In 2013 several scientific activities have been devoted to mathematical researches for the study of planet Earth. The current volume presents a selection of the highly topical issues presented at the workshop "Mathematical Models and Methods for Planet Earth", held in Roma (Italy), in May 2013. The fields of interest span from impacts of dangerous asteroids to the safeguard from space debris, from climatic changes to monitoring geological events, from the study of tumor growth to sociological problems. In all these fields the mathematical studies play a relevant role as a tool for the analysis of specific topics and as an ingredient of multidisciplinary problems. To investigate these problems we will see many different mathematical tools at work: just to mention some, stochastic processes, PDE, normal forms, chaos theory.

The main purpose of these lectures is first to briefly survey the fundamental con nection between the representation theory of the symmetric group Sn and the theory of symmetric functions and second to show how combinatorial methods that arise naturally in the theory of symmetric functions lead to efficient algorithms to express various prod ucts of representations of Sn in terms of sums of irreducible representations. That is, there is a basic isometry which maps the center of the group algebra of Sn, Z(Sn), to the space of homogeneous symmetric functions of degree n, An. This basic isometry is known as the Frobenius map, F. The Frobenius map allows us to reduce calculations involving characters of the symmetric group to calculations involving Schur functions. Now there is a very rich and beautiful theory of the combinatorics of symmetric functions that has been developed in recent years. The combinatorics of symmetric functions, then leads to a number of very efficient algorithms for expanding various products of Schur functions into a sum of Schur functions. Such expansions of products of Schur functions correspond via the Frobenius map to decomposing various products of irreducible representations of Sn into their irreducible components. In addition, the Schur functions are also the characters of the irreducible polynomial representations of the general linear group over the complex numbers GLn(C)."

This biography traces the life and work of Mary Fairfax Somerville, whose extraordinary mathematical talent only came to light through fortuitous circumstances. Barely taught to read and write as a child, all the science she learned and mastered was self taught. In this delightful narrative the author takes up the challenge of discovering how Somerville came to be one of the most outstanding British women scientists and, furthermore, a popular writer. Particular attention is paid to the gender aspects of Somerville's success in what was, to put it mildly, a predominantly male domain.

The topics faced in this book cover a large spectrum of current trends in mathematics, such as Shimura varieties and the Lang lands program, zonotopal combinatorics, non linear potential theory, variational methods in imaging, Riemann holonomy and algebraic geometry, mathematical problems arising in kinetic theory, Boltzmann systems, Pell's equations in polynomials, deformation theory in non commutative algebras. This work contains a selection of contributions written by international leading mathematicians who were speakers at the "INdAM Day", an initiative born in 2004 to present the most recent developments in contemporary mathematics.

The topics faced in this book cover a large spectrum of current trends in mathematics, such as Shimura varieties and the Lang lands program, zonotopal combinatorics, non linear potential theory, variational methods in imaging, Riemann holonomy and algebraic geometry, mathematical problems arising in kinetic theory, Boltzmann systems, Pell's equations in polynomials, deformation theory in non commutative algebras. This work contains a selection of contributions written by international leading mathematicians who were speakers at the "INdAM Day", an initiative born in 2004 to present the most recent developments in contemporary mathematics.

In 2013 several scientific activities have been devoted to mathematical researches for the study of planet Earth. The current volume presents a selection of the highly topical issues presented at the workshop “Mathematical Models and Methods for Planet Earth�, held in Roma (Italy), in May 2013. The fields of interest span from impacts of dangerous asteroids to the safeguard from space debris, from climatic changes to monitoring geological events, from the study of tumor growth to sociological problems. In all these fields the mathematical studies play a relevant role as a tool for the analysis of specific topics and as an ingredient of multidisciplinary problems. To investigate these problems we will see many different mathematical tools at work: just to mention some, stochastic processes, PDE, normal forms, chaos theory.

The main purpose of these lectures is first to briefly survey the fundamental con nection between the representation theory of the symmetric group Sn and the theory of symmetric functions and second to show how combinatorial methods that arise naturally in the theory of symmetric functions lead to efficient algorithms to express various prod ucts of representations of Sn in terms of sums of irreducible representations. That is, there is a basic isometry which maps the center of the group algebra of Sn, Z(Sn), to the space of homogeneous symmetric functions of degree n, An. This basic isometry is known as the Frobenius map, F. The Frobenius map allows us to reduce calculations involving characters of the symmetric group to calculations involving Schur functions. Now there is a very rich and beautiful theory of the combinatorics of symmetric functions that has been developed in recent years. The combinatorics of symmetric functions, then leads to a number of very efficient algorithms for expanding various products of Schur functions into a sum of Schur functions. Such expansions of products of Schur functions correspond via the Frobenius map to decomposing various products of irreducible representations of Sn into their irreducible components. In addition, the Schur functions are also the characters of the irreducible polynomial representations of the general linear group over the complex numbers GLn(C).

This biography traces the life and work of Mary Fairfax Somerville, whose extraordinary mathematical talent only came to light through fortuitous circumstances. Barely taught to read and write as a child, all the science she learned and mastered was self taught. In this delightful narrative the author takes up the challenge of discovering how Somerville came to be one of the most outstanding British women scientists and, furthermore, a popular writer. Particular attention is paid to the gender aspects of Somerville's success in what was, to put it mildly, a predominantly male domain.