We study isometric Lie group actions on symmetric spaces admitting a section, i.e., a submanifold that meets all orbits orthogonally at every intersection point. We classify such actions on the compact symmetric spaces with simple isometry group and rank greater than one. In particular, we show that these actions are hyperpolar, i.e., the sections are flat.

In this paper, we consider linear stability issues for one-dimensional hyperbolic conservation laws using a class of conservative high order upwind-biased finite difference schemes, which is a prototype for the weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) schemes, for initial-boundary value problems (IBVP). The inflow boundary is treated by the so-called inverse Lax-Wendroff (ILW) or simplified inverse Lax-Wendroff (SILW) procedure, and the outflow boundary is treated by the classical high order extrapolation. A third order total variation diminishing (TVD) Runge-Kutta time discretization is used in the fully discrete case. Both GKS (Gustafsson, Kreiss and Sundstr\"om) and eigenvalue analysis are performed for both semi-discrete and fully discrete schemes. The two different analysis techniques yield consistent results. Numerical tests are performed to demonstrate the stability results predicted by the analysis.

We present numerical schemes for the incompressible Navier–Stokes equations based on a primitive variable formulation in which the incompressibility constraint has been replaced by a pressure Poisson equation. The pressure is treated explicitly in time, completely decoupling the computation of the momentum and kinematic equations. The result is a class of extremely efficient Navier–Stokes solvers. Full time accuracy is achieved for all flow variables. The key to the schemes is a Neumann boundary condition for the pressure Poisson equation which enforces the incompressibility condition for the velocity field. Irrespective of explicit or implicit time discretization of the viscous term in the momentum equation the explicit time discretization of the pressure term does not affect the time step constraint. Indeed, we prove unconditional stability of the new formulation for the Stokes equation with explicit treatment of the pressure term and first or second order implicit treatment of the viscous term. Systematic numerical experiments for the full Navier–Stokes equations indicate that a second order implicit time discretization of the viscous term, with the pressure and convective terms treated explicitly, is stable under the standard CFL condition. Additionally, various numerical examples are presented, including both implicit and explicit time discretizations, using spectral and finite difference spatial discretizations, demonstrating the accuracy, flexibility and efficiency of this class of schemes. In particular, a Galerkin formulation is presented requiring only C0 elements to implement.

This work is devoted to the numerical computation of complex band structure $\k=\k(\omega)\in\mathbb C^3$ for positive $\omega$ of three dimensional isotropic dispersive or non-dispersive photonic crystals from the perspective of structured quadratic eigenvalue problems (QEPs). Our basic strategy is to fix two degrees of freedom in $\k\in\mathbb C^3$ and to view the remaining one as the eigenvalue of a quadratic operator pencil derived from Maxwell's equations. Then Yee's scheme is employed to discretize $\nabla\times$ and $\k\times$ operators in this quadratic operator pencil. Distinct from the others' works which either ignore or directly exploit the Hamiltonian structure of the spectrum of the resulting QEP, we reformulate this QEP into an equivalent $\top$-palindromic QEP to facilitate the use of superior structure-preserving algorithms. Ultimately we rely on the structured Arnoldi algorithm, namely the G$\top$SHIRA algorithm, to compute eigenvalues of a $\top$-skew-Hamiltonian pair which are near or in $[-2,2]$, a much narrower region than the whole positive real axis in the origin problem. Moreover, to accelerate the inner iterations of the G$\top$SHIRA algorithm, we propose the preconditioning technique, making most of the eigenmatrix, which can essentially be seen as the Kronecker product of three discrete Fourier transformation matrices, of the commutative discretized $\partial_x,\partial_y,\partial_z$ operators. The advantage of our method is discussed in detail and corroborated by several numerical results.

Inflammatory response following central nervous system (CNS) injury contributes to progressive neuropathology and reduction in functional recovery. Axons are sensitive to mechanical injury and toxic inflammatory mediators, which may lead to demyelination. Although it is well documented that degenerated myelin triggers undesirable inflammatory responses in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and its animal model, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), there has been very little study of the direct inflammatory consequences of damaged myelin in spinal cord injury (SCI), i.e., there is no direct evidence to show that myelin debris from injured spinal cord can trigger undesirable inflammation in vitro and in vivo. Our data showed that myelin can initiate inflammatory responses in vivo, which is complement receptor 3 (CR3)-dependent via stimulating macrophages to express pro-inflammatory molecules and down-regulates expression of anti-inflammatory cytokines. Mechanism study revealed that myelin-increased cytokine expression is through activation of FAK/PI3K/Akt/NF-B signaling pathways and CR3 contributes to myelin-induced PI3K/Akt/NF-B activation and cytokine production. The myelin induced inflammatory response is myelin specific as sphingomyelin (the major lipid of myelin) and myelin basic protein (MBP, one of the major proteins of myelin) are not able to activate NF-B signaling pathway. In conclusion, our results demonstrate a crucial role of myelin as an endogenous inflammatory stimulus that induces pro-inflammatory responses and suggest that blocking myelin-CR3 interaction and