Summary. From cultures ot Streptomyces viridochvoinogenes a new antibiotic, phosphinothricylalanyl-alanine, has been isolated. The new amino acid phosphinothricin is 2-amino-4-methylphosphino-butyric acid, its structure is confirmed by synthesis.The tripeptide is highly active against Gram-positive and Granz-negative bacteria and against thc fungus Botrytis cinerea. Phosphinothricin is an active glutamine synthetase inhibitor.

We introduce a subexponential algorithm for geometric solving of multivariate polynomial equation systems whose bit complexity depends mainly on intrinsic geometric invariants of the solution set. ¿From this algorithm, we derive a new procedure for the decision of consistency of polynomial equation systems whose bit complexity is subexponential, too. As a byproduct, we analyze the division of a polynomial modulo a reduced complete intersection ideal and from this, we obtain an intrinsic lower bound for the logarithmic height of diophantine approximations to a given solution of a zero-dimensional polynomial equation system. This result represents a multivariate version of Liouville's classical theorem on approximation of algebraic numbers by rationals. A special feature of our procedures is their polynomial character with respect to the mentioned geometric invariants when instead of bit operations only arithmetic operations are counted at unit cost. Technically our paper relies on the use of straight-line programs as a data structure for the encoding of polynomials, on a new symbolic application of Newton's algorithm to the Implicit Function Theorem and on a special, basis independent trace formula for affine Gorenstein algebras.

We show several arithmetic estimates for Hilbert's Nullstellensatz. This includes an algorith mic procedure computing the polynomials and constants occurring in a Bezout identity, whose complexity is polynomial in the geometric degree of the system. Moreover, we show for the first time height estimates of intrinsic type for the polynomials and constants appearing, again poly nomial in the geometric degree and linear in the height of the system. These results are based on a suitable representation of polynomials by straight-line programs and duality techniques using the Trace Formula for Gorenstein algebras. As an application we show more precise upper bounds for the function 7ls(x) counting the number of primes yielding an inconsistent modular polynomial equation system. We also give a computationally interesting lower bound for the density of small prime numbers of controlled bit length for the reduction to positive characteris tic of inconsistent systems. Again, this bound is given in terms of intrinsic parameters.

These pages are a first attempt to compare the efficiency of symbolic and numerical analysis procedures that solve systems of multivariate polynomial equations. In particular, we compare Kronecker's solution (from the symbolic approach) with approximate zero theory (introduced by S. Smale as a foundation of numerical analysis). For this purpose we show upper and lower bounds of the bit length of approximate zeros. We also introduce efficient procedures that transform local Kronecker solutions into approximate zeros and conversely. As an application of our study we exhibit an efficient procedure to compute splitting field and Lagrange resolvent of univariate polynomial equations. We remark that this procedure is obtained by a convenient combination of both approaches (numeric and symbolic) to multivariate polynomial solving. Academic Press

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