Limiting Risk by Turning Manifest Phantoms into Evil Zombies

Drawing a random sample of ballots to conduct a risk-limiting audit generally requires knowing how the ballots cast in an election are organized into groups, for instance, how many containers of ballots there are in all and how many ballots are in each container. A list of the ballot group identifiers along with number of ballots in each group is called a ballot manifest. What if the ballot manifest is not accurate? Surprisingly, even if ballots are known to be missing from the manifest, it is not necessary to make worst-case assumptions about those ballots--for instance, to adjust the margin by the number of missing ballots--to ensure that the audit remains conservative. Rather, it suffices to make worst-case assumptions about the individual randomly selected ballots that the audit cannot find. This observation provides a simple modification to some risk-limiting audit procedures that makes them automatically become more conservative if the ballot manifest has errors. The modification--phantoms to evil zombies (~2EZ)--requires only an upper bound on the total number of ballots cast. ~2EZ makes the audit P-value stochastically larger than it would be had the manifest been accurate, automatically requiring more than enough ballots to be audited to offset the manifest errors. This ensures that the true risk limit remains smaller than the nominal risk limit. On the other hand, if the manifest is in fact accurate and the upper bound on the total number of ballots equals the total according to the manifest, ~2EZ has no effect at all on the number of ballots audited nor on the true risk limit

Inverse Modelling to Obtain Head Movement Controller Signal

Experimentally obtained dynamics of time-optimal, horizontal head rotations have previously been simulated by a sixth order, nonlinear model driven by rectangular control signals. Electromyography (EMG) recordings have spects which differ in detail from the theoretical rectangular pulsed control signal. Control signals for time-optimal as well as sub-optimal horizontal head rotations were obtained by means of an inverse modelling procedures. With experimentally measured dynamical data serving as the input, this procedure inverts the model to produce the neurological control signals driving muscles and plant. The relationships between these controller signals, and EMG records should contribute to the understanding of the neurological control of movements

Critical Approaches to Continental Philosophy: Intellectual Community, Disciplinary Identity, and the Politics of Inclusion

This article examines what it means to produce critical continental philosophyin contexts where the label of “continental” may seem increasingly tenuous, ifnot entirely anachronistic. We follow Ghassan Hage in understanding “criticalthought” as enabling us “to reflexively move outside of ourselves such that wecan start seeing ourselves in ways we could not have possibly seen ourselves, ourculture or our society before.” Such thought may involve an interrogation of ourown conditions of knowledge production, by giving us “access to forces that areoutside of us but that are acting on us causally.” Our argument in this article isthat critical approaches within continental philosophy need to examine a multiplicity of ways that disciplines can be defined and delimited, and to understandthe ways that gender, geography, and coloniality (among other forces) shape theintellectual and social worlds of continental philosophy. In doing so, we wantto consider the ways that familiar debates around intellectual and institutionalbiases might be enhanced by a closer consideration of process-based aspects ofdisciplinary self-reproduction, and we take as our example the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy (ASCP) conference at the University of Tasmania(November 29-December 1, 2017). We also consider Nelson Maldonado-Torres’notion of “post-continental philosophy,” and reflect on the implications of sucha venture in the Australian context. But to begin with, we want to navigate a pathbetween two modes of criticism commonly directed toward philosophy as a discipline

Triphilic ionic-liquid mixtures: fluorinated and non-fluorinated aprotic ionic-liquid mixtures

We present here the possibility of forming triphilic mixtures from alkyl- and fluoroalkylimidazolium ionic liquids, thus, macroscopically homogeneous mixtures for which instead of the often observed two domainspolar and nonpolarthree stable microphases are present: polar, lipophilic, and fluorous ones. The fluorinated side chains of the cations indeed self-associate and form domains that are segregated from those of the polar and alkyl domains. To enable miscibility, despite the generally preferred macroscopic separation between fluorous and alkyl moieties, the importance of strong hydrogen bonding is shown. As the long-range structure in the alkyl and fluoroalkyl domains is dependent on the composition of the liquid, we propose that the heterogeneous, triphilic structure can be easily tuned by the molar ratio of the components. We believe that further development may allow the design of switchable, smart liquids that change their properties in a predictable way according to their composition or even their environment

Manganese Oxide as an Inorganic Catalyst for the Oxygen Evolution Reaction Studied by X-Ray Photoelectron and Operando Raman Spectroscopy

Manganese oxide (MnO$_{x}$) is considered a promising material for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) to replace noble metal catalysts in water splitting. The improvement of MnO$_{x}$ requires mechanistic and kinetic knowledge of the four-electron transfer steps of the OER. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, a widely used tool to characterize the electronic structure of thin films, is used in combination with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to gain a deeper knowledge of the different mixed MnO$_{x}$ types and their respective change in chemical composition. Using Raman spectroscopy during electrochemical measurements, all samples were found to reveal Birnessite-type MnO$_{2}$ motifs in alkaline media at an applied potential. Their activity correlates with two shifting Raman active modes, one of them being assigned to the formation of Mn$^{III}$ species, and one to the expansion of layers of MnO$_{6}$ octahedra. A special activation treatment leads independent of the starting material to a highly amorphous mixed-valence oxide, which shows the highest OER activity

Giant Molecular Clouds are More Concentrated to Spiral Arms than Smaller Clouds

From our catalog of Milky Way molecular clouds, created using a temperature thresholding algorithm on the Bell Laboratories 13CO Survey, we have extracted two subsets:(1) Giant Molecular Clouds (GMCs), clouds that are definitely larger than 10^5 solar masses, even if they are at their `near distance', and (2) clouds that are definitely smaller than 10^5 solar masses, even if they are at their `far distance'. The positions and velocities of these clouds are compared to the loci of spiral arms in (l, v) space. The velocity separation of each cloud from the nearest spiral arm is introduced as a `concentration statistic'. Almost all of the GMCs are found near spiral arms. The density of smaller clouds is enhanced near spiral arms, but some clouds (~10%) are unassociated with any spiral arm. The median velocity separation between a GMC and the nearest spiral arm is 3.4+-0.6 km/s, whereas the median separation between smaller clouds and the nearest spiral arm is 5.5+-0.2 km/s.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Low-power methods of power sensing and frequency detection for wideband vibration energy harvesting

Power maximisation techniques in wideband vibration energy harvesting typically require the periodic sensing of input power or excitation frequency. This paper presents low- power circuits and sensing methods to obtain this information. First, an excitation frequency measurement circuit is presented that permits a reduced timer run-time compared to reported methods. Second, a power sensing method is presented, which extends the measurement range of reported techniques by adapting to the levels of the available power. Experimental results for the frequency measurement circuit tested in the range 35-51 Hz show a power consumption of 3.7 μW. The power-sensing technique is experimentally validated over a power range of 370690 μW, and its power consumption is 7.5 μW