Professor A. Landé has kindly sent me a manuscript of a paper in which he develops some most important ideas on the meaning and the value of the number 137. His work is founded on the principle of reciprocity which I recently suggested (Born, 1938). Landé adds to this principle a new assumption about the wave functions, representing an electron, and he finds a linear integral equation for these containing a parameter the value of which may be expected to be 137. It is Landé's great merit to have shown that the reciprocity principle leads to a condition for the Planck constant ћ (the value of which in natural units, c = 1, e = 1, is 137), and to have discovered the root of the peculiar order of magnitude of the number. But some difficulties which I encountered led me to reconsider the problem.

In this paper we prove the existence of solutions of the Uehling–Uhlenbeck equation that behave like $k^{-7/6}$ as $k\to0$. From the physical point of view, such solutions can be thought as particle distributions in the space of momentum having a sink (or a source) of particles with zero momentum. Our construction is based on the precise estimates of the semigroup for the linearized equation around the singular function $k^{-7/6}$ that we obtained in an earlier paper.

The dynamics of a gene expression model with time delay are investigated. The investigation confirms that a Hopf bifurcation occurs due to the existence of stability switches when the delay varies. An explicit algorithm for determining the direction of the Hopf bifurcations and the stability of the bifurcating periodic solutions has been derived by using the theory of the centre manifold and the normal forms method. The global existence of periodic solutions has been established using a global Hopf bifurcation result by Wu and a Bendixson criterion for higher-dimensional ordinary differential equations due to Li and Muldowney.

In this paper we present a result of existence of infinitely many arbitrarily small positive solutions to the following Dirichlet problem involving the p-Laplacian, where Ω ∈ RN is a bounded open set with sufficiently smooth boundary ∂Ω, p > 1, λ > 0, and f: Ω × R → R is a Carathéodory function satisfying the following condition: there exists t̄ > 0 such that Precisely, our result ensures the existence of a sequence of a.e. positive weak solutions to the above problem, converging to zero in L∞(Ω).

A new class of integrals involving the confluent hypergeometric function 1F1(a;c;z) and the Riemann Ξ-function is considered. It generalizes a class containing some integrals of Ramanujan, Hardy and Ferrar and gives, as by-products, transformation formulae of the form F(z, α) = F(iz, β), where αβ = 1. As particular examples, we derive an extended version of the general theta transformation formula and generalizations of certain formulae of Ferrar and Hardy. A one-variable generalization of a well-known identity of Ramanujan is also given. We conclude with a generalization of a conjecture due to Ramanujan, Hardy and Littlewood involving infinite series of the Möbius function.

This paper provides a topological and ergodic analysis of random linear Hamiltonian systems. We consider a class of Hamiltonian equations presenting absolutely continuous dynamics and prove the existence of the radial limits of the Weyl M-functions in the L1-topology. The proof is based on previous ergodic relations obtained for the Floquet coefficient. The second part of the paper is devoted to the qualitative description of disconjugate linear Hamiltonian equations. We show that the principal solutions at ±∞ define singular ergodic measures, and determine an invariant region in the Lagrange bundle which concentrates the essential dynamical information. We apply this theory to the study of the n-dimensional Schrödinger equation at the first point of the spectrum.

Long-time behaviour of solutions to porous medium equations with convection is investigated when the initial datum is a non-negative and integrable function on the real line. The long-time profile of the solutions is determined, and depends on whether the convective or the diffusive effect dominates for large times. Sharp temporal decay estimates are also provided.

We present a generalisation of the continuous Gronwall inequality and show its use in bounding solutions of discrete inequalities of a form that arise when analysing the convergence of product integration methods for Volterra integral equations. We then use these ideas to prove convergence of a numerical method which is effective in approximating Volterra integral equations of the second kind with weakly singular kernels.

The method of artificial insemination in the mouse, which has been used successfully only once previously (Mark and Long, 1911), has made it possible to collect exact data on the duration of life and the fertilising capacity of spermatozoa in the female genital tract. Earlier results concerning the conditions under which spermatozoa from the male genital tract attain their maximum activity (Merton, II) and the exact knowledge of the time of parturition (Merton, I) were helpful in carrying out artificial insemination during the following œstrous period.

The subject of this paper is steady motion of vortices.

1. Extended definition of “steady motion.” The motion of any system of solid or fluid or solid and fluid matter is said to be steady when its configuration remains equal and similar, and the velocities of homologous particles equal, however the configuration may move in space, and however distant individual material particles may at one time be from the points homologous to their positions at another time.

Limit-point and limit-circle criteria are given for the generalised Sturm-Liouville differential expression

where

(i) p, q, and w are real-valued on [a, b),

(ii) p−1, q, w are locally Lebesgue integrable on [a, b),

(iii) w > 0 almost everywhere on [a, b) and the principal coefficient p is allowed toassume both positive and negative values.

We study the existence and the asymptotic behaviour of global solutions of the semilinear parabolic equation u(0) = ϧwhere a, b ∈ℝ, q > 1, p > 1. Forq=2p/(p+1) and ½ 1(p-1)>1 (equivalently, q > (n + 2)/(n + 1)), we prove the existence of mild global solutions for small initial data with respect to some norm. Some of those solutions are asymptotically self-similar.

In this paper we consider mathematical models inspired by the mechanisms of biological evolution. We take populations which are subject to interaction and mutation. In the cases we consider, the interaction is through competition or through a prey-predator relationship. The models consider the specific characteristics as taking values in real intervals and the equations are of the integro—differential type. In the case of competition, thanks to the fact that some of the equations have solutions which are quite explicit, we succeed in proving the existence of attracting stationary solutions. In the case of prey and predator, using techniques of dynamical systems in infinite-dimensional spaces, we succeed in showing the existence of a global attractor, which in some instances reduces to a point. Our analysis takes into account having δ distributions, corresponding to all individuals having the same characteristics, as possible populations.

Let m: [ 0, ∞) → [ 0, ∞) be an increasing continuous function with m(t) = 0 if and only if t = 0, m(t) → ∞ as t → ∞ and Ω C ℝN a bounded domain. In this note we show that for every r > 0 there exists a function ur solving the minimization problem

where Moreover, the function ur is a weak solution to the corresponding Euler–Lagrange equation

for some λ > 0. We emphasize that no Δ2-condition is needed for M or M; so the associated functionals are not continuously differentiable, in general.

This paper is concerned with the existence of topological multivortex solutions in (2 + 1) self-dual gauge theories such as the classical abelian Higgs model or the Chern–Simons Higgs gauge theories. A general form of topological multivortex equations is presented with the inclusion of antivortices. Two kinds of solutions are considered; topological vortex solutions and topological vortex–antivortex solutions. We construct these solutions by super and subsolution methods, and derive the exponential decay of solutions at infinity and the quantized integral formula. As an application, we prove the existence of a topological multivortex solutions in a generalized Chern–Simons Higgs theory.

Abnormalities of the digits occur under a great variety of forms, and with such frequency that most medical men interested in the subject are more or less familiar with them.

In studying such cases one cannot fail to be struck with the fact that, although the tendency to abnormality may be inherited, the inheritance is not always “true,” i.e. the precise form is not accurately reproduced in the offspring. Especially, perhaps, is this the case where the abnormality consists in a deficiency of digits. One individual of a family may have four fingers, another three, and another two, or even one, and that one very imperfect. Such cases have often been recorded (see B.M.J., 1886, vol. ii. p. 976).

We study the problem of the rigorous derivation of one-dimensional models for a thin curved beam starting from three-dimensional nonlinear elasticity. We describe the limiting models obtained for different scalings of the energy. In particular, we prove that the limit functional corresponding to higher scalings coincides with the one derived by dimension reduction starting from linearized elasticity.

When a sheet of paper is crumpled in the hands and then crushed flat against a desk-top, the pattern of creases so formed is governed by certain simple rules. These rules generalize to theorems on folding Riemannian manifolds isometrically into one another. The most interesting results apply to the case in which domain and codomain have the same dimension. The main technique of proof combines the notion of volume with Hopf's concept of the degree of a map.

Contracted inverse semigroup rings are studied subject to the restriction that the semilattices of the given inverse semigroups satisfy a certain finiteness condition, introduced in 1980 by Teply, Turman and Quesada. Results are obtained on semiprimitivity, primitivity, primeness, decomposition into a direct sum of ideals, and chain conditions on one-sided ideals.

Homogenisation of the first-order Hamilton-Jacobi equations when H is periodic in the second variable, leads to an effective Hamiltonian H satisfying: uε converges, as ε → 0, to the solution u of ut + H(Du) = 0. In our first paper, we assumed that H is convex and we derived a variational formula giving H. In this second paper, we consider eikonal equations, i.e. H(p, x) = ½|p|2 – V(x). Using our variational formula, we compute explicitly the effective Hamiltonian in several cases, and we study precisely the lack of strict convexity for H (‘flat part’ around the origin).