The mathematical formulation of many physical problems results in the task of inverting a compact operator. The only known sensible solution technique is regularization which poses a severe problem in itself. Classically one dealt with deterministic noise models and required the knowledge of smoothness of the solution or the overall error behaviour. We will show that we can guarantee an asymptotically almost optimal regularization for a physically motivated noise model under no assumptions for the smoothness and rather weak assumptions on the noise behaviour. An application to the determination of the gravitational field out of satellite data will be shown.

Motivated by the study of fibre dynamics in the carding machine, a continuum model for the motion of a medium composed of fibres is derived under the assumption that the dominant forces are due to fibre-fibre interactions and that the material is in tension. To characterise the material we include the averaged values of density and velocity and introduce variables to describe the mean direction, alignment and entanglement. We assume that the bulk stress of the material depends on the density, entanglement, degree of alignment, average direction and shear-rates. A kinematic equation for average direction and two proposed heuristic laws for the evolution of entanglement and degree of alignment are given to close the system. Extensional and shearing simulations are in good qualitative agreement with experimental results.

An infinite regular two-dimensional network is composed of unit resistances joining adjacent nodes. What is the resistance of the whole network measured between two different nodes? Three cases are considered, in which the meshes of the network are square, hexagonal or triangular. Some extensions of the problem are also treated. Asymptotic approximations are given for large distances.

In this paper we prove the existence of a solution for a system of nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations arising from thermoelectric modelling of metallurgical electrodes undergoing a phase change. The model consists of an electromagnetic problem for eddy current computation coupled with a Stefan problem for temperature. The proof uses a regularized problem obtained by truncating the source term in temperature equation. Passing to the limit requires fine a priori estimates leading to compactness.

Calcium sparks in cardiac muscle cells occur when a cluster of Ca2+ channels open and release Ca2+ from an internal store. A simplified model of Ca2+ sparks has been developed to describe the dynamics of a cluster of channels, which is of the form of a continuous time Markov chain with nearest neighbour transitions and slowly varying jump functions. The chain displays metastability, whereby the probability distribution of the state of the system evolves exponentially slowly, with one of the metastable states occurring at the boundary. An asymptotic technique for analysing the Master equation (a differential-difference equation) associated with these Markov chains is developed using the WKB and projection methods. The method is used to re-derive a known result for a standard class of Markov chains displaying metastability, before being applied to the new class of Markov chains associated with the spark model. The mean first passage time between metastable states is calculated and an expression for the frequency of calcium sparks is derived. All asymptotic results are compared with Monte Carlo simulations.

We study two coupled reaction-diffusion equations of the $\lambda$–$\omega$ type [11] in $d\,{\le}\,3$ space dimensions, on a convex bounded domain with a $C^2$ boundary. The equations are close to a supercritical Hopf bifurcation in the reaction kinetics and are model equations for oscillatory reaction-diffusion equations. Global existence, uniqueness and continuous dependence on initial data of strong and weak solutions are proved using the classical Faedo-Galerkin method of Lions [15] and compactness arguments. We also present a complete case study for the application of this method to systems of nonlinear reaction-diffusion equations.

A vectorial extension of the Keller–Rubinow method of computing asymptotic approximations of eigenvalues in bounded domains is presented. The method is applied to the problem of a multimode step-profile cylindrical optical fibre, including the effects of polarisation. A comparison of the asymptotic results with the exact eigenvalues is made when these are available, and the agreement is shown to be good.

The paper presents the results of an asymptotic theory of axially symmetric cavity flows at small and zero cavitation number. The results have been obtained on the basis of the variational Riabouchinsky principle and the asymptotic theory of slender bodies. This variational-asymptotic approach has been applied to deduce asymptotic expansions for the shape of the cavity and the force exerted on the cavitator at small cavitation number. At the zero cavitation number an integro-differential equation for the shape of the free streamline has been obtained. An exact integral of the equation has been found and a one-parameter family of solutions has been constructed and which has refined earlier asymptotics of Levinson and Gurevich. The equation and asymptotic expansion are independent of the cavitator shape and in this sense are maximally accurate. Any further amendment of the equation of higher order of accuracy would be connected with the shape of the cavitator.

An optimization problem for the fundamental eigenvalue $\lam_0$ of the Laplacian in a planar simply-connected domain that contains $N$ small identically-shaped holes, each of radius $\eps\ll 1$, is considered. The boundary condition on the domain is assumed to be of Neumann type, and a Dirichlet condition is imposed on the boundary of each of the holes. As an application, the reciprocal of the fundamental eigenvalue $\lam_0$ is proportional to the expected lifetime for Brownian motion in a domain with a reflecting boundary that contains $N$ small traps. For small hole radii $\eps$, a two-term asymptotic expansion for $\lam_0$ is derived in terms of certain properties of the Neumann Green's function for the Laplacian. Only the second term in this expansion depends on the locations $x_{i}$, for $i=1,\ldots,N$, of the small holes. For the unit disk, ring-type configurations of holes are constructed to optimize this term with respect to the hole locations. The results yield hole configurations that asymptotically optimize $\lam_0$. For a class of symmetric dumbbell-shaped domains containing exactly one hole, it is shown that there is a unique hole location that maximizes $\lam_0$. For an asymmetric dumbbell-shaped domain, it is shown that there can be two hole locations that locally maximize $\lam_0$. This optimization problem is found to be directly related to an oxygen transport problem in skeletal muscle tissue, and to determining equilibrium locations of spikes to the Gierer–Meinhardt reaction-diffusion model. It is also closely related to the problem of determining equilibrium vortex configurations within the context of the Ginzburg–Landau theory of superconductivity.

In this paper, we propose a mean curvature flow equation with nonlocal nonlinearities for an image processing model on noisy surfaces, which corresponds to the negative $L^2$-gradient flow of surface energy functional in (1.4). We investigate the initial value problem mathematically. Furthermore, numerical simulations are shown, which exhibit that the model performs smoothing operation on a complicated level surface of a given image data while preserving its geometric shape feature under suitable parameters chosen.

This paper proposes the use of a variational framework to model fluid wetting dynamics. The central problem of infinite energy dissipation for a moving contact line is dealt with explicitly rather than by introducing a specific microscopic mechanism which removes it. We analyze this modelling approach in the context of the quasi-steady limit, where contact line motion is slower than bulk relaxation. We find that global effects enter into Tanner-type laws which relate line velocity to apparent contact angle through the role that energy dissipation plays in the bulk of the fluid. A comparison is made to the dynamics of lubrication equations that include attractive and repulsive intermolecular interactions. A Galerkin-type approximation method is introduced which leads to reduced-dimensional dynamical descriptions. Computations are conducted using these low-dimensional approximations, and a substantial connection to lubrication equation dynamics is found.

This paper concerns the drainage of a thin liquid lamella into a Plateau border. Many models for draining soap films assume that their gas-liquid interfaces are effectively immobile. Such models predict a phenomenon known as “marginal pinching”, in which the film tends to pinch in the margin between the lamella and the Plateau border. We analyse the opposite extreme, in which the gas-liquid interfaces are assumed to be stress-free. We apply a nonlocal coordinate transformation that transforms the nonlinear governing equations into the linear heat equation. We thus obtain a travelling-wave solution and show that it is globally attractive. We therefore find that no marginal pinching occurs in this case: the film always approaches a monotonic profile at large times. This behaviour reflects a marked qualitative difference between a film with immobile interfaces and one with perfectly mobile interfaces. In the former case, suction of fluid into the Plateau border is localised, while in the latter it is instantaneously transmitted throughout the film.

We study the existence of planar flames, in the case of a single-step chemical reaction with volumetric heat losses, with a general reaction term. We prove that for all positive Lewis numbers, and for small values of the heat loss rate parameter, two distinct solutions exist. We also give upper bounds for the flame speed and for the heat loss rate parameter. Moreover, we explicitly compute a lower bound for the unburned gases after reaction.

We consider the activator-inhibitor Gierer–Meinhardt reaction-diffusion system of biological pattern formation in a closed bounded domain. The existence and stability of a boundary apike-layer solution to the Gierer–Meinhardt model, and it, so-called shadow limit, is analysed. In the limit of small activator diffusivity, together with a large inhibitor diffusivity, an equilibrium boundary spike-layer solution is constructed that concentrates at a non-degenerate critical point P of the boundary. By non-degenerate we mean that every principal curvature of the boundary has a local maximum at P, and hence the mean curvature at the boundary has a local maximum at P. Rigorous results for the stability of such a boundary spike-layer solution are given.

We propose a delay differential equation model for a single species with stage-structure in which the maturation delay is modelled as a distribution, to allow for the possibility that individuals may take different amounts of time to mature. General birth and death rate functions are used. We find that the dynamics of the model depends largely on the qualitative form of the birth function, which depends on the total number of adults. If it is monotonic increasing and a non-zero equilibrium exists, then the equilibrium is globally stable for all maturation delay distributions with compact support. For the case of a finite spatial domain with impermeable boundaries, a reaction-diffusion extension of the model is rigorously derived using an approach based on the von Foerster diffusion equation. The resulting reaction-diffusion system is nonlocal. The dynamics of the reaction-diffusion system again depends largely on the qualitative form of the birth function. If the latter is non-monotone with a single hump, then the dynamics depends largely on whether the equilibrium is to the left or right of the hump, with oscillatory dynamics a possibility if it is sufficiently far to the right.

We consider the problem of modelling the flow of a slightly compressible fluid in a periodic fractured medium assuming that the fissures are thin with respect to the block size. As a starting point we used a formulation applied to a system comprising a fractured porous medium made of blocks and fractures separated by a thin layer which is considered as an interface. The inter-relationship between these three characteristics comprise the triple porosity model. The microscopic model consists of the usual equation describing Darcy flow with the permeability being highly discontinuous. Over the matrix domain, the permeability is scaled by $(\varepsilon \delta)^2$, where $\varepsilon$ is the size of a typical porous block, with $\delta$ representing the relative size of the fracture. We then consider a model with Robin type transmission conditions: a jump of the density across the interface block-fracture is taken into account and proportional to the flux by the mean of a function $(\varepsilon\delta)^{-\gamma}$, where $\gamma$ is a parameter. Using two-scale convergence, we get homogenized models which govern the global behaviour of the flow as $\varepsilon$ and $\delta$ tend to zero. The resulting homogenized problem is a dual-porosity type model that contains a term representing memory effects for $\gamma\le 1$, and it is a single porosity model with effective coefficients for $\gamma >1$.

We consider the following Gray–Scott model in $B_R (0) = \{x: |x|\lt R\} \subset \R^N, N=2,3$: \[ \left\{ \begin{array}{@{}ll} v_t= \ep^2 \oldDelta v- v+ A v^2 u &\mbox{ in } B_R (0),\\ \tau u_t=\oldDelta u+1-u - v^2 u & \mbox{ in } B_R(0), \\ u, v\gt 0;~~ \frac{\partial u}{\partial \nu}=\frac{\partial v}{\partial \nu} =0 &\hspace*{3pt}\mbox{on} \ \partial B_R(0) \end{array} \right. \] where $\ep>0$ is a small parameter. We assume that $A= \skew{7}\hat{A} \ep^{\frac{1}{2}}$. For each $\skew{7}\hat{A} < +\infty$ and $R<\infty$, we construct ring-like solutions which concentrate on an $(N-1)$-dimensional sphere for the stationary system for all sufficiently small $\ep$. More precisely, it is proved the above problem has a radially symmetric steady state solution $(v_{\ep,R}, u_{\ep, R})$ with the property that $v_{\ep,R} (r) \to 0 $ in $\R^N \backslash \{ r \not = r_0 \}$ for some $ r_0 \in (0, R)$. Then we show that for $N=2$ such solutions are unstable with respect to angular fluctuations of the type $ \Phi (r) e^{ \sqrt{-1} m \theta}$ for some $m$. A relation between $\skew{7}\hat{A}$ and the minimal mode $m$ is given. Similar results are also obtained when $\Om=\R^N$ or $\Om= B_{R_2} (0) \backslash B_{R_1} (0)$ or $\Om= \R^N \backslash B_R (0)$.

We study a heterogeneous dam supplied by two reservoirs, for which we propose a new formulation based on the stream function. Without any monotonicity assumption on the permeability matrix, we prove that the free boundary is a continuous curve of the form $x=\phi(y)$. We also prove the uniqueness of the solution.

In this paper a one-dimensional parabolic variational inequality which typically arises in option pricing of fixed rate mortgage loan is studied. The main goal is to study the properties of the free boundary. The monotonicity and $C^\infty$ smoothness of free boundary are proved and its behavior near expiry is considered as well.

In a recent paper, a new three-parameter class of Abel type equations, so-called AIR, all of whose members can be mapped into Riccati equations, is shown. Most of the Abel equations with solution presented in the literature belong to the AIR class. Three canonical forms were shown to generate this class, according to the roots of a cubic. In this paper, a connection between those canonical forms and the differential equations for the hypergeometric functions $_2{\rm F}_1$, $_1{\rm F}_1$ and $_0{\rm F}_1$ is unveiled. This connection provides a closed form $_p{\rm F}_q$ solution for all Abel equations of the AIR class.