Nutation damper

A nutation damper for use on a spinning body is disclosed. The damper is positioned parallel to the spin axis of the body and radially displaced therefrom. The damper is partially filled with a fluid and contains a porous media to impede the flow of the fluid induced by nutation

A myth in time: Victor Erice's El sur

En este artículo se estudia tiempo e identidad, mitos y cine en El sur de Victor Erice. Basándose en un análisis de dos escenas, se plantea una relación entre eléxito o fracaso personal, la capacidad para construir mitos, y el transcurso del tiempo. En la primera escena analizada, Estrella aprende a manejar el péndulo en el estudio de su padre, en la segunda, Agustín observa a su ex-amante, Laura, en el melodrama Flor en la sombra. Al principio, tanto Estrella como su padre se confabulan con el mito del otro ? Estrella se deja seducir por la imaginaria omnipotencia de su padre, y Agustín por la identidad cinemática de su antiguo amor. Las mujeres, Estrella y Laura, terminan por rechazar su papel en el drama que es su relación con Agustín, mientras que Agustín , privado de los mitos femeninos que le han soportado e incapaz de cambiar, se suicida, dejando a Estrella el péndulo, símbolo de su perdido poder. Se ve, pues, que la identidad humana (tanto como las identidades cinemáticas) depende de un frágil equilibrio entre el construir mitos y el reconocer que un mito no ofrece mas que una imaginaria estabilidad transitoria: que tendrá que cambiarse con el tiempo, y que tendrá que adaptarse a la continua reconstrucción que exige la paradójica búsqueda de identidad de unos individuos en continua transición

SU(3)-Goodman-de la Harpe-Jones subfactors and the realisation of SU(3) modular invariants

We complete the realisation by braided subfactors, announced by Ocneanu, of all SU(3)-modular invariant partition functions previously classified by Gannon.Comment: 47 pages, minor changes, to appear in Reviews in Mathematical Physic

Spoiled holidays: Damages for disappointment or distress

Generally damages for disappointment or distress following a breach of contract will not be awarded to the innocent party under common law. However where the object of the contract is to provide relaxation or enjoyment, for example, an ocean cruise or a package holiday, damages may be recoverable for disappointment or distress. Damages of this type may also be awarded where there is a breach of the consumer protection provisions of the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth). This paper discusses a number of ‘spoiled’ holiday cases where damages were awarded for disappointment or distress. The liability of travel service providers under the Trade Practices Act 1974 (Cth) is also discussed

Model selection and local geometry

We consider problems in model selection caused by the geometry of models close to their points of intersection. In some cases---including common classes of causal or graphical models, as well as time series models---distinct models may nevertheless have identical tangent spaces. This has two immediate consequences: first, in order to obtain constant power to reject one model in favour of another we need local alternative hypotheses that decrease to the null at a slower rate than the usual parametric $n^{-1/2}$ (typically we will require $n^{-1/4}$ or slower); in other words, to distinguish between the models we need large effect sizes or very large sample sizes. Second, we show that under even weaker conditions on their tangent cones, models in these classes cannot be made simultaneously convex by a reparameterization. This shows that Bayesian network models, amongst others, cannot be learned directly with a convex method similar to the graphical lasso. However, we are able to use our results to suggest methods for model selection that learn the tangent space directly, rather than the model itself. In particular, we give a generic algorithm for learning Bayesian network models