Extraordinary Gentlemen: the Economic League, business networks, and organised labour in war planning and rearmament

For an organisation active for three-quarters of the twentieth century and heavily backed by some of Britain’s largest companies, it is astonishing how little is known about the Economic League. Founded after the First World War by well-known and influential individuals from the upper echelons of Business to ‘disseminate economic knowledge [and] put forward the case for capitalism amongst the working class’, ephemera produced by the League, especially for the period between the world wars, was circulated by the million and still survives in significant quantities. However, the totality of published academic historical research into its activities extends to just one article and one (self- published) book, by Arthur McIvor in 1989 and Mike Hughes in 1994, respectively. Never at any point willing to divulge past secrets, the League denied McIvor access to its archives while Hughes based his work on a handful of published sources. Late 1980s and early 1990s investigative journalism by Paul Foot and others into the League’s systematic blacklisting of workers brought about its collapse in 1993, and with it – it appears – the deliberate destruction of its records. Thus, until now, Hughes’ work marked the end of research into its activities. This paper has two goals. Firstly, it attempts to answer some of the unknown questions about the League’s membership and finance. The second is to understand the League’s ‘power’ by viewing it through a different lens, not only as a shadowy organisation whose dubious activities warrant highlighting, but as an organisation with aims and objectives like any other, which took decisions that can be evaluated and whose success one can attempt to measure. To achieve this, the years of initial defence planning and subsequent arms expenditure programme from c.1932 to 1940 are re-examined from an employer, rather than employee, perspective, drawing on previously unused material from the Scottish Business Archives

Set-up and evaluation of laser-driven miniflyer system

A laser-driven miniflyer system is built in design similar to those at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Eglin Air Force Base. It is composed of three parts: laser drive source, impact experiment assembly, and diagnostics. The laser drive source is a Nd:YAG laser operating at 1064nm at a maximum energy of 3 J. The impact experiment assembly consists of a BK7 substrate on to which is deposited an ablation layer consisting of carbon, alumina, and aluminum. Mounted on the ablation layer is a metal foil (flyer). The carbon in the ablation layer absorbs the laser energy to form a rapidly expanding plasma. The alumina and aluminum layers provide thermal insulation and also contain the plasma. The set-up is expected to provide flyer velocities in the range of 100 to 1000 m/s. Diagnostics consist of a Photonic Doppler Velocimetry (PDV) system that uses Doppler-shifted coherent laser light to measure the instantaneous velocity of a moving surface, as well as velocity dispersions caused by mechanical or material heterogeneities. This thesis will provide a description of the set-up of the laser-driven miniflyer system, as well as an evaluation of the flyer velocity, measured using the PDV system, as a function of laser energy. The flyer velocity trends will be used in order to characterize and calibrate the system. A manual providing system operation instructions will also be included to serve future users of this miniflyer systemM.S.Committee Chair: Thadhani, Naresh; Committee Member: Das, Suman; Committee Member: Fajardo, Mario; Committee Member: Zhou, Mi

An Investigation into Subject Matter Expert Elicitation in Cost Risk Analysis

This research compares the efficacy of subject matter expert (SME) elicitation methods to other cost estimation methods using a development and production dataset provided by AFLCMC/FZC. First, by using descriptive statistics to evaluate low versus high amount of the respective cost estimation methods by analyzing the means of percent cost growth for both groups. Next, this research involved using a statistics-based approach to investigate whether SME based cost estimating methods have an associated relationship to percent change of Program Acquisition Unit Costs (PAUC), which will be our proxy variable to cost growth. Using a pooled cross-sectional OLS regression analysis model with adjusted R2 of 0.298, 144 POEs sample for development have statistical evidence to support SME based cost estimates have a positive association with Program Acquisition Unit Cost (PAUC). Lastly, this research critically examines SME elicitation methods used within DoD and provides best practices used by industry and academia when eliciting SMEs that the cost estimating community should consider implementing

Distribution‐constrained optimal stopping

We solve the problem of optimal stopping of a Brownian motion subject to the constraint that the stopping time’s distribution is a given measure consisting of finitely many atoms. In particular, we show that this problem can be converted to a finite sequence of state‐constrained optimal control problems with additional states corresponding to the conditional probability of stopping at each possible terminal time. The proof of this correspondence relies on a new variation of the dynamic programming principle for state‐constrained problems, which avoids measurable selections. We emphasize that distribution constraints lead to novel and interesting mathematical problems on their own, but also demonstrate an application in mathematical finance to model‐free superhedging with an outlook on volatility.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146860/1/mafi12171_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146860/2/mafi12171.pd

Three-dimensional low Reynolds number flows near biological filtering and protective layers

Mesoscale filtering and protective layers are replete throughout the natural world. Within the body, arrays of extracellular proteins, microvilli, and cilia can act as both protective layers and mechanosensors. For example, blood flow profiles through the endothelial surface layer determine the amount of shear stress felt by the endothelial cells and may alter the rates at which molecules enter and exit the cells. Characterizing the flow profiles through such layers is therefore critical towards understanding the function of such arrays in cell signaling and molecular filtering. External filtering layers are also important to many animals and plants. Trichomes (the hairs or fine outgrowths on plants) can drastically alter both the average wind speed and profile near the leaf's surface, affecting the rates of nutrient and heat exchange. In this paper, dynamically scaled physical models are used to study the flow profiles outside of arrays of cylinders that represent such filtering and protective layers. In addition, numerical simulations using the Immersed Boundary Method are used to resolve the 3D flows within the layers. The experimental and computational results are compared to analytical results obtained by modeling the layer as a homogeneous porous medium with free flow above the layer. The experimental results show that the bulk flow is well described by simple analytical models. The numerical results show that the spatially averaged flow within the layer is well described by the Brinkman model. The numerical results also demonstrate that the flow can be highly 3D with fluid moving into and out of the layer. These effects are not described by the Brinkman model and may be significant for biologically relevant volume fractions. The results of this paper can be used to understand how variations in density and height of such structures can alter shear stresses and bulk flows.Comment: 28 pages, 10 figure

Autonomous thruster failure recovery on underactuated spacecraft using model predictive control

Thruster failures historically account for a large percentage of failures that have occurred on orbit. These failures are typically handled through redundancy, however, with the push to using smaller, less expensive satellites in clusters or formations there is a need to perform thruster failure recovery without additional hardware. This means that a thruster failure may cause the spacecraft to become underactuated, requiring more advanced control techniques. A model of a thruster-controlled spacecraft is developed and analyzed with a nonlinear controllability test, highlighting several challenges including coupling, nonlinearities, severe control input saturation, and nonholonomicity. Model Predictive Control (MPC) is proposed as a control technique to solve these challenges. However, the real-time, online implementation of MPC brings about many issues. A method of performing MPC online is described, implemented and tested in simulation as well as in hardware on the Synchronized Position-Hold, Engage, Reorient Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) testbed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and on the International Space Station (ISS). These results show that MPC provided improved performance over a simple path planning technique