At the summer school in Pisa in September 1996, Luigi Ambrosio and Norman Dancer each gave a course on the geometric problem of evolution of a surface by mean curvature, and degree theory with applications to PDEs respectively. This self-contained presentation accessible to PhD students bridged the gap between standard courses and advanced research on these topics. The resulting book is divided accordingly into 2 parts, and neatly illustrates the 2-way interaction of problems and methods. Each of the courses is augmented and complemented by additional short chapters by other authors describing current research problems and results.

Originally published in the Soviet Union, this text is meant for students of higher schools and deals with the most important sections of mathematics - differential equations and the calculus of variations. The first part describes the theory of differential equations and reviews the methods for integrating these equations and investigating their solutions. The second part gives an idea of the calculus of variations and surveys the methods for solving variational problems. The book contains a large number of examples and problems with solutions involving applications of mathematics to physics and mechanics. Apart from its main purpose the textbook is of interest to expert mathematicians. Lev Elsgolts (deceased) was a Doctor of Physico-Mathematical Sciences, Professor at the Patrice Lumumba University of Friendship of Peoples. His research work was dedicated to the calculus of variations and differential equations. He worked out the theory of differential equations with deviating arguments and supplied methods for their solution. Lev Elsgolts was the author of many printed works. Among others, he wrote the well-known books Qualitative Methods in Mathematical Analysis and Introduction to the Theory of Differential Equations with Deviating Arguments. In addition to his research work Lev Elsgolts taught at higher schools for over twenty years.

This volume provides the texts of lectures given by L. Ambrosio, L. Caffarelli, M. Crandall, L.C. Evans, N. Fusco at the Summer course held in Cetraro, Italy in 2005. These are introductory reports on current research by world leaders in the fields of calculus of variations and partial differential equations. Coverage includes transport equations for nonsmooth vector fields, viscosity methods for the infinite Laplacian, and geometrical aspects of symmetrization.

Hilbert's talk at the second International Congress of 1900 in Paris marked the beginning of a new era in the calculus of variations. A development began which, within a few decades, brought tremendous success, highlighted by the 1929 theorem of Ljusternik and Schnirelman on the existence of three distinct prime closed geodesics on any compact surface of genus zero, and the 1930/31 solution of Plateau's problem by Douglas and Radò. The book gives a concise introduction to variational methods and presents an overview of areas of current research in this field. This new edition has been substantially enlarged, a new chapter on the Yamabe problem has been added and the references have been updated. All topics are illustrated by carefully chosen examples, representing the current state of the art in their field.

Partial differential equations and variational methods were introduced into image processing about 15 years ago, and intensive research has been carried out since then. The main goal of this work is to present the variety of image analysis applications and the precise mathematics involved. It is intended for two audiences. The first is the mathematical community, to show the contribution of mathematics to this domain and to highlight some unresolved theoretical questions. The second is the computer vision community, to present a clear, self-contained, and global overview of the mathematics involved in image processing problems. The book is divided into five main parts. Chapter 1 is a detailed overview. Chapter 2 describes and illustrates most of the mathematical notions found throughout the work. Chapters 3 and 4 examine how PDEs and variational methods can be successfully applied in image restoration and segmentation processes. Chapter 5, which is more applied, describes some challenging computer vision problems, such as sequence analysis or classification. This book will be useful to researchers and graduate students in mathematics and computer vision.

This problem book contains exercises for courses in differential equations and calculus of variations at universities and technical institutes. It is designed for non-mathematics students and also for scientists and practicing engineers who feel a need to refresh their knowledge. The book contains more than 260 examples and about 1400 problems to be solved by the students — much of which have been composed by the authors themselves. Numerous references are given at the end of the book to furnish sources for detailed theoretical approaches, and expanded treatment of applications. Contents:First Order Differential EquationsN-th Order Differential EquationsLinear Second Order EquationsSystems of Differential EquationsPartial Equations of the First OrderNonlinear Equations and StabilityCalculus of VariationsAnswers to Problems Readership: Mathematicians and engineers. keywords:Examples;Differential Equations;Calculus of Variations “… the book can be successfully used both by students and practising engineers.” Mathematics Abstracts