Michael Strieby. / "January 5, 1956." "This report is based on a thesis submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering, M.I.T., July 1955, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Science." / Bibliography: p. 35.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-84). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

The theme of this thesis is combinatorics, complex analysis and algebraic geometry. The thesis consists of six articles divided into four parts. Part A: Spectral properties of the Schrödinger equation This part consists of Papers I-II, where we study a univariate Schrödinger equation with a complex polynomial potential. We prove that the set of polynomial potentials that admit solutions to the Schrödingerequation is connected, under certain boundary conditions. We also study a similar result for even polynomial potentials, where a similar result is obtained. Part B: Graph monomials and sums of squares In this part, consisting of Paper III, we study natural bases for the space of homogeneous, symmetric and translation-invariant polynomials in terms of multigraphs. We find all multigraphs with at most six edges that give rise to non-negative polynomials, and which of these that can be expressed as a sum of squares. Such polynomials appear naturally in connection to expressing certain non-negative polynomials as sums of squares. Part C: Eigenvalue asymptotics of banded Toeplitz matrices This part consists of Papers IV-V. We give a new and generalized proof of a theorem by P. Schmidt and F. Spitzer concerning asymptotics of eigenvalues of Toeplitz matrices. We also generalize the notion of eigenvalues to rectangular matrices, and partially prove the a multivariate analogue of the above. Part D: Stretched Schur polynomials This part consists of Paper VI, where we give a combinatorial proof that certain sequences of skew Schur polynomials satisfy linear recurrences with polynomial coefficients. / <p>At the time of doctoral defence the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 5: Manuscript; Paper 6: Manuscript</p>

This thesis examines the transient performance of packed bed heat regenerators when very large temperature differences are involved. The effects of gas temperature on the key gas physical properties of velocity, density and heat capacity were studied via simulation. Three models were developed and compared. The first model (HRKDV) considers heat balances for both solid and gas phases, the second (HRVDV) considers mass balances in addition to the heat balances set up in the first model and the third one (HRASO) considers that the only significant rate of accumulation term is that of the energy of the solid phase. The governing partial differential equations were solved by the method of lines with the spatial discretization accomplished by the method of orthogonal collocation. The findings of this work reveal that whereas the effects of large temperature changes on the gas velocity and density are completely negligible, the effects of temperature on the gas heat capacity must be considered "continuously" when large temperature swings occur. Considering the heat capacity as a constant, even at an average value, leads to significant errors in temperature profiles. / Graduation date: 1992

In this thesis, we investigate two expressions for symmetric group characters: Kerov?s universal character polynomials and Stanley?s character polynomials. We give a new explicit form for Kerov?s polynomials, which exactly evaluate the characters of the symmetric group scaled by degree and a constant. We use this explicit expression to obtain specific information about Kerov polynomials, including partial answers to positivity questions. We then use the expression obtained for Kerov?s polynomials to obtain results about Stanley?s character polynomials.

In the last twenty years, algebraic techniques have been applied with great success to several areas in theoretical computer science. However, for many problems involving modular counting, there is a huge gap in our understanding depending on whether the modulus is prime or composite. A prime example is the problem of showing lower bounds for circuits with Mod gates in circuit complexity. Proof techniques that work well for primes break down over composites. Moreover, in some cases, the problem for composites turns out to be very different from the prime case. Making progress on these problems seems to require a better understanding of polynomials over composites. In this thesis, we address some such "prime vs. composite" problems from algorithms, complexity and combinatorics, and the surprising connections between them. We consider the complexity-theoretic problem of computing Boolean functions using polynomials modulo composites. We show that symmetric polynomials can viewed as simultaneous communication protocols. This equivalence allows us to use techniques from communication complexity and number theory to prove degree bounds. We use these to give the first tight degree bounds for a number of Boolean functions. We consider the combinatorial problem of explicit construction of Ramsey graphs. We present a simple construction of such graphs using polynomials modulo composites. This approach gives a unifying view of many known constructions,and explains why they all achieve the same bound.We show that certain approaches to this problem cannot give better bounds. Finally, we consider the algorithmic problem of interpolation for polynomials modulo composites. We present the first query-efficient algorithms for interpolation and learning under a distribution. These results rely on some new structural results about such polynomials.

The purpose of this work is to solve governing differential equations of laminated anisotropic plates and shells by using the Chebyshev collocation method. This method yields these results those can not be accomplished easily by both Navier¡¦s and Levy¡¦s methods in the case of any kind of stacking sequence in composite laminates with the variety of boundary conditions subjected to any type of loading. The Chebyshev polynomials have the characteristics of orthogonality and fast convergence. They and Gauss-Lobatto collocation points can be utilized to approximate the solution of these problems in this paper. Meanwhile, these results obtained by the method are presented as some mathematical functions that they are more applicable than some sets of data obtained by other methods. On the other hand, by simply mathematical transformation, it is easy to modify the range of Chebyshev polynomials from the interval [-1,1] into any intervals. In general, the research on laminated anisotropic plates is almost focused on the case of rectangular plate. It is difficult to handle the laminated anisotropic plate problems with the non-rectangular borders by traditional methods. However, through the merits of Chebyshev polynomials, such problems can be overcome as stated in this paper. Finally, some cases in the chapter of examples are illustrated to highlight the displacements, stress resultants and moment resultants of our proposed work. The preciseness is also found in comparison with numerical results by using finite element method incorporated with the software of NASTRAN.

Thesis--M. Phil., University of Hong Kong, 1986.

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The thesis offers an investigation into the analysis of so-called iterated generating functions and the schemes that produce them. Beginning with the study of some ad hoc scheme formulations, the notion of an iterated generating function is introduced and a mechanism to produce arbitrary finite sequences established. The development of schemes to accommodate infinite sequences leads – in the case of the Catalan sequence – to the discovery of what are termed Catalan polynomials whose properties are examined. Results are formulated for these polynomials through the algebraic adaptation of classical root-finding algorithms, serving as a basis for the synthesis of new generalised results for other infinite sequences and their associated polynomials.