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In this paper, we consider the time dependent Maxwell’s equations in dispersive media on a bounded three-dimensional domain. Global superconvergence is obtained for semi-discrete mixed finite element methods for three most popular dispersive media models: the isotropic cold plasma, the one-pole Debye medium, and the two-pole Lorentz medium. Global superconvergence for a standard finite element method is also presented. To our best knowledge, this is the first superconvergence analysis obtained for Maxwell’s equations when dispersive media are involved.

Most of classical theoretical ecology is based on the assumption that organisms in a community can be naturally partitioned into groups of individuals that can be treated as identical. At the same time, mounting experimental evidence from studies of microbial communities raises the intriguing question whether this intuition is an accurate description of the microbial world. This work builds on Mac Arthur’s model of competitive coexistence on multiple resources to construct a framework that does not rely on postulated existence of species as fundamental ecological variables. In one parameter regime, effective “species” with a core and accessory genome naturally appear in this model as emergent concepts. However, the same model allows a smooth transition to a highly diverse regime where the species formalism becomes inadequate. An alternative description is proposed based on the dynamical modes of population fluctuations. This approach provides a naturally hierarchical description of community dynamics which is well-defined even when the species description breaks down. The relevance of this framework for understanding the complexity of naturally observed microbial communities is discussed.

Two Dehn surgeries on a knot are called purely cosmetic, if they yield manifolds that are homeomorphic as oriented manifolds. Suppose there exist purely cosmetic surgeries on a knot in S^3, we show that the two surgery slopes must be the opposite of each other. One ingredient of our proof is a Dehn surgery formula for correction terms in Heegaard Floer homology.

The discrete fracture model (DFM) has been widely used in the simulation of fluid flow in fractured porous media. Traditional DFM uses the so-called hybrid-dimensional approach to treat fractures explicitly as low-dimensional entries (e.g. line entries in 2D media and face entries in 3D media) on the interfaces of matrix cells and then couple the matrix and fracture flow systems together based on the principle of superposition with the fracture thickness used as the dimensional homogeneity factor. Because of this methodology, DFM is considered to be limited on conforming meshes and thus may raise difficulties in generating high quality unstructured meshes due to the complexity of fracture's geometrical morphology. In this paper, we clarify that the DFM actually can be extended to non-conforming meshes without any essential changes. To show it clearly, we provide another perspective for DFM based on hybrid-dimensional representation of permeability tensor to describe fractures as one-dimensional line Dirac delta functions contained in permeability tensor. A finite element DFM scheme for single-phase flow on non-conforming meshes is then derived by applying Galerkin finite element method to it. Analytical analysis and numerical experiments show that our DFM automatically degenerates to the classical finite element DFM when the mesh is conforming with fractures. Moreover, the accuracy and efficiency of the model on non-conforming meshes are demonstrated by testing several benchmark problems. This model is also applicable to curved fracture with variable thickness.