Alternative Education for the Rom

The Rom* in the United States are nearly 100% illiterate. There are very few in any of the professions. The Rom cannot rely on gajo (non-Gypsy) doctors, lawyers, and educators who do not understand their ways or their unique problems

On Partitions of Two-Dimensional Discrete Boxes

Let $A$ and $B$ be finite sets and consider a partition of the \emph{discrete box} $A \times B$ into \emph{sub-boxes} of the form $A' \times B'$ where $A' \subset A$ and $B' \subset B$. We say that such a partition has the $(k,\ell)$-piercing property for positive integers $k$ and $\ell$ if every \emph{line} of the form $\{a\} \times B$ intersects at least $k$ sub-boxes and every line of the form $A \times \{b\}$ intersects at least $\ell$ sub-boxes. We show that a partition of $A \times B$ that has the $(k, \ell)$-piercing property must consist of at least $(k-1)+(\ell-1)+\left\lceil 2\sqrt{(k-1)(\ell-1)} \right\rceil$ sub-boxes. This bound is nearly sharp (up to one additive unit) for every $k$ and $\ell$. As a corollary we get that the same bound holds for the minimum number of vertices of a graph whose edges can be colored red and blue such that every vertex is part of red $k$-clique and a blue $\ell$-clique.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure

Tools for Stability of Switching Linear Systems: Gain Automata and Delay Compensation.

The topic of this paper is the analysis of stability for a class of switched linear systems, modeled by hybrid automata. In each location of the hybrid automaton the dynamics is assumed to be linear and asymptotically stable; the guards on the transitions are hyperplanes in the state space. For each location an estimate is made of the gain via a Lyapunov function for the dynamics in that location, given a pair of ingoing and outgoing transitions. It is shown how to obtain the best possible estimate by optimizing the Lyapunov function. The estimated gains are used in defining a so-called gain automaton that forms the basis of an algorithmic criterion for the stability of the hybrid automaton. The associated gain automaton provides a systematic tool to detect potential sources of instability as well as an indication on to how to stabilize the hybrid systems by requiring appropriate delays for specific transitions

Smooth Hamiltonian systems with soft impacts

In a Hamiltonian system with impacts (or "billiard with potential"), a point particle moves about the interior of a bounded domain according to a background potential, and undergoes elastic collisions at the boundaries. When the background potential is identically zero, this is the hard-wall billiard model. Previous results on smooth billiard models (where the hard-wall boundary is replaced by a steep smooth billiard-like potential) have clarified how the approximation of a smooth billiard with a hard-wall billiard may be utilized rigorously. These results are extended here to models with smooth background potential satisfying some natural conditions. This generalization is then applied to geometric models of collinear triatomic chemical reactions (the models are far from integrable $n$-degree of freedom systems with $n\geq2$). The application demonstrates that the simpler analytical calculations for the hard-wall system may be used to obtain qualitative information with regard to the solution structure of the smooth system and to quantitatively assist in finding solutions of the soft impact system by continuation methods. In particular, stable periodic triatomic configurations are easily located for the smooth highly-nonlinear two and three degree of freedom geometric models.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figure

Frequency spanning homoclinic families

A family of maps or flows depending on a parameter $\nu$ which varies in an interval, spans a certain property if along the interval this property depends continuously on the parameter and achieves some asymptotic values along it. We consider families of periodically forced Hamiltonian systems for which the appropriately scaled frequency $\bar{\omega}(\nu)$ is spanned, namely it covers the semi-infinite line $[0,\infty).$ Under some natural assumptions on the family of flows and its adiabatic limit, we construct a convenient labelling scheme for the primary homoclinic orbits which may undergo a countable number of bifurcations along this interval. Using this scheme we prove that a properly defined flux function is $C^{1}$ in $\nu.$ Combining this proof with previous results of RK and Poje, immediately establishes that the flux function and the size of the chaotic zone depend on the frequency in a non-monotone fashion for a large class of Hamiltonian flows

Gas core nuclear reactor Patent

Gaseous core diffusion nuclear reactor for thermal energy generatio