Effective complex permittivity tensor of a periodic array of cylinders

We determine the effective complex permittivity of a two-dimensional composite, consisting of an arbitrary doubly periodic array of identical circular cylinders in a homogeneous matrix, and whose dielectric properties are complex-valued. Efficient formulas are provided to determine the effective complex permittivity tensor which are in excellent agreement with numerical calculations. We also show that in contrast to the real-valued case, the real and imaginary parts of the effective complex-valued tensor can exhibit non-monotonic behavior as functions of volume fraction of cylinders, and can be either greater or less than that of the constituents.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figure

On the determination of the boundary impedance from the far field pattern

We consider the Helmholtz equation in the half space and suggest two methods for determining the boundary impedance from knowledge of the far field pattern of the time-harmonic incident wave. We introduce a potential for which the far field patterns in specially selected directions represent its Fourier coefficients. The boundary impedance is then calculated from the potential by an explicit formula or from the WKB approximation. Numerical examples are given to demonstrate efficiency of the approaches. We also discuss the validity of the WKB approximation in determining the impedance of an obstacle.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure

Graph multicoloring reduction methods and application to McDiarmid-Reed's Conjecture

A $(a,b)$-coloring of a graph $G$ associates to each vertex a set of $b$ colors from a set of $a$ colors in such a way that the color-sets of adjacent vertices are disjoints. We define general reduction tools for $(a,b)$-coloring of graphs for $2\le a/b\le 3$. In particular, we prove necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a $(a,b)$-coloring of a path with prescribed color-sets on its end-vertices. Other more complex $(a,b)$-colorability reductions are presented. The utility of these tools is exemplified on finite triangle-free induced subgraphs of the triangular lattice. Computations on millions of such graphs generated randomly show that our tools allow to find (in linear time) a $(9,4)$-coloring for each of them. Although there remain few graphs for which our tools are not sufficient for finding a $(9,4)$-coloring, we believe that pursuing our method can lead to a solution of the conjecture of McDiarmid-Reed.Comment: 27 page

Collaborative OLAP with Tag Clouds: Web 2.0 OLAP Formalism and Experimental Evaluation

Increasingly, business projects are ephemeral. New Business Intelligence tools must support ad-lib data sources and quick perusal. Meanwhile, tag clouds are a popular community-driven visualization technique. Hence, we investigate tag-cloud views with support for OLAP operations such as roll-ups, slices, dices, clustering, and drill-downs. As a case study, we implemented an application where users can upload data and immediately navigate through its ad hoc dimensions. To support social networking, views can be easily shared and embedded in other Web sites. Algorithmically, our tag-cloud views are approximate range top-k queries over spontaneous data cubes. We present experimental evidence that iceberg cuboids provide adequate online approximations. We benchmark several browser-oblivious tag-cloud layout optimizations.Comment: Software at https://github.com/lemire/OLAPTagClou