Fermat gave the first example of a set of four positive integers {a1, a2, a3, a4} with the property that aiaj+1 is a square for 1≤i<j≤4. His example was {1, 3, 8, 120}. Baker and Davenport [1] proved that the example could not be extended to a set of 5 positive integers such that the product of any two of them plus one is a square. Kangasabapathy and Ponnudurai [6], Sansone [9] and Grinstead [4] gave alternative proofs. The construction of such sets originated with Diophantus who studied the problem when the ai are rational numbers. It is conjectured that there do not exist five positive integers whose pairwise products are all one less than the square of an integer. Recently Dujella [3] proved that there do not exist nine such integers. In this note we address the following related problem. Let V denote the set of pure powers, that is, the set of positive integers of the form xk with x and k positive integers and k>1. How large can a set of positive integers A be if aa′ + 1 is in V whenever a and a′ are distinct integers from A? We expect that there is an absolute bound for |A|, the cardinality of A. While we have not been able to establish this result, we have been able to prove that such sets cannot be very dense.

We show that substantially more than a quarter of the odd integers of the form $pq$ up to $x$, with $p,q$ both prime, satisfy $p\equiv q\equiv 3~(\text{mod}\,4)$.

The Stefan problem is a particular free boundary problem for the heat equation which arises in the investigation of the melting of solids. In the case of one space dimension there are numerous results available concerning the existence, uniqueness, and stability of the solution [c.f. 6]. However the case of several space variables is considerably more difficult. This is due in large part to the fact that the geometry of the problem can become quite complicated, and smooth initial and boundary data do not necessarily lead to smooth solutions. In particular, under heating, a connected solid can melt into two (or more) disconnected solids, thus leading to a problem in which the free boundary varies in a discontinuous manner. These difficulties have motivated several researchers to look for “weak” solutions to the Stefan problem [c.f. 1, 3, 5]. Although this approach is quite general and leads to numerical schemes for solving the problem under consideration, there are several drawbacks to this method, among them being the fact that no information is obtained concerning the structure of the interphase boundary, nor is there much information on the regularity of these weak solutions.

Let g(n) be a complex valued multiplicative function such that |g(n)| ≤ 1. In this paper we shall be concerned with the validity of the inequality

under the weak condition g(p)∈ for all primes p, where is a fixed subset of the closed unit disc Thus our point of view is similar to that of Halász [Hz 2] in that we seek a general inequality in terms of simple quantities, albeit g(p) may have a quite irregular distribution. We are not concerned here with the problem of asymptotic formulae for the sum on the left of (1) studied by (among others) Delange [D], Halász [Hz 1] and Wirsing [W].

We shall deal throughout with regular matrix methods of summability defined by a stochastic matrix A = (ank). Thus

means

We consider the minimization of Dirichlet eigenvalues $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{k}$, $k\in \mathbb{N}$, of the Laplacian on cuboids of unit measure in $\mathbb{R}^{3}$. We prove that any sequence of optimal cuboids in $\mathbb{R}^{3}$ converges to a cube of unit measure in the sense of Hausdorff as $k\rightarrow \infty$. We also obtain an upper bound for that rate of convergence.

Central to the study of electromagnetic induction in turbulently moving conductors is the evolution of the ensemble averaged field, and so the subject of “mean field electrodynamics” has been born. It has provided a particularly fruitful approach to the dynamo problem, that is the study of the self-excitation of magnetic field by a moving fluid. It has been shown by Steenbeck, Krause and Rädler, in studies dating from 1966, that regeneration of field is efficient when the motions are sufficiently vigorous and lack mirror-symmetry. Using a commonly accepted approximation of the subject (the neglect of third order cumulants) which is valid when the correlation length and/or the correlation time of the turbulence are sufficiently small, and paying proper regard to a theorem due to Bochner, it is shown here that mirror-symmetric homogeneous turbulence cannot be regenerative.

We prove that, if (fn)n∈ω is a sequence of continuous functions on some recursively presentable Polish space, such that any pointwise cluster point of (fn)n∈ω is a Borel function, then there exists a -subsequence of (fn)n∈ω which is pointwise convergent. This is an effective version of a well known result of Bourgain, Fremlin and Talagrand.

The 2-adic density of a quadratic form is a factor in the expression for the weight of a genus (of positive forms) and so has been investigated by a number of writers. As pointed out by Pall [1], the most complete investigation, that by Minkowski, omitted many details and errors resulted. Unfortunately, Pall's paper also contains errors: the last — in his formula (23) should be +, and 8, 4 in the second and third lines after (47) should be 3, 2. In the fourfold distinction of cases (with nine sub-cases) at the end, the possibility ei+l – ei = 1, øi and øi+1 both pp., seems to have been overlooked.

In this paper X(t) denotes Brownian motion on the line 0 ≤ t < ∞, E is a compact subset of (0, ∞) and F a compact subset of ( -∞, ∞). Then δ(E, F) is the supremum of the numbers c such that

In [4, 5] some lower and upper bounds for δ were found in terms of dim E and dim F, and it seemed possible that δ(E, F) could be determined entirely by these constants; this much is false, as the examples in our last paragraph will demonstrate. Here we shall show that δ(E, F) depends on a certain metric character η(E × F). However, η is not calculated relative to the Euclidean metric: the set F must be compressed to compensate for the oscillations of most paths X(t). Fortunately, η(E × F) can be calculated for a large enough class of sets E and F, by means of sequences of integers, to test any conjectures (and disprove most of them). In passing from η to δ we present a slight variation of Frostman's theory [3II].

Let K3 be a non-Galois cubic extension of the rationals and let K6 be its normal closure. Under K6 there is a unique quadratic field K2. For i = 2, 3, 6 we define C1i; to be the 3-class group of K2 and ri to be the rank of Cli. We suppose that K2 is complex and that K6/K2 is unramified. Our main result is

The approximation constant ${\it\lambda}_{k}({\it\zeta})$ is defined as the supremum of ${\it\eta}\in \mathbb{R}$ such that the estimate $\max _{1\leqslant j\leqslant k}\Vert {\it\zeta}^{j}x\Vert \leqslant x^{-{\it\eta}}$ has infinitely many integer solutions $x$. Here $\Vert .\Vert$ denotes the distance to the closest integer. We establish a connection on the joint spectrum $({\it\lambda}_{1}({\it\zeta}),{\it\lambda}_{2}({\it\zeta}),\ldots )$, which will lead to various improvements of known results on the individual spectrum of the approximation constants ${\it\lambda}_{k}({\it\zeta})$ as well. In particular, for given $k\geqslant 1$ and ${\it\lambda}\geqslant 1$, we construct ${\it\zeta}$ in the Cantor set with ${\it\lambda}_{k}({\it\zeta})={\it\lambda}$. Moreover, we establish an estimate for the uniform approximation constants $\widehat{{\it\lambda}}_{k}({\it\zeta})$, which enables us to determine classical approximation constants for Liouville numbers.

Siegel defined an E-function to be a function which admits a power series expansion

with complex coefficients βn, belonging to some algebraic number field K (of finite degree over the rationals Q), satisfying the following conditions:

(i) Given ε > 0, the maximum of the absolute values of the conjugates of βn, satisfies

If a scattered compact space K is such that its ω1-th derived set K(ω1) is empty then the Banach space ℒ(K) admits an equivalent locally uniformly convex norm.

Let A be a complete discrete valuation ring of characteristic zero with finite residue field, and for any integer m > 1, let Jm (A) be the subring of A generated by the m-th powers of elements of A. We will prove that any element of Jm (A) is a sum of at most 8m5m-th powers of elements of A. We will also prove a similar assertion when the residue field of A is only assumed to be perfect and of positive characteristic, with the number Γ(m) of summands depending only on m and not on A.

We study the geometry of the space of measures of a compact ultrametric space $X$, endowed with the $L^{p}$ Wasserstein distance from optimal transportation. We show that the power $p$ of this distance makes this Wasserstein space affinely isometric to a convex subset of $\ell ^{1}$. As a consequence, it is connected by $1/p$-Hölder arcs, but any ${\it\alpha}$-Hölder arc with ${\it\alpha}>1/p$ must be constant. This result is obtained via a reformulation of the distance between two measures which is very specific to the case when $X$ is ultrametric; however, thanks to the Mendel–Naor ultrametric skeleton it has consequences even when $X$ is a general compact metric space. More precisely, we use it to estimate the size of Wasserstein spaces, measured by an analogue of Hausdorff dimension that is adapted to (some) infinite-dimensional spaces. The result we get generalizes greatly our previous estimate, which needed a strong rectifiability assumption. The proof of this estimate involves a structural theorem of independent interest: every ultrametric space contains large co-Lipschitz images of regular ultrametric spaces, i.e. spaces of the form $\{1,\dots ,k\}^{\mathbb{N}}$ with a natural ultrametric. We are also led to an example of independent interest: a space of positive lower Minkowski dimension, all of whose proper closed subsets have vanishing lower Minkowski dimension.

Let R be a simple ring. If R contains at least one minimal nonzero one-sided ideal, then R has zero-divisors, unless R is a division ring. However, simple rings exist which are not division rings and have no zero-divisors. Our present object is to prove the following embedding theorem:

Theorem 1. Every ring R without zero-divisors may be embedded in a simple ring R* without zero-divisors. If there is a non-zero element ƒ in R satisfying ƒ2 = nƒ, where n is an integer, then R* necessarily has a unit-element; otherwise R* may be chosen to have no unit-element.

Let be a finite sequence of positive integers. If we want to show that contains primes, or at least almost-primes (i.e. numbers with few prime factors), sieve methods give better results if weights of a certain kind are attached to the elements of .

The Littlewood conjecture states that for all (α,β)∈ℝ2. We show that with the additional factor of log q⋅log log q, the statement is false. Indeed, our main result implies that the set of (α,β) for which is of full dimension.

We consider finite point subsets (distributions) in compact metric spaces. In the case of general rectifiable metric spaces, non-trivial bounds for sums of distances between points of distributions and for discrepancies of distributions in metric balls are given (Theorem 1.1). We generalize Stolarsky’s invariance principle to distance-invariant spaces (Theorem 2.1). For arbitrary metric spaces, we prove a probabilistic invariance principle (Theorem 3.1). Furthermore, we construct equal-measure partitions of general rectifiable compact metric spaces into parts of small average diameter (Theorem 4.1).