Provilla and the Gang

There exists   a  PayPal Mafia which consists of  founders of   well-known start ups in Silicon Valley.

How about   a   Provilla   Gang?    When  BX  got some angel investment to start A4 Data Technology a couple of  months ago, and    BP  &  AD  are teaming together to  cook a novel idea,  I am excited to find that  this nice dream is becoming possible.      I'll try  my best for fund raising and establishing business connections for them as my appreciation for their contributions to Provilla.

Best wishes to them!

Twin prime conjecture

The problem of  Twin Prime Conjecture  had been  known only to the math  community until Dr Yitang Zhang was known to the world  in May this year  due to his breakthrough toward this problem.  His story touches  me for his spirit for pursuing truth persistently  &  lonely for about  20 years.

I did not know that  my Pitt math classmates Aiping and Luyang (王鲁燕) were  Yitang's  classmates at Peking University until  I visited Pittsburgh in August ..  they chatted about Dr Zhang's work proudly. I wish I had a classmate like Dr Zhang too. The world is small that I have only 2 connections away from Zhang... That is not what I want to say.

This moving math story inspires me for two thoughts:
1.  Dr Zhang is what the first word of Pitt's motto means:  Veritas.    I hope one can write a novel about his story, and produce a movie or TV series from it.   It is like the "beautiful mind"...  even more.
2.  I started to have an ambitious yet elegant dream:  as a humble math  entrepreneur,  I should  work harder to become wealthy or influential ...  I shall  raise enough fund one day to establish  an academic institute ... it will host 50 great minds like Dr Zhang in math and theoretic physics ....  full time in early stage of  their career.   That would be a great objective for me to do in  next 20 years or beyond ....   that is what is calling me from my heart... that reflects Pitt  motto's 2nd word Virtus.

当今中国人9大欲望

据可靠调查，当今中国人有9大欲望:
1、发大财; 2、买大房子; 3、开豪车; 4、当老板; 5、中彩票;  6、当官;  7、桃花运; 8、移民; 9、环游世界。


平头百姓的这些欲望无可厚非。 要是有一天， 以下两项亦列入其中就好了：
1.  终极真理；  2.  社会公义 

叹！

Weakly coupled oscillators & 3-regular graph

After visiting my Ph.D adviser Dr Ermentrout at Pitt on Aug, 19,   I have been trapped into the following problems.

Problem 1:  To find a non-trivial solution for weakly coupled oscillators on a 3-regular graph for the coupling function H(θ) = sin(θ).

To solve this problem, one may start with a simpler problem.

Problem 2:  To find a non-trivial stable solution for weakly coupled oscillators on a 3-regular graph with a Hamiltonian cycle via the same H.

It is actually  a ring of oscillators  with multiple-node coupling (each is  coupled with 2-nearest neighbors  + 1 additional nodes).  Using homotopy method, we may  be able to arrive at a solution that is homotopy to the  nontrivial one on the ring: (0, 2π/N, …, 2(N-1) π/N ):

(a)  The nodes can be denoted as  1,2,…, N as they present  in the Hamiltonian cycle;

(b)  θ’ =  ω + H(θ_k-1 - θ_k) + H(θ_k+1 - θ_k) + λ H(θ_p(k) – θ_k)  where p(k) is the 3^rd coupling node  of k in the cycle;

(c) Let λ change from 0  to 1 to find out out whether there is any solution at λ=1 which is homotopy to  (0, 2π/N, …, 2(N-1) π/N ). 

A solution should exist when p(k) satisfies certain conditions:
(a) p(k) = (k+h) mod N;
(b) N=2m > 10;
(c) 1 < h < N/4.

Well-known quotes（名句欣赏）

1.       "What does not destroy me, makes me stronger." – Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900

2.      "Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance." Samuel Johnson 1709-84.

3.      "Sweet are the uses of adversity." – William Shakespeare, 1564-1616

4.      "When it’s darkest, men see the stars." – Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1882

5.      "Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom." – General George S. Patton, 1885-1945

6.      "When the well’s dry, we know the worth of water." – Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790

7.      "A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with the wind." – John Neal, 1793-1876

8.      "Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm." – Anon

9.      "He knows not his own strength that hath not met adversity." – Ben Jonson, c. 1573-1637

10.  "Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well." – Jack London, undated

Elon Musk

人类需要几个像Tesla Motors创始人Elon Musk一样思考的科学家，发明家，和entrepreneurs， 带领我们走出资源困乏的地球，到太空开拓生存的空间。离我们最近的恒星为4个光年，火星计划在我看来离此终极目标相差甚远。人类期待下一个Einstein的到来久矣！ 乔布斯的创新很伟大，但对此目标好无用处。


http://www.iheima.com/archives/40195.html

New Patents

I just noticed I had  two new US patents granted in July:

1. US patent 8490203.  Title: Fingerprinting based entity extraction.   This is a deep content inspection technique for DLP products.
2. US patent 8498965.  Title: Methods and apparatus for generating difference files.  This is a technique of differential compression serving incremental file update in the area of software patch management.

These two patents bring my US patent portfolio to 18 patents.

How exciting!