Axioms, Volume 3, Issue 2 (June 2014) – 9 articles , Pages 140-299

This paper outlines and qualitatively compares the implementations of seven different methods for solving Poisson’s equation on the disk. The methods include two classical finite elements, a cotan formula-based discrete differential geometry approach and four isogeometric constructions. The comparison reveals numerical convergence rates and, particularly for isogeometric constructions based on Catmull–Clark elements, the need to carefully choose quadrature formulas. The seven methods include two that are new to isogeometric analysis. Both new methods yield O(h³) convergence in the L² norm, also when points are included where n 6≠ 4 pieces meet. One construction is based on a polar, singular parameterization; the other is a G¹ tensor-product construction. Full article

Allegories are enriched categories generalizing a category of sets and binary relations. In this paper, we extend a new, recently-introduced conceptual data model based on allegories by adding support for modal operators and developing a modal interpretation of the model in any allegory satisfying certain additional (but natural) axioms. The possibility of using different allegories allows us to transparently use alternative logical frameworks, such as fuzzy relations. Mathematically, our work demonstrates how to enrich with modal operators and to give a many world semantics to an abstract algebraic logic framework. We also give some examples of applications of the modal extension. Full article

There is a contact problem between classical probability and quantum outcomes. Thus, a standard result from classical probability on the existence of joint distributions ultimately implies that all quantum observables must commute. An essential task here is a closer identification of this conflict based on deriving commutativity from the weakest possible assumptions, and showing that stronger assumptions in some of the existing no-go proofs are unnecessary. An example of an unnecessary assumption in such proofs is an entangled system involving nonlocal observables. Another example involves the Kochen-Specker hidden variable model, features of which are also not needed to derive commutativity. A diagram is provided by which user-selected projectors can be easily assembled into many new, graphical no-go proofs. Full article

This paper presents two algorithms, based on conformal geometry, for the multi-scale representations of geometric shapes and surface morphing. A multi-scale surface representation aims to describe a 3D shape at different levels of geometric detail, which allows analyzing or editing surfaces at the global or local scales effectively. Surface morphing refers to the process of interpolating between two geometric shapes, which has been widely applied to estimate or analyze deformations in computer graphics, computer vision and medical imaging. In this work, we propose two geometric models for surface morphing and multi-scale representation for 3D surfaces. The basic idea is to represent a 3D surface by its mean curvature function, H, and conformal factor function λ, which uniquely determine the geometry of the surface according to Riemann surface theory. Once we have the (λ, H) parameterization of the surface, post-processing of the surface can be done directly on the conformal parameter domain. In particular, the problem of multi-scale representations of shapes can be reduced to the signal filtering on the λ and H parameters. On the other hand, the surface morphing problem can be transformed to an interpolation process of two sets of (λ, H) parameters. We test the proposed algorithms on 3D human face data and MRI-derived brain surfaces. Experimental results show that our proposed methods can effectively obtain multi-scale surface representations and give natural surface morphing results. Full article

Geometric invariants are important for shape recognition and matching. Existing invariants in projective geometry are typically defined on the limited number (e.g., five for the classical cross-ratio) of collinear planar points and also lack the ability to characterize the curve or surface underlying the given points. In this paper, we present a projective invariant named after the characteristic number of planar algebraic curves. The characteristic number in this work reveals an intrinsic property of an algebraic hypersurface or curve, which relies no more on the existence of the surface or curve as its planar version. The new definition also generalizes the cross-ratio by relaxing the collinearity and number of points for the cross-ratio. We employ the characteristic number to construct more informative shape descriptors that improve the performance of shape recognition, especially when severe affine and perspective deformations occur. In addition to the application to shape recognition, we incorporate the geometric constraints on facial feature points derived from the characteristic number into facial feature matching. The experiments show the improvements on accuracy and robustness to pose and view changes over the method with the collinearity and cross-ratio constraints. Full article

With both computational complexity and storage space bounded by a small constant, greedy routing is recognized as an appealing approach to support scalable routing in wireless sensor networks. However, significant challenges have been encountered in extending greedy routing from 2D to 3D space. In this research, we develop decentralized solutions to achieve greedy routing in 3D sensor networks. Our proposed approach is based on a unit tetrahedron cell (UTC) mesh structure. We propose a distributed algorithm to realize volumetric harmonic mapping (VHM) of the UTC mesh under spherical boundary condition. It is a one-to-one map that yields virtual coordinates for each node in the network without or with one internal hole. Since a boundary has been mapped to a sphere, node-based greedy routing is always successful thereon. At the same time, we exploit the UTC mesh to develop a face-based greedy routing algorithm and prove its success at internal nodes. To deliver a data packet to its destination, face-based and node-based greedy routing algorithms are employed alternately at internal and boundary UTCs, respectively. For networks with multiple internal holes, a segmentation and tunnel-based routing strategy is proposed on top of VHM to support global end-to-end routing. As far as we know, this is the first work that realizes truly deterministic routing with constant-bounded storage and computation in general 3D wireless sensor networks. Full article

A standard result in quantum mechanics is this: if two observables are commuting then they have a classical joint distribution in every state. A converse is demonstrated here: If a classical joint distribution for the pair agrees with standard quantum facts, then the observables must commute. This has consequences for some historical and recent quantum nonlocal models: they are analytically disallowed without the need for experiment, as they imply that all local observables must commute among themselves. Full article

The necessity of a rigorously operative formulation of quantum mechanics, functional to the exigencies of quantum computing, has raised the interest again in the nature of probability and the inference in quantum mechanics. In this work, we show a relation among the probabilities of a quantum system in terms of information of non-local correlation by means of a new quantity, the Bell length. Full article

From Kemp [1], we have a family of confluent q-Chu- Vandermonde distributions, consisted by three members I, II and III, interpreted as a family of q-steady-state distributions from Markov chains. In this article, we provide the moments of the distributions of this family and we establish a continuous limiting behavior for the members I and II, in the sense of pointwise convergence, by applying a q-analogue of the usual Stirling asymptotic formula for the factorial number of order n. Specifically, we initially give the q-factorial moments and the usual moments for the family of confluent q-Chu- Vandermonde distributions and then we designate as a main theorem the conditions under which the confluent q-Chu-Vandermonde distributions I and II converge to a continuous Stieltjes-Wigert distribution. For the member III we give a continuous analogue. Moreover, as applications of this study we present a modified q-Bessel distribution, a generalized q-negative Binomial distribution and a generalized over/underdispersed (O/U) distribution. Note that in this article we prove the convergence of a family of discrete distributions to a continuous distribution which is not of a Gaussian type. Full article