Starting with a commutative ring $R$ and an ideal $I$ , it is possible to define a family of rings $R(I)_{a,b}$ , with $a,b \in R$ , as quotients of the Rees algebra $\oplus_{n \geq0} I^{n}t^{n}$ ; among the rings appearing in this family we find Nagata’s idealization and amalgamated duplication. Many properties of these rings depend only on $R$ and $I$ and not on $a$ , $b$ ; in this paper we show that the Gorenstein and the almost Gorenstein properties are independent of $a$ , $b$ . More precisely, we characterize when the rings in the family are Gorenstein, complete intersection, or almost Gorenstein and we find a formula for the type.

We study the Newton polygon jumping locus of a Mumford family in char p. Our main result says that, under a mild assumption on p, the jumping locus consists of only supersingular points and its cardinality is equal to (p^r − 1)(g − 1), where r is the degree of the defining field of the base curve of a Mumford family in char p and g is the genus of the curve. The underlying technique is the p-adic Hodge theory.

We consider the flow of closed convex hypersurfaces in Euclidean space R^{n+1} with speed given by a power of the k-th mean curvature E_k plus a global term chosen to impose a constraint involving the enclosed volume V_{n+1} and the mixed volume V_{n+1−k} of the evolving hypersurface. We prove that if the initial hypersurface is strictly convex, then the solution of the flow exists for all time and converges to a round sphere smoothly. No curvature pinching assumption is required on the initial hypersurface.

In this paper we introduce an appealing nonparametric method for estimating the mean regression function. The proposed method combines the ideas of local linear smoothers and variable bandwidth. Hence, it also inherits the advantages of both approaches. We give expressions for the conditional MSE and MISE of the estimator. Minimization of the MISE leads to an explicit formula for an optimal choice of the variable bandwidth. Moreover, the merits of considering a variable bandwidth are discussed. In addition, we show that the estimator does not have boundary effects, and hence does not require modifications at the boundary. The performance of a corresponding plug-in estimator is investigated. Simulations illustrate the proposed estimation method.

We study the periodic homogenization of first order front propagations. Based on PDE methods, we provide a simple proof that, for n ≥ 3, the class of centrally symmetric polytopes with rational coordinates and nonempty interior is admissible as effective fronts, which was also established by I. Babenko and F. Balacheff [Sur la forme de la boule unit\'e de la norme stable unidimensionnelle, Manuscripta Math. 119 (2006) 347--358] and M. Jotz [Hedlund metrics and the stable norm, Diff. Geometry Appl. 27 (2009) 543--550] in the form of stable norms as an extension of G. A. Hedlund's classical result [Geodesics on a two-dimensional Riemannian manifold with periodic coefficients, Ann. Math. 33 (1932) 719--739]. Besides, we obtain the optimal convergence rate of the homogenization problem for this class.