This paper treats two topics: matrices with sign patterns and Jacobians of certain mappings. The main topic is counting the number of plus and minus coefficients in the determinant expansion of sign patterns and of these Jacobians. The paper is motivated by an approach to chemical networks initiated by Craciun and Feinberg. We also give a graph-theoretic test for determining when the Jacobian o...

We construct examples of families of curves of genus 2 or 3 over Q whose Jacobians split completely and have various large rational torsion subgroups. For example, the rational points on a certain elliptic surface over P of positive rank parameterize a family of genus-2 curves over Q whose Jacobians each have 128 rational torsion points. Also, we find the genus-3 curve 15625(X + Y 4 + Z)− 96914...

We construct examples of families of curves of genus 2 or 3 over Q whose Jacobians split completely and have various large rational torsion subgroups. For example, the rational points on a certain elliptic surface over P of positive rank parameterize a family of genus-2 curves over Q whose Jacobians each have 128 rational torsion points. Also, we find the genus-3 curve 15625(X4 + Y 4 + Z4)− 969...

By the Lefschetz embedding theorem a principally polarized g-dimensional abelian variety is embedded into projective space by the linear system of 4 half-characteristic theta functions. Suppose we edit this linear system by dropping all the theta functions vanishing at the origin to order greater than parity requires. We prove that for Jacobians the edited 4Θ linear system still defines an embe...