Generalized offsetting of planar structures using skeletons

We study different means to extend offsetting based on skeletal structures beyond the well-known constant-radius and mitered offsets supported by Voronoi diagrams and straight skeletons, for which the orthogonal distance of offset elements to their respective input elements is constant and uniform over all input elements. Our main contribution is a new geometric structure, called variable-radius Voronoi diagram, which supports the computation of variable-radius offsets, i.e., offsets whose distance to the input is allowed to vary along the input. We discuss properties of this structure and sketch a prototype implementation that supports the computation of variable-radius offsets based on this new variant of Voronoi diagrams

Discrete space-time geometry and skeleton conception of particle dynamics

It is shown that properties of a discrete space-time geometry distinguish from properties of the Riemannian space-time geometry. The discrete geometry is a physical geometry, which is described completely by the world function. The discrete geometry is nonaxiomatizable and multivariant. The equivalence relation is intransitive in the discrete geometry. The particles are described by world chains (broken lines with finite length of links), because in the discrete space-time geometry there are no infinitesimal lengths. Motion of particles is stochastic, and statistical description of them leads to the Schr\"{o}dinger equation, if the elementary length of the discrete geometry depends on the quantum constant in a proper way.Comment: 22 pages, 0 figure

Addicted to Bryozoans

Most people are familiar with the shells of large molluscs: clams, scallops, mussels, oysters, snails, päua. It may seem surprising that almost every group of marine creatures produces at least somekind of skeletal structure – biomineralisation is everywhere in the sea. Vertebrates like us make our skeletons from what we eat, but invertebrates like urchins, barnacles, worms and corals maketheir skeletons straight out of seawater. Despite that common origin, there is huge variation in their shapes and sizes and textures. When they die, shells break up into fragments, littering the seafloor with evidence of the past. I decided to come to New Zealand to work with Prof Cam Nelson, a world authority on temperate-latitude shells and the sediments that come from them, to try to understand more about calcareous algae. Why would a plant that needs the sun make itself a coat of armour?

The Altshuler-Shklovskii Formulas for Random Band Matrices I: the Unimodular Case

We consider the spectral statistics of large random band matrices on mesoscopic energy scales. We show that the two-point correlation function of the local eigenvalue density exhibits a universal power law behaviour that differs from the Wigner-Dyson-Mehta statistics. This law had been predicted in the physics literature by Altshuler and Shklovskii [4]; it describes the correlations of the eigenvalue density in general metallic samples with weak disorder. Our result rigorously establishes the Altshuler-Shklovskii formulas for band matrices. In two dimensions, where the leading term vanishes owing to an algebraic cancellation, we identify the first non-vanishing term and show that it differs substantially from the prediction of Kravtsov and Lerner [33]