Maximum entropy and Bayesian methods have fundamental, central roles in scientific inference, and, with the growing availability of computer power, are being successfully applied in an increasing number of applications in many disciplines. This volume contains selected papers presented at the Thirteenth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods. It includes an extensive tutorial section, and a variety of contributions detailing application in the physical sciences, engineering, law, and economics. Audience: Researchers and other professionals whose work requires the application of practical statistical inference.

Proceedings of the Thirteenth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods

This volume contains selections from among the presentations at the Thirteenth International Workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods- MAXENT93 for short- held at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), August 1-5, 1993. This annual workshop is devoted to the theory and practice of Bayesian probability and the use of the maximum entropy principle in assigning prior probabilities. Like its predecessors, MAXENT93 attracted researchers and scholars representing a wide diversity of disciplines and applications. These included physicists, geophysicists, astronomers, statisticians, engineers, and economists, among others. Indeed Bayesian methods increasingly compel the interest of any who would apply scientific inference. The impressive successes, so evident in the proceedings of the past workshops, when adherence to Bayesian principles replaces popular ad hoc approaches in problems of inference, continue. Many are reported in this volume. It is perhaps indicative of the growing acceptance of Bayesian methods that the most prominent controversy at the thirteenth workshop was not a Bayesian- frequents confrontation but rather a disagreement over the suitability of using an approximation in the Bayesian formalism.

In 1978 Edwin T. Jaynes and Myron Tribus initiated a series of workshops to exchange ideas and recent developments in technical aspects and applications of Bayesian probability theory. The first workshop was held at the University of Wyoming in 1981 organized by C.R. Smith and W.T. Grandy. Due to its success, the workshop was held annually during the last 18 years. Over the years, the emphasis of the workshop shifted gradually from fundamental concepts of Bayesian probability theory to increasingly realistic and challenging applications. The 18th international workshop on Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods was held in Garching / Munich (Germany) (27-31. July 1998). Opening lectures by G. Larry Bretthorst and by Myron Tribus were dedicated to one of th the pioneers of Bayesian probability theory who died on the 30 of April 1998: Edwin Thompson Jaynes. Jaynes revealed and advocated the correct meaning of 'probability' as the state of knowledge rather than a physical property. This inter pretation allowed him to unravel longstanding mysteries and paradoxes. Bayesian probability theory, "the logic of science" - as E.T. Jaynes called it - provides the framework to make the best possible scientific inference given all available exper imental and theoretical information. We gratefully acknowledge the efforts of Tribus and Bretthorst in commemorating the outstanding contributions of E.T. Jaynes to the development of probability theory.

This book is written for theoretical and mathematical physicists and mat- maticians interested in recent developments in complex general relativity and their application to classical and quantum gravity. Calculations are presented by paying attention to those details normally omitted in research papers, for pedagogical r- sons. Familiarity with fibre-bundle theory is certainly helpful, but in many cases I only rely on two-spinor calculus and conformally invariant concepts in gravitational physics. The key concepts the book is devoted to are complex manifolds, spinor techniques, conformal gravity, ?-planes, ?-surfaces, Penrose transform, complex 3 1 – – space-time models with non-vanishing torsion, spin- fields and spin- potentials. 2 2 Problems have been inserted at the end, to help the reader to check his und- standing of these topics. Thus, I can find at least four reasons for writing yet another book on spinor and twistor methods in general relativity: (i) to write a textbook useful to - ginning graduate students and research workers, where two-component spinor c- culus is the unifying mathematical language.

This monograph is devoted to the problem of the geometrizing of Lagrangians which depend on higher-order accelerations. It presents a construction of the geometry of the total space of the bundle of the accelerations of order k>=1. A geometrical study of the notion of the higher-order Lagrange space is conducted, and the old problem of prolongation of Riemannian spaces to k-osculator manifolds is solved. Also, the geometrical ground for variational calculus on the integral of actions involving higher-order Lagrangians is dealt with. Applications to higher-order analytical mechanics and theoretical physics are included as well. Audience: This volume will be of interest to scientists whose work involves differential geometry, mechanics of particles and systems, calculus of variation and optimal control, optimization, optics, electromagnetic theory, and biology.

This book reflects our own struggle to understand the semiclassical behaviour of quantized fields in the presence of boundaries. Along many years, motivated by the problems of quantum cosmology and quantum field theory, we have studied in detail the one-loop properties of massless spin-l/2 fields, Euclidean Maxwell the ory, gravitino potentials and Euclidean quantum gravity. Hence our book begins with a review of the physical and mathematical motivations for studying physical theories in the presence of boundaries, with emphasis on electrostatics, vacuum v Maxwell theory and quantum cosmology. We then study the Feynman propagator in Minkowski space-time and in curved space-time. In the latter case, the corre sponding Schwinger-DeWitt asymptotic expansion is given. The following chapters are devoted to the standard theory of the effective action and the geometric im provement due to Vilkovisky, the manifestly covariant quantization of gauge fields, zeta-function regularization in mathematics and in quantum field theory, and the problem of boundary conditions in one-loop quantum theory. For this purpose, we study in detail Dirichlet, Neumann and Robin boundary conditions for scalar fields, local and non-local boundary conditions for massless spin-l/2 fields, mixed boundary conditions for gauge fields and gravitation. This is the content of Part I. Part II presents our investigations of Euclidean Maxwell theory, simple super gravity and Euclidean quantum gravity.

Flux quantization experiments indicate that the carriers, Cooper pairs (pairons), in the supercurrent have charge magnitude 2e, and that they move independently. Josephson interference in a Superconducting Quantum Int- ference Device (SQUID) shows that the centers of masses (CM) of pairons move as bosons with a linear dispersion relation. Based on this evidence we develop a theory of superconductivity in conventional and mate- als from a unified point of view. Following Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer (BCS) we regard the phonon exchange attraction as the cause of superc- ductivity. For cuprate superconductors, however, we take account of both optical- and acoustic-phonon exchange. BCS started with a Hamiltonian containing “electron” and “hole” kinetic energies and a pairing interaction with the phonon variables eliminated. These “electrons” and “holes” were introduced formally in terms of a free-electron model, which we consider unsatisfactory. We define “electrons” and “holes” in terms of the cur- tures of the Fermi surface. “Electrons” (1) and “holes” (2) are different and so they are assigned with different effective masses: Blatt, Schafroth and Butler proposed to explain superconductivity in terms of a Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) of electron pairs, each having mass M and a size. The system of free massive bosons, having a quadratic dispersion relation: and moving in three dimensions (3D) undergoes a BEC transition at where is the pair density.

The book consists of two Volumes. The first (the preceding volume) is devoted to the general nonlinear theory of the hierarchical dynamic oscillative–wave systems. This theory has been called the theory of hi- archical oscillations and waves. Here two aspects of the proposed theory are discussed. The first aspects concern the fundamental nature and the basic c- cepts and ideas of a new hierarchical approach to studying hierarchical dynamic systems. A new hierarchical paradigm is proposed as a - sis of a new point of view of such types of systems. In turn, a set of hierarchical principles is formulated as the fundamental basis of this paradigm. Therein the self-resemblance (holographic) principle plays a key role here. An adequate mathematic description (factorization) of the proposed paradigm is carried out. The concepts of structural and dynamic (functional) operators are put into the basis of this descr- tion. Electrodynamics is chosen as a convenient basis for an obvious demonstration of some key points of the proposed new theory. The second aspect has a purely mathematical nature. It is related to the form of factorization (i.e., mathematical description) of hier- chical types of dynamic models, and discussion of the methods of their mathematical analysis. A set of the hierarchical asymptotic analytical– numerical methods is given as an evidence of the practical effectiveness of the proposed version of hierarchical theory.