The current research involves an analytical method of electromagnetic wave scattering by an impenetrable spherical object, which is immerged in an otherwise lossless environment. The highly conducting body is excited by an arbitrarily orientated time-harmonic magnetic dipole that is located at a reasonable remote distance from the sphere and operates at low frequencies for the physical situation under consideration, wherein the wavelength is much bigger than the size of the object. Upon this assumption, the scattering problem is formulated according to expansions of the implicated magnetic and electric fields in terms of positive integer powers of the wave number of the medium, which is linearly associated to the implied frequency. The static Rayleigh zeroth-order case and the initial three dynamic terms provide an excellent approximation for the obtained solution, while terms of higher orders are of minor significance and are neglected, since we work at the low-frequency regime. To this end, Maxwell’s equations reduce to a finite set of interrelated elliptic partial differential equations, each one accompanied by the perfectly electrically conducting boundary conditions on the metal sphere and the necessary limiting behavior as we move towards theoretical infinity, which is in practice very far from the observation domain. The presented analytical technique is based on the introduction of a suitable spherical coordinated system and yields compact fashioned three-dimensional solutions for the scattered components in view of infinite series expansions of spherical harmonic modes. In order to secure the validity and demonstrate the efficiency of this analytical approach, we invoke an example of reducing already known results from the literature to our complete isotropic case.

A well-known mathematical model of radially symmetric tumour growth is revisited in the present work. Under this aim, a cancerous spherical mass lying in a finite concentric nutritive surrounding is considered. The host spherical shell provides the tumor with vital nutrients, receives the debris of the necrotic cancer cells, and also transmits to the tumour the pressure imposed on its exterior boundary. We focus on studying the type of inhomogeneity that the nutrient supply and the pressure field imposed on the host exterior boundary, can exhibit in order for the spherical structure to be supported. It turns out that, if the imposed fields depart from being homogeneous, only a special type of interrelated inhomogeneity between nutrient and pressure can secure the spherical growth. The work includes an analytic derivation of the related boundary value problems based on physical conservation laws and their analytical treatment. Implementations in cases of special physical interest are examined, and also existing homogeneous results from the literature are fully recovered.

Electroencephalography (EEG) has evolved over the years to be one of the primary diagnostic technologies providing information concerning the dynamics of spontaneous and stimulated electrical brain activity. The core question of EEG is to acquire the precise location and strength of the sources inside the human brain by knowledge of an electrical potential measured on the scalp. But in what way is the source recovered? Leaving aside the biological mechanisms on the cellular level responsible for the recorded EEG signals, we pay attention to the mathematical aspects of the narrative. Our goal is to provide a brief and concise introduction of the mathematical terminology associated with the modality of EEG. We start from the very beginning, presenting step by step the mathematical formulation behind EEG in a simple and clear manner, keeping the mathematical notation to a minimum. Whilst we serve only the key relations for the described problems, we focus specifically on the limitations of each modelling approach. In this fashion, the reader can appreciate the beauty of the formulas presented and discover every single piece of information encoded within these formulas.

The present work is part of a series of studies conducted by the authors on analytical models of avascular tumour growth that exhibit both geometrical anisotropy and physical inhomogeneity. In particular, we consider a tumour structure formed in distinct ellipsoidal regions occupied by cell populations at a certain stage of their biological cycle. The cancer cells receive nutrient by diffusion from an inhomogeneous supply and they are subject to also an inhomogeneous pressure field imposed by the tumour microenvironment. It is proved that the lack of symmetry is strongly connected to a special condition that should hold between the data imposed by the tumour's surrounding medium, in order for the ellipsoidal growth to be realizable, a feature already present in other non-symmetrical yet more degenerate models. The nutrient and the inhibitor concentration, as well as the pressure field, are provided in analytical fashion via closed-form series solutions in terms of ellipsoidal eigen-functions, while their behaviour is demonstrated by indicative plots. The evolution equation of all the tumour's ellipsoidal interfaces is postulated in ellipsoidal terms and a numerical implementation is provided in view of its solution. From the mathematical point of view, the ellipsoidal system is the most general coordinate system that the Laplace operator, which dominates the mathematical models of avascular growth, enjoys spectral decomposition. Therefore, we consider the ellipsoidal model presented in this work, as the most general analytic model describing the avascular growth in inhomogeneous environment. Additionally, due to the intrinsic degrees of freedom inherited to the model by the ellipsoidal geometry, the ellipsoidal model presented can be adapted to a very populous class of avascular tumours, varying in figure and in orientation.

The opening up of the global positioning system (GPS) for non-military uses provided a new impetus for the study of the sea surface topography (SST) and geoid, especially in coastal areas which are important from the viewpoint of the climate crisis. The application of the “GPS/GNSS on boat” method, as an alternative to traditional (indirect and direct) methods, has provided detailed SST maps in coastal and oceanic areas with an accuracy of up to few centimeters. In this work we present the first critical review concerning the evolution of the “GPS/GNSS on boat” method over a period of 27 years. Twenty-one papers, covering the 27 years of related research, are critically reviewed, focusing on the innovations they introduce, the solutions they present and the accuracy they achieve. Further improvement of the method, principally of its accuracy, and the extension of SST measurements to additional coastal environments open new perspectives for the examination of open geophysical problems and climate change.