In bioinformatics, the notion of an ‘island’ enhances the efficient simulation of gapped local alignment statistics. This paper generalizes several results relevant to gapless local alignment statistics from one to higher dimensions, with a particular eye to applications in gapped alignment statistics. For example, reversal of paths (rather than of discrete time) generalizes a distributional equality, from queueing theory, between the Lindley (local sum) and maximum processes. Systematic investigation of an ‘ownership’ relationship among vertices in ℤ2 formalizes the notion of an island as a set of vertices having a common owner. Predictably, islands possess some stochastic ordering and spatial averaging properties. Moreover, however, the average number of vertices in a subcritical stationary island is 1, generalizing a theorem of Kac about stationary point processes. The generalization leads to alternative ways of simulating some island statistics.

The problem of determining infinitely dilute resonance integrals is formulated in renewal theoretical terms. The mean value of the integral for a single resonance is determined in simple closed form. On the assumption that Wigner's hypothesis holds, the resonance density is determined, and a usable approximation to it is derived. An expression for the infinitely dilute resonance integral in the statistical region is then given and its value calculated in special cases and compared with the results of a previous computation.

A dual Markov branching process (DMBP) is by definition a Siegmund's predual of some Markov branching process (MBP). Such a process does exist and is uniquely determined by the so-called dual-branching property. Its q-matrix Q is derived and proved to be regular and monotone. Several equivalent definitions for a DMBP are given. The criteria for transience, positive recurrence, strong ergodicity, and the Feller property are established. The invariant distributions are given by a clear formulation with a geometric limit law.

Bandit processes and the Gittins index have provided powerful and elegant theory and tools for the optimization of allocating limited resources to competitive demands. In this paper we extend the Gittins theory to more general branching bandit processes, also referred to as open bandit processes, that allow uncountable states and backward times. We establish the optimality of the Gittins index policy with uncountably many states, which is useful in such problems as dynamic scheduling with continuous random processing times. We also allow negative time durations for discounting a reward to account for the present value of the reward that was received before the present time, which we refer to as time-backward effects. This could model the situation of offering bonus rewards for completing jobs above expectation. Moreover, we discover that a common belief on the optimality of the Gittins index in the generalized bandit problem is not always true without additional conditions, and provide a counterexample. We further apply our theory of open bandit processes with time-backward effects to prove the optimality of the Gittins index in the generalized bandit problem under a sufficient condition.

In this paper we characterize the mean and the distribution of the first exit time of a Lévy flight from a bounded region in N-dimensional spaces. We characterize tight upper and lower bounds on the tail distribution of the first exit time, and provide the exact asymptotics of the mean first exit time for a given range of step-length distribution parameters.

We consider a stationary face-to-face tessellation X of Rd and introduce several percolation models by colouring some of the faces black in a consistent way. Our main model is cell percolation, where cells are declared black with probability p and white otherwise. We are interested in geometric properties of the union Z of black faces. Under natural integrability assumptions, we first express asymptotic mean values of intrinsic volumes in terms of Palm expectations associated with the faces. In the second part of the paper we focus on cell percolation on normal tessellations and study asymptotic covariances of intrinsic volumes of Z ∩ W, where the observation window W is assumed to be a convex body. Special emphasis is given to the planar case where the formulae become more explicit, though we need to assume the existence of suitable asymptotic covariances of the face processes of X. We check these assumptions in the important special case of a Poisson-Voronoi tessellation.

We develop a theory of semiregenerative phenomena. These may be viewed as a family of linked regenerative phenomena, for which Kingman [6], [7] developed a theory within the framework of quasi-Markov chains. We use a different approach and explore the correspondence between semiregenerative sets and the range of a Markov subordinator with a unit drift (or a Markov renewal process in the discrete-time case). We use techniques based on results from Markov renewal theory.

We consider a stochastic differential equation (SDE) with piecewise linear drift driven by a spectrally one-sided Lévy process. We show that this SDE has some connections with queueing and storage models, and we use this observation to obtain the invariant distribution.

We propose a method to generate a max-stable process in C[0, 1] from a max-stable random vector in Rd by generalizing the max-linear model established by Wang and Stoev (2011). For this purpose, an interpolation technique that preserves max-stability is proposed. It turns out that if the random vector follows some finite-dimensional distribution of some initial max-stable process, the approximating processes converge uniformly to the original process and the pointwise mean-squared error can be represented in a closed form. The obtained results carry over to the case of generalized Pareto processes. The introduced method enables the reconstruction of the initial process only from a finite set of observation points and, thus, a reasonable prediction of max-stable processes in space becomes possible. A possible extension to arbitrary dimensions is outlined.

Detection of repeated sequences within complete genomes is a powerful tool to help understanding genome dynamics and species evolutionary history. To distinguish significant repeats from those that can be obtained just by chance, statistical methods have to be developed. In this paper we show that the distribution of the number of long repeats in long sequences generated by stationary Markov chains can be approximated by a Poisson distribution with explicit parameter. Thanks to the Chen-Stein method we provide a bound for the approximation error; this bound converges to 0 as soon as the length n of the sequence tends to ∞ and the length t of the repeats satisfies n2ρt = O(1) for some 0 < ρ < 1. Using this Poisson approximation, p-values can then be easily calculated to determine if a given genome is significantly enriched in repeats of length t.

We study the genealogy of so-called immortal branching processes, i.e. branching processes where each individual upon death is replaced by at least one new individual, and conclude that their marginal distributions are compound geometric. The result also implies that the limiting distributions of properly scaled supercritical branching processes are compound geometric. We exemplify our results with an expression for the marginal distribution for a class of branching processes that have recently appeared in the theory of coalescent processes and continuous stable random trees. The limiting distribution can be expressed in terms of the Fox H-function, and in special cases by the Meijer G-function.

The paper considers some properties of the reversible counters system of Lampard [1]. Lampard considers the properties of the process imbedded at the epochs when the counter receiving pulses from the ‘down’ process reaches zero. We consider here the time-dependent and stationary distributions of the original process. Their derivation gives rise to some interesting functional equations, besides being useful for studying queues with Markov-dependent inter-arrival or service times.

Models for epidemic spread of infections are formulated by defining intensities for relevant counting processes. It is assumed that an infected individual passes through k stages of infectivity. The times spent in the different stages are random. Many well-known models for the spread of infections can be described in this way. The models can also be applied to describe other processes of epidemic character (such as models for rumour spreading). Asymptotic results are derived both for the size and for the duration of the epidemic.

A number of multi-priority jobs are to be processed on two heterogeneous processors. Of the jobs waiting in the buffer, jobs with the highest priority have the first option of being dispatched for processing when a processor becomes available. On each processor, the processing times of the jobs within each priority class are stochastic, but have known distributions with decreasing mean residual (remaining) processing times. Processors are heterogeneous in the sense that, for each priority class, one has a lesser average processing time than the other. It is shown that the non-preemptive scheduling strategy for each priority class to minimize its expected flowtime is of threshold type. For each class, the threshold values, which specify when the slower processor is utilized, may be readily computed. It is also shown that the social and the individual optimality coincide.

A variety of performance measures of a GI/G/1 queue are explicitly related to the idle-period distribution of the queue, suggesting that the system analysis can be accomplished by the analysis of the idle period. However, the ‘stand-alone' relationship for the idle-period distribution of the GI/G/1 queue (i.e. the counterpart of Lindley's equation) has not been found in the literature. In this paper we develop a non-linear integral equation for the idle period distribution of the GI/G/1 queue. We also show that this non-linear system defines a unique solution. This development makes possible the analysis of the GI/G/1 queue in a different perspective.

Realizations of the autoregressive series considered by Kendall are generated using both Gaussian and uniformly distributed random variables. Estimates of the autocorrelation and power spectrum of the process obtained from these realizations are compared with the theoretical expressions derived by Bartlett. Agreement is well within the theoretical variance.

This paper is concerned with the characterization of weak-sense limits of state-dependent G-networks under heavy traffic. It is shown that, for a certain class of networks (which includes a two-layer feedforward network and two queues in tandem), it is possible to approximate the number of customers in the queue by a reflected stochastic differential equation. The benefits of such an approach are that it describes the transient evolution of these queues and allows the introduction of controls, inter alia. We illustrate the application of the results with numerical experiments.

A Malthusian parameter for the generation-dependent general branching process is introduced and some asymptotics of the expected population size, counted by a general non-negative characteristic, are discussed. Processes both with and without immigration are considered.

We investigate how the property of null-recurrence is preserved for Markov chains under a perturbation of the transition probability. After recalling some useful criteria in terms of the one-step transition nucleus we present two methods to determine barrier functions, one in terms of taboo potentials for the unperturbed Markov chain, and the other based on Taylor's formula.