We present a simple model for the evolution of social behavior in family-structured, finite sized populations. Interactions are represented as evolutionary games describing frequency-dependent selection. Individuals interact more frequently with siblings than with members of the general population, as quantified by an assortment parameter r, which can be interpreted as “relatedness”. Other models, mostly of spatially structured populations, have shown that assortment can promote the evolution of cooperation by facilitating interaction between cooperators, but this effect depends on the details of the evolutionary process. For our model, we find that sibling assortment promotes cooperation in stringent social dilemmas such as the Prisoner's Dilemma, but not necessarily in other situations. These results are obtained through straightforward calculations of changes in gene frequency. We also analyze our model using inclusive fitness. We find that the quantity of inclusive fitness does not exist for general games. For special games, where inclusive fitness exists, it provides less information than the straightforward analysis.

We provide here a framework to analyze the phase transition phenomenon of slice inverse regression (SIR), a supervised dimension reduction technique introduced by Li [1991]. Under mild conditions, the asymptotic ratio ρ = lim p/n is the phase transition parameter and the SIR estimator is consistent if and only if ρ = 0. When dimension p is greater than n, we propose a diagonal thresholding screening SIR (DT-SIR) algorithm. This method provides us with an estimate of the eigen-space of the covariance matrix of the conditional expectation var(E[x|y]). The desired dimension reduction space is then obtained by multiplying the inverse of the covariance matrix on the eigen-space. Under certain sparsity assumptions on both the covariance matrix of predictors and the loadings of the directions, we prove the consistency of DT-SIR in estimating the dimension reduction space in high dimensional data analysis. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate superior performances of the proposed method in comparison to its competitors.

In this paper, we study the full regularity and well-posedness of classical solutions to the nonlinear unsteady Prandtl equations with Robin or Dirichlet boundary condition in half space. Under Oleinik’s monotonicity assumption, we prove the large time existence of classical solutions to the nonlinear Prandtl equations with Robin or Dirichlet boundary condition, when both initial vorticity and the general Euler flow are sufficiently small. For the general Euler flow, the vertical velocity of the Prandtl flow is unbounded. We prove that the Prandtl solutions preserve the full regularities in our solution spaces. The uniqueness and stability are also proved in the weighted Sobolev spaces.

We consider two-dimensional critical bond percolation. Conditioned on the existence of an open circuit in an annulus, we show that the ratio of the expected size of the shortest open circuit to the expected size of the innermost circuit tends to zero as the side length of the annulus tends to infinity, the aspect ratio remaining fixed. The same proof yields a similar result for the lowest open crossing of a rectangle. In this last case, we answer a question of Kesten and Zhang by showing in addition that the ratio of the length of the shortest crossing to the length of the lowest tends to zero in probability. This suggests that the chemical distance in critical percolation is given by an exponent strictly smaller than that of the lowest path.

We consider the mixed q-Gaussian algebras introduced by Speicher which are generated by the variables Xi = li + l ∗ i , i = 1, . . . , N, where l ∗ i lj − qij lj l ∗ i = δi,j and −1 < qij = qji < 1. Using the free monotone transport theorem of Guionnet and Shlyakhtenko, we show that the mixed q-Gaussian von Neumann algebras are isomorphic to the free group von Neumann algebra L(FN ), provided that maxi,j |qij | is small enough. Similar results hold in the reduced C ∗ -algebra setting. The proof relies on some estimates which are generalizations of Dabrowski’s results for the special case qij ≡ q.