For strong solutions of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in bounded domains with velocity specified at the boundary, we establish the unconditional stability and convergence of discretization schemes that decouple the updates of pressure and velocity through explicit time stepping for pressure. These schemes require no solution of stationary Stokes systems, nor any compatibility between velocity and pressure spaces to ensure an inf-sup condition, and are representative of a class of highly efficient computational methods that have recently emerged. The proofs are simple, based upon a new, sharp estimate for the commutator of the Laplacian and Helmholtz projection operators. This allows us to treat an unconstrained formulation of the Navier-Stokes equations as a perturbed diffusion equation. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

We solve the Fu-Yau equation for arbitrary dimension and arbitrary slope $\alpha'$. Actually we obtain at the same time a solution of the open case $\alpha'>0$, an improved solution of the known case $\alpha'<0$, and solutions for a family of Hessian equations which includes the Fu-Yau equation as a special case. The method is based on the introduction of a more stringent ellipticity condition than the usual $\Gamma_k$ admissible cone condition, and which can be shown to be preserved by precise estimates with scale.

The uniqueness of positive solutions to some semilinear elliptic systems with variational structure arising from mathematical physics is proved. The key ingredient of the proof is the oscillatory behavior of solutions to linearized equations for cooperative semilinear elliptic systems of two equations on one-dimensional domains, and it is shown that the stability of the positive solutions for such semilinear system is closely related to the oscillatory behavior.

Recently, Huang, Lutwak, Yang & Zhang discovered the duals of Federer’s curvature measures within the dual Brunn-Minkowski theory and stated the “Minkowski problem” associated with these new measures. As they showed, this dual Minkowski problem has as special cases the Aleksandrov problem (when the index is 0) and the logarithmic Minkowski problem (when the index is the dimension of the ambient space)—two problems that were never imagined to be connected in any way. Huang, Lutwak, Yang & Zhang established sufficient conditions to guarantee existence of solution to the dual Minkowski problem in the even setting. In this work, existence of solution to the even dual Minkowski problem is established under new sufficiency conditions. It was recently shown by B ̈or ̈oczky, Henk & Pollehn that these new sufficiency conditions are also necessary.

We study the vanishing viscosity of the Navier-Stokes equations for interacting shocks. Given an entropy solution to <i>p</i>-system which consists of two different families of shocks interacting at some positive time, we show that such entropy solution is the vanishing viscosity limit of a family of global smooth solutions to the isentropic Navier-Stokes equations. The key point of the proofs is to derive the estimates separately before and after the interaction time and connect the incoming and outgoing viscous shock profiles.