In this paper, we study the Li stability of perturbation of constant states for 2 x 2 systems of conservation laws. We introduce a nonlinear functional which is equivalent to the Li norm of the difference between the constant state and the approximate solutions consisting of elementary waves and is non-increasing in time for the limiting weak solution. This yields the Li stability of the constant states. The approximate solutions are constructed with the aid of wave tracing for the random choice method. Our functional reveals the aspects of nonlinear wave behavior, particularly the coupling of waves pertaining to different characteristic families, which affects the Li norm of the solutions.

We study large groups of birational transformations Bir(X), where X is a variety of dimension at least 3, defined over C or a subfield of C. Two prominent cases are when X is the projective space P^n, in which case Bir(X) is the Cremona group of rank n, or when X⊂P^{n+1} is a smooth cubic hypersurface. In both cases, and more generally when X is birational to a conic bundle, we produce infinitely many distinct group homomorphisms from Bir(X) to Z/2, showing in particular that the group Bir(X) is not perfect, and thus not simple. As a consequence, we also obtain that the Cremona group of rank n⩾3 is not generated by linear and Jonquières elements.

Our purpose is to compare how much the F5 algorithm can gain in efficiency compared to the F4 algorithm. This can be achieve as the F5 algorithm uses the concept of signatures to foresee potential useless computation which the F4 algorithm might make represented by zero rows in the reduction of a large matrix. We experimentally show that this is a modest increase in efficiency for the parameters we tested.

Characterization of homogeneous polynomials with isolated critical point at the origin follows from a study of complex geometry. Yau previously proposed a Numerical Characterization Conjecture. A step forward in solving this Conjecture, the Granville-Lin-Yau Conjecture was formulated, with a sharp estimate that counts the number of positive integral points in ndimensional (n≥3) real right-angled simplices with vertices whose distance to the origin are at least n-1. The estimate was proven for n≤6 but has a counterexample for n = 7. In this project we come up with an idea of forming a new sharp estimate conjecture where we need the distances of the vertices to be n. We have proved this new sharp estimate conjecture for n≤7 and are in the process of proving the general n case.

This paper addresses the problem of approximate merging of two adjacent B-spline curves into one B-spline curve. The basic idea of the approach is to find the conditions for precise merging of two B-spline curves, and perturb the control points of the curves by constrained optimization subject to satisfying these conditions. To obtain a merged curve without superfluous knots, we present a new knot adjustment algorithm for adjusting the end k knots of a kth order B-spline curve without changing its shape. The more general problem of merging curves to pass through some target points is also discussed.