Delhi and the Indian Mutiny, May to September 1857: The campaign of the Delhi Field Force and its operations to recover Delhi

For centuries men have fought over the rich and populous sub continent of India. In the last seven hundred years it has suffered from the attentions of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, European invaders, and from a host of internal power struggles and wars. Although Britain's influence and subsequent control of India played a pivotal part in the history of both countries, it nevertheless only encompasses a period of some three hundred or so years. From its earliest trade links with Britain at the start of the seventeenth century to its independence in the mid twentieth is only one chapter in India's long and turbulent history. During this period India changed from useful trading partner to Crown colony and eventually the most glittering jewel in the Imperial Crown. Britain invested hugely in India, sent some of its best soldiers and statesmen to secure it, fought wars to defend it, and risked all to control it. From the granting of a Royal Charter by Elizabeth I in 1600 the gateway to India was opened and the East India Company was born. The Company eventually rose to unprecedented heights of power and authority and its fate was linked with that of India for two hundred and fifty years. But in 1857 the Indian Mutiny rocked the British Empire to its very foundations. It has been seen by some as India's first war of independence. In reality it was a mutiny of military forces, albeit on an unprecedented scale. It is not the intention here to revisit the vast literature on the mutiny, nor to provide an overview of its whole course. Instead the focus will be on one specific part of the conflict, the loss and subsequent recapture of the city of Delhi. In the early stages of the mutiny Delhi was the only place where the mutineers appeared to be on the defensive against a British force which attempted to maintain the initiative. Despite being hugely outnumbered the Delhi Field Force, as it came to be known, contained the mutineers for three months before eventually storming and retaking the city. It is through these actions that some of the strongest arguments for the mutiny being something greater than a military insurrection are generated and given the greatest credibility. There is compelling evidence to suggest that the mutiny may have been only a part of a planned general rising, even though no such insurrection took place. The siege of Delhi figured heavily in the early stages of the mutiny, as it became a focal point and rallying place for the mutineers. The campaign to retake the city and the mutineers' defence of it give many valuable clues to the subsequent course of the mutiny and the reasons for its eventual failure. Delhi's pivotal role in the Mutiny forms the basis for this thesis, and for the argument that the capture of Delhi was not the unique and unlikely victory that history generally suggests

Energy-level statistics at the metal-insulator transition in anisotropic systems

We study the three-dimensional Anderson model of localization with anisotropic hopping, i.e. weakly coupled chains and weakly coupled planes. In our extensive numerical study we identify and characterize the metal-insulator transition using energy-level statistics. The values of the critical disorder $W_c$ are consistent with results of previous studies, including the transfer-matrix method and multifractal analysis of the wave functions. $W_c$ decreases from its isotropic value with a power law as a function of anisotropy. Using high accuracy data for large system sizes we estimate the critical exponent $\nu=1.45\pm0.2$. This is in agreement with its value in the isotropic case and in other models of the orthogonal universality class. The critical level statistics which is independent of the system size at the transition changes from its isotropic form towards the Poisson statistics with increasing anisotropy.Comment: 22 pages, including 8 figures, revtex few typos corrected, added journal referenc

The three-dimensional Anderson model of localization with binary random potential

We study the three-dimensional two-band Anderson model of localization and compare our results to experimental results for amorphous metallic alloys (AMA). Using the transfer-matrix method, we identify and characterize the metal-insulator transitions as functions of Fermi level position, band broadening due to disorder and concentration of alloy composition. The appropriate phase diagrams of regions of extended and localized electronic states are studied and qualitative agreement with AMA such as Ti-Ni and Ti-Cu metallic glasses is found. We estimate the critical exponents nu_W, nu_E and nu_x when either disorder W, energy E or concentration x is varied, respectively. All our results are compatible with the universal value nu ~ 1.6 obtained in the single-band Anderson model.Comment: 9 RevTeX4 pages with 11 .eps figures included, submitted to PR

The Scottish Mental Survey 1932 linked to the Midspan studies: a prospective investigation of childhood intelligence and future health

The Scottish Mental Survey of 1932 (SMS1932) recorded mental ability test scores for nearly all of the age group of children born in 1921 and at school in Scotland on 1st June 1932. The Collaborative and Renfrew/Paisley studies, two of the Midspan studies, obtained health and social data by questionnaire and a physical examination in the 1970s. Some Midspan participants were born in 1921 and may have taken part in the SMS1932, so might have mental ability data available from childhood. The 1921-born Midspan participants were matched with the computerised SMS1932 database. The total numbers successfully matched were 1032 out of 1251 people (82.5%). Of those matched, 938 (90.9%) had a mental ability test score recorded. The mean score of the matched sample was 37.2 (standard deviation [SD] 13.9) out of a possible score of 76. The mean (SD) for the boys and girls respectively was 38.3 (14.2) and 35.7 (13.9). This compared with 38.6 (15.7) and 37.2 (14.3) for boys and girls in all of Scotland. Graded relationships were found between mental ability in childhood, and social class and deprivation category of residence in adulthood. Being in a higher social class or in a more affluent deprivation category was associated with higher childhood mental ability scores and the scores reduced with increasing deprivation. Future plans for the matched data include examining associations between childhood mental ability and other childhood and adult risk factors for disease in adulthood, and modelling childhood mental ability, alongside other factors available in the Midspan database, as a risk factor for specific illnesses, admission to hospital and mortality

Bond-disordered Anderson model on a two dimensional square lattice - chiral symmetry and restoration of one-parameter scaling

Bond-disordered Anderson model in two dimensions on a square lattice is studied numerically near the band center by calculating density of states (DoS), multifractal properties of eigenstates and the localization length. DoS divergence at the band center is studied and compared with Gade's result [Nucl. Phys. B 398, 499 (1993)] and the powerlaw. Although Gade's form describes accurately DoS of finite size systems near the band-center, it fails to describe the calculated part of DoS of the infinite system, and a new expression is proposed. Study of the level spacing distributions reveals that the state closest to the band center and the next one have different level spacing distribution than the pairs of states away from the band center. Multifractal properties of finite systems furthermore show that scaling of eigenstates changes discontinuously near the band center. This unusual behavior suggests the existence of a new divergent length scale, whose existence is explained as the finite size manifestation of the band center critical point of the infinite system, and the critical exponent of the correlation length is calculated by a finite size scaling. Furthermore, study of scaling of Lyapunov exponents of transfer matrices of long stripes indicates that for a long stripe of any width there is an energy region around band center within which the Lyapunov exponents cannot be described by one-parameter scaling. This region, however, vanishes in the limit of the infinite square lattice when one-parameter scaling is restored, and the scaling exponent calculated, in agreement with the result of the finite size scaling analysis.Comment: 23 pages, 11 figures. RevTe

The random phase property and the Lyapunov Spectrum for disordered multi-channel systems

A random phase property establishing in the weak coupling limit a link between quasi-one-dimensional random Schrödinger operators and full random matrix theory is advocated. Briefly summarized it states that the random transfer matrices placed into a normal system of coordinates act on the isotropic frames and lead to a Markov process with a unique invariant measure which is of geometric nature. On the elliptic part of the transfer matrices, this measure is invariant under the unitaries in the hermitian symplectic group of the universality class under study. While the random phase property can up to now only be proved in special models or in a restricted sense, we provide strong numerical evidence that it holds in the Anderson model of localization. A main outcome of the random phase property is a perturbative calculation of the Lyapunov exponents which shows that the Lyapunov spectrum is equidistant and that the localization lengths for large systems in the unitary, orthogonal and symplectic ensemble differ by a factor 2 each. In an Anderson-Ando model on a tubular geometry with magnetic field and spin-orbit coupling, the normal system of coordinates is calculated and this is used to derive explicit energy dependent formulas for the Lyapunov spectrum

Review: The Newsletter of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, volume 14, issue 1

Contents include: Far From Inundated, A Word form the President, BHAGS Words of Welcome, Remarks from Conference Co-Chair Ed Sobel, Keynote Speech Given by Chuck Smith Introduced by Michele Volansky, The Telephone Monologues: Five Monologues Written for the 2003 LMDA Conference introduced by Janet Allard, Telephone, Billy, The Visitors, A Drag Queen, Choice, Don\u27t Know Much About Holly-turgy Outline, Reflections on Conference 2003, Elect Better Actors, Neo-Romantic Manifesto, Pullet Surprise-Call for Nominations, and Regional News-Know Your Regional Vice Presidents. Issue editors: D.J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr, Liz Engelman, Madeleine Oldham, Jacob Zimmerhttps://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/lmdareview/1028/thumbnail.jp

On the verge of Umdeutung in Minnesota: Van Vleck and the correspondence principle (Part One)

In October 1924, the Physical Review, a relatively minor journal at the time, published a remarkable two-part paper by John H. Van Vleck, working in virtual isolation at the University of Minnesota. Van Vleck combined advanced techniques of classical mechanics with Bohr's correspondence principle and Einstein's quantum theory of radiation to find quantum analogues of classical expressions for the emission, absorption, and dispersion of radiation. For modern readers Van Vleck's paper is much easier to follow than the famous paper by Kramers and Heisenberg on dispersion theory, which covers similar terrain and is widely credited to have led directly to Heisenberg's "Umdeutung" paper. This makes Van Vleck's paper extremely valuable for the reconstruction of the genesis of matrix mechanics. It also makes it tempting to ask why Van Vleck did not take the next step and develop matrix mechanics himself.Comment: 82 page

Identification of common genetic risk variants for autism spectrum disorder

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly heritable and heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental phenotypes diagnosed in more than 1% of children. Common genetic variants contribute substantially to ASD susceptibility, but to date no individual variants have been robustly associated with ASD. With a marked sample-size increase from a unique Danish population resource, we report a genome-wide association meta-analysis of 18,381 individuals with ASD and 27,969 controls that identified five genome-wide-significant loci. Leveraging GWAS results from three phenotypes with significantly overlapping genetic architectures (schizophrenia, major depression, and educational attainment), we identified seven additional loci shared with other traits at equally strict significance levels. Dissecting the polygenic architecture, we found both quantitative and qualitative polygenic heterogeneity across ASD subtypes. These results highlight biological insights, particularly relating to neuronal function and corticogenesis, and establish that GWAS performed at scale will be much more productive in the near term in ASD.Peer reviewe