynman integrals. This volume is aimed at a) students at the master's level in physics or mathematics, b) physicists who want to learn how to calculate Feynman integrals (for whom state-of-the-art techniques and computations are provided), and c) mathematicians who are interested in the mathematical aspects underlying Feynman integrals. It is, indeed, the interwoven nature of their physical and mathematical aspects that make Feynman integrals so enthralling.

This book offers a thorough and updated guide to the theory and methods of progressive censoring, an area that has experienced tremendous growth over the last decade. The theory has developed quite nicely in some special cases having practical applications to reliability and quality. The Art of Progressive Censoring is a valuable reference for graduate students, researchers, and practitioners in applied statistics, quality control, life testing, and reliability. With its accessible style and concrete examples, the work may also be used as a textbook in an advanced undergraduate or a beginning graduate course on censoring or progressive censoring, as well as a supplementary textbook for a course on ordered data.

The Jackknife and bootstrap are the most popular data-resampling methods used in statistical analysis. This book provides a systematic introduction to the theory of the jackknife, bootstrap and other resampling methods that have been developed in the last twenty years. It aims to provide a guide to using these methods which will enable applied statisticians to feel comfortable in applying them to data in their own research. The authors have included examples of applying these methods in various applications in both the independent and identically distributed (iid) case and in more complicated cases with non-iid data sets. Readers are assumed to have a reasonable knowledge of mathematical statistics and so this will be made suitable reading for graduate students, researchers and practitioners seeking a wide-ranging survey of this important area of statistical theory and application.

This proceedings volume features selected contributions from the conference Positivity X. The field of positivity deals with ordered mathematical structures and their applications. At the biannual series of Positivity conferences, the latest developments in this diverse field are presented. The 2019 edition was no different, with lectures covering a broad spectrum of topics, including vector and Banach lattices and operators on such spaces, abstract stochastic processes in an ordered setting, the theory and applications of positive semi-groups to partial differential equations, Hilbert geometries, positivity in Banach algebras and, in particular, operator algebras, as well as applications to mathematical economics and financial mathematics. The contributions in this book reflect the variety of topics discussed at the conference. They will be of interest to researchers in functional analysis, operator theory, measure and integration theory, operator algebras, and economics. Positivity X was dedicated to the memory of our late colleague and friend, Coenraad Labuschagne. His untimely death in 2018 came as an enormous shock to the Positivity community. He was a prominent figure in the Positivity community and was at the forefront of the recent development of abstract stochastic processes in a vector lattice context.

This book provides a unified and insightful treatment of deterministic global optimization. It introduces theoretical and algorithmic advances that address the computation and characterization of global optima, determine valid lower and upper bounds on the global minima and maxima, and enclose all solutions of nonlinear constrained systems of equations. Among its special features, the book: Introduces the fundamentals of deterministic global optimization; Provides a thorough treatment of decomposition-based global optimization approaches for biconvex and bilinear problems; Covers global optimization methods for generalized geometric programming problems Presents in-depth global optimization algorithms for general twice continuously differentiable nonlinear problems; Provides a detailed treatment of global optimization methods for mixed-integer nonlinear problems; Develops global optimization approaches for the enclosure of all solutions of nonlinear constrained systems of equations; Includes many important applications from process design, synthesis, control, and operations, phase equilibrium, design under uncertainty, parameter estimation, azeotrope prediction, structure prediction in clusters and molecules, protein folding, and peptide docking. Audience: This book can be used as a textbook in graduate-level courses and as a desk reference for researchers in all branches of engineering and applied science, applied mathematics, industrial engineering, operations research, computer science, economics, computational chemistry and molecular biology.

The scattering theory for transport phenomena was initiated by P. Lax and R. Phillips in 1967. Since then, great progress has been made in the field and the work has been ongoing for more than half a century. This book shows part of that progress. The book is divided into 7 chapters, the first of which deals with preliminaries of the theory of semigroups and C*-algebra, different types of semigroups, Schatten-von Neuman classes of operators, and facts about ultraweak operator topology, with examples using wavelet theory. Chapter 2 goes into abstract scattering theory in a general Banach space. The wave and scattering operators and their basic properties are defined. Some abstract methods such as smooth perturbation and the limiting absorption principle are also presented. Chapter 3 is devoted to the transport or linearized Boltzmann equation, and in Chapter 4 the Lax and Phillips formalism is introduced in scattering theory for the transport equation. In their seminal book, Lax and Phillips introduced the incoming and outgoing subspaces, which verify their representation theorem for a dissipative hyperbolic system initially and also matches for the transport problem. By means of these subspaces, the Lax and Phillips semigroup is defined and it is proved that this semigroup is eventually compact, hence hyperbolic. Balanced equations give rise to two transport equations, one of which can satisfy an advection equation and one of which will be nonautonomous. For generating, the Howland semigroup and Howland's formalism must be used, as shown in Chapter 5. Chapter 6 is the highlight of the book, in which it is explained how the scattering operator for the transport problem by using the albedo operator can lead to recovery of the functionality of computerized tomography in medical science. The final chapter introduces the Wigner function, which connects the Schroedinger equation to statistical physics and the Husimi distribution function. Here, the relationship between the Wigner function and the quantum dynamical semigroup (QDS) can be seen.

"Fractals in Biology and Medicine, Volume 2" explores the potential of the fractal geometry in understanding how to analyse natural shapes. The volume devotes special emphasis to the complex field of human tumours.

This book presents a systematic study of multivariate wavelet frames with matrix dilation, in particular, orthogonal and bi-orthogonal bases, which are a special case of frames. Further, it provides algorithmic methods for the construction of dual and tight wavelet frames with a desirable approximation order, namely compactly supported wavelet frames, which are commonly required by engineers. It particularly focuses on methods of constructing them. Wavelet bases and frames are actively used in numerous applications such as audio and graphic signal processing, compression and transmission of information. They are especially useful in image recovery from incomplete observed data due to the redundancy of frame systems. The construction of multivariate wavelet frames, especially bases, with desirable properties remains a challenging problem as although a general scheme of construction is well known, its practical implementation in the multidimensional setting is difficult. Another important feature of wavelet is symmetry. Different kinds of wavelet symmetry are required in various applications, since they preserve linear phase properties and also allow symmetric boundary conditions in wavelet algorithms, which normally deliver better performance. The authors discuss how to provide H-symmetry, where H is an arbitrary symmetry group, for wavelet bases and frames. The book also studies so-called frame-like wavelet systems, which preserve many important properties of frames and can often be used in their place, as well as their approximation properties. The matrix method of computing the regularity of refinable function from the univariate case is extended to multivariate refinement equations with arbitrary dilation matrices. This makes it possible to find the exact values of the Hoelder exponent of refinable functions and to make a very refine analysis of their moduli of continuity.