Math Forum / Mathematics / Research / October 2008

Does anyone know or can give reference for the following?
If X_t + i Y_t is complex Brownian motion, and \tau is the first
hitting time of {|y| = 1} (bdry of the strip), what is the
distribution or density for \tau? i.e. P(\tau \in dt) = ?

A monograph has been published by Geometry & Topology Monographs:
(1) Compactness and gluing theory for monopoles
     by Kim A Froyshov
   URL: http://msp.warwick.ac.uk/gtm/2008/15/index.xhtml

While doing some research on solvable sextics, I stumbled upon this
unusual connection between it and Fibonacci/Lucas numbers.
Define the sequence, starting with n=0:
L_n = {2, 3, 7, 18, 47, 123, 322,...}

Also available at http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week271.html
October 26, 2008
This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics (Week 271)
John Baez

Where can I find a rigorous proof that the (orientation-preserving)
MCG(R^n)={1}?
Also, is MCG(S^4)={1}? What about MCG(S^n), n>1?

I imagine that the below is a classical problem but I'd not seen it before.
Initially I thought it was circle-packing, but now I'm suspicious that
in fact it's slightly different. Here's the background...
The following came up in an undergraduate problem-solving group: given

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Your help with circulating this announcement locally is much

Computers are as important to modern scientists as test tubes, but we
know surprisingly little about how scientists develop and use software
in their research.  To find out, the University of Toronto, Simula
Research Laboratory, and the National Research Council of Canada have

The Facultad de Ciencias of the University of Colima invites
applications for a faculty position in Mathematics. Applicants must
possess a Ph.D. and postdoctoral experience. The successful candidate
will be expected to build a strong research program, supervise

Four papers have been published by Algebraic & Geometric Topology in
Volume 8; papers (1) and (2) complete issue 3 and papers (3) and (4)
open issue 4:
(1) Algebraic & Geometric Topology 8 (2008) 1811-1832

The UK suffers from having no canonical centralised system for advertising
maths post-docs jobs. Furthermore, post-doc jobs are typically rarer in
the UK than in the US, because there is less money in the system. Still
worse is that there's no analogue of the "AMS cover sheet" and ...

I'm Xavier Bordoy.
I have a problem involving prime numbers distribution. I tried to
solve, pot not significantly progress was get.
I explain it (I use Latex notation):

Recently I believe I saw a paper on the ArXiv about the different paths one
can trace out by walking in and out of a building with n doors, without
crossing one's own path.  Unfortunately I can't remember the title or the
author, or enough keywords to locate the paper.  Does anyone ...

Mathieu equation is a well studied equation:
y''+(p-2qcos(2x))y=0
But can someone please suggest methods to find the particular solution
to this equation:

Suppose we have the following sequence of equations:
Fi k = alpha_i Ai k
where we know that alpha_i > 0, all Fi and Ai are 6x6 having rank 3
and the column space of both Fi and Ai is the same for all i. All Fi