Francophone Enlistment in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, 1914–1918: The Evidence

Francophone enlistment during the First World War has been estimated in the past between 35,000 and 50,000, including the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the merchant marine. Information on the language spoken was not recorded at enlistment and those estimates were based on very cautious guesses only. We had suggested in a recent paper (Canadian Historical Review, vol. 96, no. 3) that this participation had been significantly higher, in part due to the contribution of Francophones from outside the province of Quebec. Information have now been extracted from enlistment sheets and one new B database, comprised of 10 percent of all enlistment papers of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), allows to research and analyse personal data from a fairly large corpus of soldiers. This paper offers the first evidence that the actual number of Francophones who joined the CEF, either as volunteers or under the Military Service Act (MSA), most likely exceeded 70,000

Modifications of torsion-free coherent analytic sheaves

We study the transformation of torsion-free coherent analytic sheaves under proper modifications. More precisely, we study direct images of inverse image sheaves, and torsion-free preimages of direct image sheaves. Under some conditions, it is shown that torsion-free coherent sheaves can be realized as the direct image of locally free sheaves under modifications. Thus, it is possible to study coherent sheaves modulo torsion by reducing the problem to study vector bundles on manifolds. We apply this to reduced ideal sheaves and to the Grauert-Riemenschneider canonical sheaf of holomorphic n-forms.Comment: 28 pages; the article has been completely rewritten due to a wrong statement in the first versio

L2L^2-Riemann-Roch for singular complex curves

We present a comprehensive $L^2$-theory for the $\overline\partial$-operator on singular complex curves, including $L^2$-versions of the Riemann-Roch theorem and some applications.Comment: 19 page

CHA visit to the War Museum

During CHA council meetings last November of 2006 CHA council members were given a first-rate tour of the recently completed Canadian War Museum, located on the LeBreton Flats, a plain of wetland and former industrial land adjascent to networks of mill races and hydro dams on the right bank of the Ottawa River. The tour was given by CWM World War. One curator and historian Tim Cook. The tour allowed visitors to take in the remarkable breadth, chronological and thematic, of the CWM permanent exhibition, from the pre-contact(native) ways of fighting to the Seven Years War and all the way up to and well into the 20th century marked by two World Wars, the Korean War etc. Dr. Cook shared with visitors the challenges of preparing a display — what works, what does not work

Non-Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics of Strongly Anharmonic Chains of Oscillators

We study the model of a strongly non-linear chain of particles coupled to two heat baths at different temperatures. Our main result is the existence and uniqueness of a stationary state at all temperatures. This result extends those of Eckmann, Pillet, Rey-Bellet to potentials with essentially arbitrary growth at infinity. This extension is possible by introducing a stronger version of H\"ormander's theorem for Kolmogorov equations to vector fields with polynomially bounded coefficients on unbounded domains.Comment: ~60 pages, 3 figure

Complexation between oppositely charged polyelectrolytes: beyond the Random Phase Approximation

We consider the phase behavior of polymeric systems by calculating the structure factors beyond the Random Phase Approximation. The effect of this correction to the mean-field RPA structure factor is shown to be important in the case of coulombic systems. Two examples are given: simple electrolytes and mixtures of incompatible oppositely charged polyelectrolytes. In this last case, all former studies predicted an enhancement of compatibility for increasing charge densities; we also describe the complexation transition between the polyelectrolytes. We determine a phase diagram of the polyelectrolyte mixture that includes both complexation and incompatibility.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to EPJ-

Uniqueness of the Invariant Measure for a Stochastic PDE Driven by Degenerate Noise

We consider the stochastic Ginzburg-Landau equation in a bounded domain. We assume the stochastic forcing acts only on high spatial frequencies. The low-lying frequencies are then only connected to this forcing through the non-linear (cubic) term of the Ginzburg-Landau equation. Under these assumptions, we show that the stochastic PDE has a unique invariant measure. The techniques of proof combine a controllability argument for the low-lying frequencies with an infinite dimensional version of the Malliavin calculus to show positivity and regularity of the invariant measure. This then implies the uniqueness of that measure.Comment: 45 pages, 0 figures, needs 3 latex run