In a recent important breakthrough D. Christodoulou has solved a long standing problem of General Relativity of evolutionary formation of trapped surfaces in the Einstein-vacuum space-times. He has identified an open set of regular initial conditions on an outgoing null hypersurface (both finite and at past null infinity) leading to a formation a trapped surface in the corresponding vacuum space-time to the future of the initial outgoing hypersurface and another incoming null hypersurface with the prescribed Minkowskian data. In this paper we give a simpler proof for a finite problem by enlarging the admissible set of initial conditions and, consistent with this, relaxing the corresponding propagation estimates just enough that a trapped surface still forms. We also reduce the number of derivatives needed in the argument from two derivatives of the curvature to just one. More importantly, the proof, which can be easily localized with respect to angular sectors, has the potential for further developments.

We establish a new on-diagonal lower estimate of continuous-time heat kernels for large time on graphs. To achieve the goal, we first introduce an upper estimate of heat kernels in natural graph metric, then use the upper estimate and the volume growth condition to show the validity of the on-diagonal lower estimate.

Fluid dynamic limit to compressible Euler equations from compressible Navier-Stokes equations and Boltzmann equation has been an active topic with limited success so far. In this paper, we consider the case when the solution of the Euler equations is a Riemann solution consisting two rarefaction waves and a contact discontinuity and prove this limit for both Navier-Stokes equations and the Boltzmann equation when the viscosity, heat conductivity coefficients and the Knudsen number tend to zero respectively. In addition, the uniform convergence rates in terms of the above physical parameters are also obtained. It is noted that this is the first rigorous proof of this limit for a Riemann solution with superposition of three waves even though the fluid dynamic limit for a single wave has been proved.

The paper aims at analytically exhibiting for the first time the fundamental mechanisms underlying the fact that effective biological tissue electrical properties and their frequency dependence reflect the tissue composition and physiology. For doing so, a homogenization theory is derived to describe the effective admittivity of cell suspensions. A new formula is reported for dilute cases that gives the frequency-dependent effective admittivity with re- spect to the membrane polarization. Different microstructures are shown to be distinguish- able via spectroscopic measurements of the overall admittivity using the spectral properties of the membrane polarization. The Debye relaxation times associated with the membrane polarization tensor are shown to be able to give the microscopic structure of the medium. A natural measure of the admittivity anisotropy is introduced and its dependence on the frequency of applied current is derived. A Maxwell-Wagner-Fricke formula is given for concentric circular cells, and the results can be extended to the random cases. A randomly deformed periodic medium is also considered and a new formula is derived for the overall admittivity of a dilute suspension of randomly deformed cells.

Abstract In this paper, we provide an alternative proof for the classical Sz. Nagy inequality in one dimension by a variational method and generalize it to higher dimensions J(h):=(∫Rd|h| dx)a611∫Rd|63h|2 dx(∫Rd|h|m+1 dx)a+1m+1≥β0, where m > 0 for d = 1, 2, for , and . The Euler–Lagrange equation for critical points of in the non-negative radial decreasing function space is given by a free boundary problem for a generalized Lane–Emden equation, which has a unique solution (denoted by h c ) and the solution determines the best constant for the above generalized Sz. Nagy inequality. The connection between the critical mass for the thin-film equation and the best constant of the Sz. Nagy inequality in one dimension was first noted by Witelski et al (2004 Eur. J. Appl. Math. 15 223–56). For the following critical thin film equation in multi-dimension ht+6366(h 63Δh)+6366(h 63hm)=0,x∈Rd, where m = 1 + 2/d, the critical mass is also given by . A finite time blow-up occurs for solutions with the initial mass larger than M c . On the other hand, if the initial mass is less than M c and a global non-negative entropy weak solution exists, then the second moment goes to infinity as or in for some subsequence . This shows that a part of the mass spreads to infinity.