TMsim : an algorithmic tool for the parametric and worst-case simulation of systems with uncertainties

This paper presents a general purpose, algebraic tool—named TMsim—for the combined parametric and worst-case analysis of systems with bounded uncertain parameters.The tool is based on the theory of Taylor models and represents uncertain variables on a bounded domain in terms of a Taylor polynomial plus an interval remainder accounting for truncation and round-off errors.This representation is propagated from inputs to outputs by means of a suitable redefinition of the involved calculations, in both scalar and matrix form. The polynomial provides a parametric approximation of the variable, while the remainder gives a conservative bound of the associated error. The combination between the bound of the polynomial and the interval remainder provides an estimation of the overall (worst-case) bound of the variable. After a preliminary theoretical background, the tool (freely available online) is introduced step by step along with the necessary theoretical notions. As a validation, it is applied to illustrative examples as well as to real-life problems of relevance in electrical engineering applications, specifically a quarter-car model and a continuous time linear equalizer

What the alligator didn't know: natural selection and love in our mutual friend

This essay reads Our Mutual Friend as Dickens's rejoinder to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, and sees it as a novel that is profoundly shaped by the imaginative impact of Darwin's work. However, the direct influence of On the Origin of Species is not the essay's major concern. Instead, the essay sees this novel as a response to some of the questions posed by Darwin's work about how a natural world driven by chance and contigency, death, waste and hunger might be redeemed. I focus on the figure of Mr Venus, the taxidermist who, I argue, is an affectionate portrait of Dickens's friend Richard Owen. By tracing Owen's involvement in debates over evolution and the origins of life, I show that these contemporary debates had a considerable backwash in a novel saturated with the metaphors of evolution, and centrally concerned with the nature of, and the relationship betweeen, life and death. I suggest that Mr Venus's shop is a comic version of the Hunterian Museum, over which Owen presided, and that its portrayal encapuslates the novel's concerns with evolution, life and death. I argue that Dickens's response to the challenge of Darwinism is to see love as the world's redemption, and that he uses transmuted versions of Mr Venus's shop as a vivid metaphor for the idea that love is the redeeming spark of life. I suggest, though, that in the post-Darwinian imaginative landscape, love could not redeem all, and that Dickens's redeeming vision of love is finally inadequate to save all his characters. 'What the alligator knew, ages deep in the slime' was that love was powerless against nature - and what it didn't know, and Dickens tried to show in this, his last completed novel, is that in spite of the ruthless rapacity of both nature and human society, love makes the world go round

Antidumping in law and practice

The alarming increase in the number of antidumping actions pursued by both industrial and developing countries has caused considerable concern among economists, lawyers, and trade reformers. These concerns have led to suggestions to substitute antitrust principles for antidumping laws and regulations or to use safeguard measures under Article XIX of GATT 1994 and the Uruguay Round Agreement on Safeguards. The author contends that, under current international trade law, neither proposal appears feasible. Moreover, antidumping actions have become a fact of life and the international community recognizes them as the only legitimate tool to combat dumping as defined by and determined in accordance with law. Despite urgings in some quarters, neither national legal systems nor international agreements have mandated an economy-wide cost-benefit analysis of proposed antidumping actions. Because of political, technical, and other implications, such a methodology is unlikely to be accepted soon. Although the most recent Uruguay Round antidumping agreement (URAA) has enhanced the discipline and made a number of improvements, it cannot claim to have plugged all loopholes for the misuse of antidumping. In those matters on which the agreement is silent or ambiguous or allows room for flexibility in adopting a less restrictive rule or practice. A case in point is the U.S. practice on voting in the International Trade Commission. A 3-3 vote in antidumping and countervailing duty investigation constitutes an affirmative decision. It would be preferable to require a clear majority rather than treat an evenly divided vote as sufficient to establish a finding of injury.Markets and Market Access,Environmental Economics&Policies,General Technology,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Economic Theory&Research,Access to Markets,Markets and Market Access,Trade Policy,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT

Striking a Balance Between Physical and Digital Resources

In various configurations—be they academic, archival, county, juvenile, monastic, national, personal, public, reference, or research, the library has been a fixture in human affairs for a long time. Digital — meaning, content or communication that is delivered through the internet, is 20 years old (but younger in parts). Basically, both approaches to organizing serve to structure information for access. However, digital is multiplying very fast and libraries all-round contemplate an existential crisis; the more hopeful librarians fret about physical and digital space. Yet, the crux of the matter is not about physical vs. digital: without doubt, the digital space of content or communication transmogrifies all walks of life and cannot be wished away; but, the physical space of libraries is time-tested, extremely valuable, and can surely offer more than currently meets the eye. Except for entirely virtual libraries, the symbiotic relationship between the physical and the digital is innately powerful: for superior outcomes, it must be recognized, nurtured, and leveraged; striking a balance between physical and digital resources can be accomplished. This paper examines the subject of delivering digital from macro, meso, and micro perspectives: it looks into complexity theory, digital strategy, and digitization

An author report: Elfreda Annmary Chatman

The main aim of this report is to become familiar with Elfreda A. Chatman and her major works and theories. She has contributed information science by producing several theories such as “the theory of information poverty,” “the normative behavior theory” and “the theory of life in the round” and implemented many studies about information seeking behavior of ordinary people. Although her major is library and information science, she focused on women in prison, the feminist movement, poor workers and janitors at large universities by using an ethnographic perception. She emphasized their information seeking behaviors in small communities and tried to describe their approach about information poverty. Also, she studied public libraries and the role of mentorship of the library leaders. The findings she found in her studies are useful not only for information science but also other disciplines such as sociology and psychology

A probabilistic model of diffusion through a semi-permeable barrier

Diffusion through semipermeable structures arises in a wide range of processes in the physical and life sciences. Examples at the microscopic level range from artificial membranes for reverse osmosis to lipid bilayers regulating molecular transport in biological cells to chemical and electrical gap junctions. There are also macroscopic analogs such as animal migration in heterogeneous landscapes. It has recently been shown that one-dimensional diffusion through a barrier with constant permeability $\kappa_0$ is equivalent to snapping out Brownian motion (BM). The latter sews together successive rounds of partially reflecting BMs that are restricted to either the left or right of the barrier. Each round is killed when its Brownian local time exceeds an exponential random variable parameterized by $\kappa_0$. A new round is then immediately started in either direction with equal probability. In this paper we use a combination of renewal theory, Laplace transforms and Green's function methods to show how an extended version of snapping out BM provides a general probabilistic framework for modeling diffusion through a semipermeable barrier. This includes modifications of the diffusion process away from the barrier (eg. stochastic resetting) and non-Markovian models of membrane absorption that kill each round of partially reflected BM. The latter leads to time-dependent permeabilities.Comment: 29 pages, 7 figure

Indigenous Everyday Life in Chatman’s Small World Theories

Indigenous communities are connected through their worldview or commonly held way of seeing everyday life. In this article we will describe the intersection, match, and mismatch of Chatman’s theories of information poverty, and life in the round and how these theories might be incorporated—or not—in understanding contemporary indigenous living. Within the theory of information poverty, we will consider Chatman’s four notions defining an impoverished lifeworld: secrecy, deception, risk taking, and situational relevance. Secrecy and deception might be interpreted as negatives by outsiders when boundaries are maintained around access to traditional cultural knowledge and its expression. Within the community, though, such behaviors are observances of protocol or expected behavior. Risk taking may be welcomed and applauded but might also result in the individual Native risk taker stepping into the interface frame of being an outsider, or someone who is now separated from their trial community. Relevance is contextual and is interpreted by indigenous peoples in terms of its ability to support tribal sovereignty. Chatman’s Theory of Life in the Round presents how individuals find fulfillment in their lives as understood through the concepts of worldview, societal norms, small worlds or settings, and the roles or social types to which people are assigned. These concepts can be seen in indigenous life as the connection to the land and clan kinship models. Our article will close within the framework of Cajete’s model of a fulfilled indigenous life as one where someone can find their true face, heart, and foundation. In this article we refer to the first or original peoples of the land as Native or Indigenous. We refer to first peoples living within the borders of the United States as American Indian or Indian. Indian Country is where Native people live and includes indigenous homeland areas including lands referred to as reservations. That said, Native people consider all land indigenous land. Together, our writing is based on decades of direct interaction with and observation of indigenous peoples from numerous tribal communities, our personal writing and review of the literature, as well as our own cultural affiliations and life backgrounds. Pre-print first published online 6/22/202

Comparative Analysis of Fatigue Life Predictions in Lateral Notched Round Bars under Multiaxial Loading

The main objective of this study is to predict the multiaxial fatigue life for lateral notched round bars made of DIN 34CrNiMo6 high strength steel. In-phase bending-torsion tests for different stress amplitudes and different ratios of the normal stress to the shear stress were performed. Single torsion and single bending tests were also conducted for different stress amplitudes. In addition, the beach marking technique was used to mark crack fronts on fracture surfaces for the different loading paths studied. Experimental fatigue life was compared with predictions obtained by the Coffin-Manson model. The stress-strain state at the notch root was evaluated using the Theory of Critical Distances (TCD) and the Equivalent Strain Energy Density (ESED). Finally, a comparative analysis of the fatigue life predictions obtained by the two above-mentioned approaches was carried out. The former gave good results for higher lives but was too conservative for lower lives. The latter led to good correlations in the range studied here

Character and conflict in Agatha Christie’s crooked house

Characters are the important element in the novel to build the story more interesting. Usually, the main characters in the novel have mental and physical similarities in the real life. The character is the person in a story, a character can also society, race, mental and moral attitude, quality of reason, famous person, figure in the literary work created by the author from what they do or what they say. The character fully displayed to represent the author’s own ideas as they occur in everyday life. This present study discusses the characters and conflicts in Crooked House novel aimed to find two things: 1) Character that exist in Crooked House novel. 2) The conflict that exists in Crooked House novel. The research data used the theory from E.M Forster who introduced the theory of flat and round characters to find character reflected in the novel Crooked House. Then, to analyze conflict used theory of Robert Stanton to know the conflict that exist in Crooked House novel. This study used qualitative descriptive method to find character and conflicts that exist in Crooked House novel. The researcher identifies the determination of analysis and conclusion to the research data. The result of this present study shows that there are fifty-one data which are divided into two types. Those are twenty-two data of flat character, there are Shopia Leonides, Charles Hayward, Magda Leonides, Philip Leonides, and Laurence Brown, and twenty-nine data of round characters, there are Brenda Leonides, Clemency Leonides, Roger Leonides, Edith de Haviland, Aristide Leonides, Josephine Leonides, Eustace Leonides, and Mr Gaitskill which describe how the characters in Crooked House novel. Then in the conflict found eight data which are divided into two types that is two data of internal conflict there are Charles Hayward and Eustace Leonides, and six data of external conflict there are Sophia Leonides, Josephine Leonides and Roger Leonides