For an ideal A of a commutative ring R with identity and a unitary R-module E the notion of an E-sequence of length d in A can be extended as follows. For d = 0 the E-sequence is empty, and for d = 1 it is a subset {ai|i ∈ I} = α ⊆ A such that . For d > 1 we may define, inductively, an E-sequence of length d in A as a sequence

of subsets of A such that a, is an E-sequence of length 1 in A and α2,…, αd is a -sequence of length d − 1 in A. Thus in the standard notion of E-sequence the sets αj, are singletons, and, in effect, the extended notion due to Hochster [1] and Northcott [3] the sets a; are finite. Many of the standard results concerning E-sequences when E is Noetherian extend to the above generalization when the Noetherian condition is dropped. For example it follows from the results of the present note that every maximal E-sequence has the same length (which may be infinite) and every E-sequence can be extended to a maximal E-sequence. This maximal length is inf which we call the homological grade of E in A and denote by hgrR (A; E). So 0 ≤ hgrR (A; E) ≤ ∞, hgrR (A; E) = 0, if, and only if, 0:EA≠0 and hgrg (A; E) = ∞, if, and only if, for all nєℤ.

This theoretical work shows formally that unsteady interactive boundary layers can break up within a finite time by encountering a nonlinear localized singularity. The theory is an extension of, and is guided to a large extent by, Brotherton-Ratcliffe and Smith's (1987) work on a special case. Two major types of singularity are proposed, a “moderate” type yielding a singular pressure gradient and a “severe” type associated with a pressure discontinuity. Each type produces a singular response in the skin friction in the case of wall-bounded flows. The present finite-time singularity applies to any unsteady interactive flow, e.g., incompressible or compressible boundary layers, internal flows, wakes, in two or three dimensions; and the singularity and its associated change in flow structure have numerous repercussions, which are discussed, physically and theoretically, concerning boundary-layer transition in particular.

We study the minimal length of faithful nuclear representations of operators acting between finite-dimensional Banach spaces and the related minimal number of contact points of the John ellipsoid of maximal volume contained in the unit ball of a finite-dimensional Banach space. In both cases the classical upper estimates, which follow from the Caratheodory theorem, are shown to be exact. Related isometric characterizations of are proved.

Let K be a convex compact body with nonempty interior in the d-dimensional Euclidean space Rd and let x1, …, xn be random points in K, independently and uniformly distributed. Define Kn = conv {x1, …, xn}. Our main concern in this paper will be the behaviour of the deviation of vol Kn from vol K as a function of n, more precisely, the expectation of the random variable vol (K\Kn). We denote this expectation by E (K, n).

One construction used to produce a random number table is to take a smooth function F(x) taking values between 0 and 1, to evaluate it at N points spaced 1/M apart, and to ignore the first t decimal digits. With T = 10t this corresponds to taking the fractional part of

where T>M>N. The grounds for assuming this sequence to be random are that it is so difficult to prove anything about it.

Let f(x) be a polynomial of degree d over Fq, the finite field with q = pn elements. Let V(f) denote the number of distinct values of f(x), xєFq. Then, it is easy to see that

where [x] denotes the greatest integer ≤x. A polynomial for which equality is achieved in (1) is called a minimal value set polynomial. Minimal value set polynomials have been studied in [1] and [3].

A study is made of the length L(h, k) of the Euclidean algorithm for determining the g.c.d. of two polynomials h, k in [X], a finite field. We obtain exact formulae for the number of pairs with a fixed length N which lie in a given range, as well as the average length and variance of the Euclidean algorithm for such pairs.