Some new approximation methods are described for harmonic functions corresponding to boundary values on the (unit) sphere. Starting from the usual Fourier (orthogonal) series approach, we propose here nonorthogonal expansions, i.e. series expansions in terms of overcomplete systems consisting of localizing functions. In detail, we are concerned with the so-called Gabor, Toeplitz, and wavelet expansions. Essential tools are modulations, rotations, and dilations of a mother wavelet. The Abel-Poisson kernel turns out to be the appropriate mother wavelet in approximation of harmonic functions from potential values on a spherical boundary.

With this article we first like to give a brief review on wavelet thresholding methods in non-Gaussian and non-i.i.d. situations, respectively. Many of these applications are based on Gaussian approximations of the empirical coefficients. For regression and density estimation with independent observations, we establish joint asymptotic normality of the empirical coefficients by means of strong approximations. Then we describe how one can prove asymptotic normality under mixing conditions on the observations by cumulant techniques.; In the second part, we apply these non-linear adaptive shrinking schemes to spectral estimation problems for both a stationary and a non-stationary time series setup. For the latter one, in a model of Dahlhaus on the evolutionary spectrum of a locally stationary time series, we present two different approaches. Moreover, we show that in classes of anisotropic function spaces an appropriately chosen wavelet basis automatically adapts to possibly different degrees of regularity for the different directions. The resulting fully-adaptive spectral estimator attains the rate that is optimal in the idealized Gaussian white noise model up to a logarithmic factor.

In the automotive industry both the loca l strain approach and rainflow counting are well known and approved tools in the numerical estimation of the lifetime of a new developed part especially in the automotive industry. This paper is devoted to the combination of both tools and a new algorithm is given that takes advantage of the inner structure of the most used damage parameters.

A way to derive consistently kinetic models for vehicular traffic from microscopic follow the leader models is presented. The obtained class of kinetic equations is investigated. Explicit examples for kinetic models are developed with a particular emphasis on obtaining models, that give realistic results. For space homogeneous traffic flow situations numerical examples are given including stationary distributions and fundamental diagrams.