Conference report: Middlesex University Centre for Co-production in Mental Health inaugural international seminar 18th July 2016 - ‘Insider, outsider, impostor?’ Perspectives of mental health service user and survivor researchers and teachers on co-production in academia

Conference repor

Equilibrium transition study for a hybrid MAV

Wind tunnel testing was performed on a VTOL aircraft in order to characterize longitudinal flight behavior during an equilibrium transition between vertical and horizontal flight modes. Trim values for airspeed, pitch, motor speed and elevator position were determined. Data was collected by independently varying the trim parameters, and stability and control derivatives were identified as functions of the trim pitch angle. A linear fractional representation model was then proposed, along with several methods to improve longitudinal control of the aircraft

Quantifying Non-Equilibrium in Hypersonic Flows Using Entropy Generation

The constitutive relations traditionally used for finding shear stress and heat flux in a fluid become invalid in non-equilibrium flow. Their derivation from kinetic theory only demonstrates they are valid only for small deviations from equilibrium. Because it is fundamentally linked to non-equilibrium, entropy generation is used to investigate the limits of the continuum constitutive relations. However, the continuum equations are inherently limited to near equilibrium conditions due to the constitutive relations; thus kinetic theory must be used as a basis for comparison. Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC), a particle method alternative to continuum methods, is based on kinetic theory and is used to develop a flow solution free from equilibrium assumptions. Solutions were obtained for hypersonic flow over two axisymmetric geometries using both a continuum solver and DSMC. Formulations for entropy generation are presented for each method, and the two solutions are compared. The continuum solver fails to capture regions of non-equilibrium as evidenced by thicker shocks in the DSMC solution. To extend the useful range of the continuum constitutive relations, the Lennard-Jones model is offered as an alternative to Sutherland\u27s Law for calculating viscosity and thermal conductivity. The two are compared, and parameters offering a good fit for these flows are suggested for the Lennard-Jones model

Generation and Analysis of Strategies in an Evolutionary Social Learning Game

An important way to learn new actions and behaviors is by observing others, and several evolutionary games have been developed to investigate what learning strategies work best and how they might have evolved. In this dissertation I present an extensive set of mathematical and simulation results for Cultaptation, which is one of the best-known such games. I derive a formula for measuring a strategy's expected reproductive success, and provide algorithms to compute near-best-response strategies and near-Nash equilibria. Some of these algorithms are too complex to run quickly on larger versions of Cultaptation, so I also show how they can be approximated to be able to handle larger games, while still exhibiting better performance than the current best-known Cultaptation strategy for such games. Experimental studies provide strong evidence for the following hypotheses: 1. The best strategies for Cultaptation and similar games are likely to be conditional ones in which the choice of action at each round is conditioned on the agent's accumulated experience. Such strategies (or close approximations of them) can be computed by doing a lookahead search that predicts how each possible choice of action at the current round is likely to affect future performance. 2. Such strategies are likely to prefer social learning most of the time, but will have ways of quickly detecting structural shocks, so that they can switch quickly to individual learning in order to learn how to respond to such shocks. This conflicts with the conventional wisdom that successful social-learning strategies are characterized by a high frequency of individual learning; and agrees with recent experiments by others on human subjects that also challenge the conventional wisdom

Optimal Control Methods for Missile Evasion

Optimal control theory is applied to the study of missile evasion, particularly in the case of a single pursuing missile versus a single evading aircraft. It is proposed to divide the evasion problem into two phases, where the primary considerations are energy and maneuverability, respectively. Traditional evasion tactics are well documented for use in the maneuverability phase. To represent the first phase dominated by energy management, the optimal control problem may be posed in two ways, as a fixed final time problem with the objective of maximizing the final distance between the evader and pursuer, and as a free final time problem with the objective of maximizing the final time when the missile reaches some capture distance away from the evader.These two optimal control problems are studied under several different scenarios regarding assumptions about the pursuer. First, a suboptimal control strategy, proportional navigation, is used for the pursuer. Second, it is assumed that the pursuer acts optimally, requiring the solution of a two-sided optimal control problem, otherwise known as a differential game. The resulting trajectory is known as a minimax, and it can be shown that it accounts for uncertainty in the pursuer\u27s control strategy. Finally, a pursuer whose motion and state are uncertain is studied in the context of Receding Horizon Control and Real Time Optimal Control. The results highlight how updating the optimal control trajectory reduces the uncertainty in the resulting miss distance

Towards a model for monitoring public services projects in Saudi Arabia

Information and communication technology (ICT) has been adopted by many governments around the world in the form of e-government to facilitate service delivery to the public. Saudi Arabia is an example of such a country that has adopted technology with these aims, but there is a failure in enabling the engagement of citizens with government to deliver public services projects with assured quality standards. The failings are blamed on the system's lack of support for stakeholder oversight. In light of these inadequacies, more effective monitoring of project construction and project implementation is required in order to improve public service quality from a long-term perspective. Fixes have been proposed to the lack of two-way communication between citizens and the government by inviting feedback from citizens through social media and other communication channels, however, a cohesive overarching model that enables the engagement of citizens with government projects has yet to be devised. There is a clear need for a model that can be applied to design official systems to facilitate consultation between the government and the public and to invite feedback from key stakeholders throughout each stage of the project lifecycle. This paper proposes a conceptual model to facilitate citizens in monitoring the quality of public services and the progress of public service projects. It is designed based on an in-depth analysis of the available systems on the market, e-participation studies and theoretical work presented in the literature. The paper also recommends technologies and features that will facilitate the implementation of the model in different contexts

Dynamic Elite Partisanship: Party Loyalty and Agenda Setting in the U.S. House

Legislators and legislative parties must strike a balance between collective and member-level goals. While there are legislative and reputational returns to co-ordinated behavior, partisan loyalty has a detrimental effect on members’ electoral success. This article argues that members and parties navigate these competing forces by pursuing partisan legislation when the threat of electoral repercussions is relatively low – when elections are distant. This study tests our theory by examining US House members’ likelihood of voting with their party on both partisan and non-divisive votes during the course of the election cycle in order to assess whether members strategically alter their levels of party loyalty as elections approach. It also explores whether majority parties strategically structure the agenda according to variation in members’ electoral constraints. This approach allows elite partisanship to follow a dynamic process, which is referred to here as dynamic elite partisanship. The results demonstrate that as elections approach, members are less likely to cast party votes, and parties are less inclined to schedule votes that divide the parties. At the same time, the study finds no evidence of strategic variation in members’ voting behavior on broadly consensual votes with election proximity