What Will They Think of Us?

One day, hopefully in the far-distant future, an archaeologist may come across the ruins of our American civilization that it had been. In order to do this, he may attempt to analyze the words and phrases that we used. For example, he may discover that George Dewey, an admiral in the U.S. Navy, is reputed to have said at Manila Bay, You may fire when ready, Gridley. And he may also discover that William Prescott, a Revolutionary soldier, said at Bunker Hill, Don\u27t fire until you see the whites of their eyes. As these two quotations are clearly at variance with each other in determining the proper time to fire at an adversary, he may conclude that the American people were split about 50-50 between the laissez-faire attitude of Admiral Dewey and the considerably stricter requirements laid down by Mr. Prescott. Or did the rules change drastically, depending on whether one was on land or at sea

The Strong Vs. The Weak

In the English language, verbs are divided into two groups: the strong and the weak. Weak verbs are those which simply add the letters ED onto the basic verb in order to form the other principal parts; an example is the verb WALK, WALKED, WALKED. A strong verb is one which changes its spelling in order to form the three principal parts; an example is the verb SING, SANG, SUNG

The Perils of Literal Translation

It is well known that all languages have their own peculiar idioms. Reckless translation into foreign languages can sometimes have unfortunate, and sometimes funny, consequences. This fact is amply illustrated by the following story. An engineer had once devised a program which would enable him to translate between any two languages on earth. He described his program at a technical meeting, and in order to demonstrate its power, he had a computer loaded with the new program. After describing the program, he asked the audience to suggest a phrase for him to ask the computer to translate. Someone suggested the phrase out of sight, out of mind . The engineer punched this into the machine, and then asked someone else in the audience to suggest a language that he might translate to. Someone suggested Russian. He loaded that into the machine, punched the Go button, and waited. The machine whirred for a few moments, and finally announced that the translation was such-and-such (in Russian)

Nimbus power systems /1960 - 1969/

Power supply subsystems for use on Nimbus satellite progra

Product Measure Steady States of Generalized Zero Range Processes

We establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of factorizable steady states of the Generalized Zero Range Process. This process allows transitions from a site $i$ to a site $i+q$ involving multiple particles with rates depending on the content of the site $i$, the direction $q$ of movement, and the number of particles moving. We also show the sufficiency of a similar condition for the continuous time Mass Transport Process, where the mass at each site and the amount transferred in each transition are continuous variables; we conjecture that this is also a necessary condition.Comment: 9 pages, LaTeX with IOP style files. v2 has minor corrections; v3 has been rewritten for greater clarit

The Use of Thread Memory in Amnesic Aphasia and Concept Learning.(note 0)

We propose a new type of semantic memory, called thread memory. The primitives of this memory are threads, defined as keyed multilink, loop-free chains, which link semantic nodes. All links run from superordinate categories to subordinate categories. This is the opposite direction to those in the usual tree structure in that brother nodes in the tree share the structure above their common ancestors. The most valuable feature of the thread memory is its capacity to learn. A program which can learn concepts using as data children's primer books, was written by R. Greenblatt and runs on the LISP-MACHINE at the MIT-AI Laboratory. We have considered the thread memory as working hypothesis for exploring the mechanisms of naming deficits in aphasia and the ways of rehabilitation.MIT Artificial Intelligence Laborator

Proof of Rounding by Quenched Disorder of First Order Transitions in Low-Dimensional Quantum Systems

We prove that for quantum lattice systems in d<=2 dimensions the addition of quenched disorder rounds any first order phase transition in the corresponding conjugate order parameter, both at positive temperatures and at T=0. For systems with continuous symmetry the statement extends up to d<=4 dimensions. This establishes for quantum systems the existence of the Imry-Ma phenomenon which for classical systems was proven by Aizenman and Wehr. The extension of the proof to quantum systems is achieved by carrying out the analysis at the level of thermodynamic quantities rather than equilibrium states.Comment: This article presents the detailed derivation of results which were announced in Phys. Rev. Lett. 103 (2009) 197201 (arXiv:0907.2419). v3 incorporates many corrections and improvements resulting from referee comment

ARPES and NMTO Wannier Orbital Theory of LiMo6_{6}O17_{17} - Implications for Unusually Robust Quasi-One Dimensional Behavior

We present the results of a combined study by band theory and angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) of the purple bronze, Li$_{1-x}$Mo$_{6}$O$_{17}$. Structural and electronic origins of its unusually robust quasi-one dimensional (quasi-1D) behavior are investigated in detail. The band structure, in a large energy window around the Fermi energy, is basically 2D and formed by three Mo $t_{2g}$-like extended Wannier orbitals, each one giving rise to a 1D band running at a 120$^\circ$ angle to the two others. A structural "dimerization" from $\mathbf{c}/2$ to $\mathbf{c}$ gaps the $xz$ and $yz$ bands while leaving the $xy$ bands metallic in the gap, but resonantly coupled to the gap edges and, hence, to the other directions. The resulting complex shape of the quasi-1D Fermi surface (FS), verified by our ARPES, thus depends strongly on the Fermi energy position in the gap, implying a great sensitivity to Li stoichiometry of properties dependent on the FS, such as FS nesting or superconductivity. The strong resonances prevent either a two-band tight-binding model or a related real-space ladder picture from giving a valid description of the low-energy electronic structure. We use our extended knowledge of the electronic structure to newly advocate for framing LiMo$_{6}$O$_{17}$ as a weak-coupling material and in that framework can rationalize both the robustness of its quasi-1D behavior and the rather large value of its Luttinger liquid (LL) exponent $\alpha$. Down to a temperature of 6$\,$K we find no evidence for a theoretically expected downward renormalization of perpendicular single particle hopping due to LL fluctuations in the quasi-1D chains.Comment: 53 pages, 17 Figures, 6 year