This book focuses on a selection of special topics, with emphasis on past and present research of the authors on “canonical” Riemannian metrics on smooth manifolds. On the backdrop of the fundamental contributions given by many experts in the field, the volume offers a self-contained view of the wide class of “Curvature Conditions” and “Critical Metrics” of suitable Riemannian functionals. The authors describe the classical examples and the relevant generalizations. This monograph is the winner of the 2020 Ferran Sunyer i Balaguer Prize, a prestigious award for books of expository nature presenting the latest developments in an active area of research in mathematics.

This volume contains two review articles: "Stochastic Pro gramming" by Vo V. Kolbin, and "Application of Queueing-Theoretic Methods in Operations Research, " by N. Po Buslenko and A. P. Cherenkovo The first article covers almost all aspects of stochastic programming. Many of the results presented in it have not pre viously been surveyed in the Soviet literature and are of interest to both mathematicians and economists. The second article com prises an exhaustive treatise on the present state of the art of the statistical methods of queueing theory and the statistical modeling of queueing systems as applied to the analysis of complex systems. Contents STOCHASTIC PROGRAMMING V. V. Kolbin Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 § 1. The Geometry of Stochastic Linear Programming Problems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 § 2. Chance-Constrained Problems . . . . . . . . . 8 § 3. Rigorous Statement of stochastic Linear Programming Problems . . . . . . . . . . 16 § 4. Game-Theoretic Statement of Stochastic Linear Programming Problems. . . . . . . . 18 § 5. Nonrigorous Statement of SLP Problems . . . 19 § 6. Existence of Domains of Stability of the Solutions of SLP Problems . . . . . . . . . 29 § 7. Stability of a Solution in the Mean. . . . . . . . . . . . 30 § 8. Dual Stochastic Linear Programming Problems. . . 37 § 9. Some Algorithms for the Solution of Stochastic Linear Programming Problems . . . . . . . . . . 40 § 10. Stochastic Nonlinear Programming: Some First Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 § 11. The Two-Stage SNLP Problem. . . . . . . . . . . . 47 § 12. Optimality and Existence of a Plan in Stochastic Nonlinear Programming Problems. 58 Literature Cited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The starting point of this volume was a conference entitled "Progress in Mathematical Programming," held at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, March 1-4, 1987. The main topic of the conference was developments in the theory and practice of linear programming since Karmarkar's algorithm. There were thirty presentations and approximately fifty people attended. Presentations included new algorithms, new analyses of algorithms, reports on computational experience, and some other topics related to the practice of mathematical programming. Interestingly, most of the progress reported at the conference was on the theoretical side. Several new polynomial algorithms for linear program ming were presented (Barnes-Chopra-Jensen, Goldfarb-Mehrotra, Gonzaga, Kojima-Mizuno-Yoshise, Renegar, Todd, Vaidya, and Ye). Other algorithms presented were by Betke-Gritzmann, Blum, Gill-Murray-Saunders-Wright, Nazareth, Vial, and Zikan-Cottle. Efforts in the theoretical analysis of algo rithms were also reported (Anstreicher, Bayer-Lagarias, Imai, Lagarias, Megiddo-Shub, Lagarias, Smale, and Vanderbei). Computational experiences were reported by Lustig, Tomlin, Todd, Tone, Ye, and Zikan-Cottle. Of special interest, although not in the main direction discussed at the conference, was the report by Rinaldi on the practical solution of some large traveling salesman problems. At the time of the conference, it was still not clear whether the new algorithms developed since Karmarkar's algorithm would replace the simplex method in practice. Alan Hoffman presented results on conditions under which linear programming problems can be solved by greedy algorithms."

This book contains contributions from the Spanish Relativity Meeting, ERE 2012, held in Guimarães, Portugal, September 2012. It features more than 70 papers on a range of topics in general relativity and gravitation, from mathematical cosmology, numerical relativity and black holes to string theory and quantum gravity. Under the title "Progress in Mathematical Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology," ERE 2012 was attended by an exceptional international list of over a hundred participants from the five continents and over forty countries. ERE is organized every year by one of the Spanish or Portuguese groups working in this area and is supported by the Spanish Society of Gravitation and Relativity (SEGRE). This book will be of interest to researchers in mathematics and physics.