In this paper, we develop and analyze the Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) method to solve weakly coupled hyperbolic multi-domain problems. Such problems involve transfer type boundary conditions with discontinuous fluxes between different domains, calling for special techniques to prove stability of the RKDG methods. We prove both stability and error estimates for our RKDG methods on simple models, and then apply them to a biological cell proliferation model \cite{EMSC}. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the good behavior of our RKDG methods.

Quantitatively identifying direct dependencies between variables is an important task in data analysis, in particular for reconstructing various types of networks and causal relations in science and engineering. One of the most widely used criteria is partial correlation, but it can only measure linearly direct association and miss nonlinear associations. However, based on conditional independence, conditional mutual information (CMI) is able to quantify nonlinearly direct relationships among variables from the observed data, superior to linear measures, but suffers from a serious problem of underestimation, in particular for those variables with tight associations in a network, which severely limits its applications. In this work, we propose a new concept, “partial independence,” with a new measure, “part mutual information” (PMI), which not only can overcome the problem of CMI but also retains the quantification properties of both mutual information (MI) and CMI. Specifically, we first defined PMI to measure nonlinearly direct dependencies between variables and then derived its relations with MI and CMI. Finally, we used a number of simulated data as benchmark examples to numerically demonstrate PMI features and further real gene expression data from Escherichia coli and yeast to reconstruct gene regulatory networks, which all validated the advantages of PMI for accurately quantifying nonlinearly direct associations in networks.

In this paper, we study, in some new ways, the estimation of unimodal densities. Several methods for estimating unimodal densities are proposed: plug-in MLE, pregrouping techniques, linear spline MLE. Based on the maximum likelihood method, an automatic procedure for estimating a unimodal density as well as its mode is proposed. We also give asymptotic theory for the proposed estimators. An important consequence of this study is that having to estimate the location of a mode does not affect the limiting behavior of the proposed unimodal density estimate. Simulation studies illustrate the proposed methods.

We study the generalized eigenvalue problems (GEPs) derived from modeling the surface acoustic wave in piezoelectric materials with periodic inhomogeneity. The eigenvalues appear in the reciprocal pairs due to periodic boundary conditions in the modeling. By transforming the GEP into a T-palindromic quadratic eigenvalue problem (TPQEP), the reciprocal relationship of the eigenvalues can be maintained. In this paper, we outline four recently developed structure-preserving algorithms, SA, SDA, TSHIRA and GTSHIRA, for solving the TPQEP. Numerical comparisons on the accuracy and the computational costs of these algorithm are presented. The eigenvalues close to unit circle on the complex plane are of interest in the area of filter and sensor designs. Our numerical results show that the Arnoldi-type structure-preserving algorithms TSHIRA and GTSHIRA with re-symplectic and re-bi-isotropic processes

We study the large time asymptotic speeds (turbulent flame speeds sT) of the simplified HamiltonJacobi (HJ) models arising in turbulent combustion. One HJ model is G-equation describing the front motion law in the form of local normal velocity equal to a constant (laminar speed) plus the normal projection of fluid velocity. In level set formulation, G-equations are HJ equations with convex (L1 type) but non-coercive Hamiltonians. The other is the quadratically nonlinear (L2 type) inviscid HJ model of MajdaSouganidis derived from the KolmogorovPetrovskyPiskunov reactive fronts. Motivated by a question posed by Embid, Majda and Souganidis (1995)[10], we compare the turbulent flame speeds sTs from these inviscid HJ models in two-dimensional cellular flows or a periodic array of steady vortices via sharp asymptotic estimates in the regime of large amplitude. The estimates are obtained by analyzing the action minimizing trajectories in the Lagrangian representation of solutions (Lax formula and its extension) in combination with delicate gradient bound of viscosity solutions to the associated cell problem of homogenization. Though the inviscid turbulent flame speeds share the same leading order asymptotics, their difference due to nonlinearities is identified as a subtle double logarithm in the large flow amplitude from the sharp growth laws. The turbulent flame speeds differ much more significantly in the corresponding viscous HJ models. 2013 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.