The Mod-2 wind turbine development project

A major phase of the Federal Wind Energy Program, the Mod-2 wind turbine, a second-generation machine developed by the Boeing Engineering and Construction Co. for the U.S. Department of Energy and the Lewis Research Center of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is described. The Mod-2 is a large (2.5-MW power rating) horizontal-axis wind turbine designed for the generation of electrical power on utility networks. Three machines were built and are located in a cluster at Goodnoe Hills, Washington. All technical aspects of the project are described: design approach, significant innovation features, the mechanical system, the electrical power system, the control system, and the safety system

The evolution of misbelief

From an evolutionary standpoint, a default presumption is that true beliefs are adaptive and misbeliefs maladaptive. But if humans are biologically engineered to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs, how are we to explain the routine exceptions to this rule? How can we account for mistaken beliefs, bizarre delusions, and instances of self-deception? We explore this question in some detail. We begin by articulating a distinction between two general types of misbelief: those resulting from a breakdown in the normal functioning of the belief formation system (e.g., delusions) and those arising in the normal course of that system's operations (e.g., beliefs based on incomplete or inaccurate information). The former are instances of biological dysfunction or pathology, reflecting "culpable” limitations of evolutionary design. Although the latter category includes undesirable (but tolerable) by-products of "forgivably” limited design, our quarry is a contentious subclass of this category: misbeliefs best conceived as design features. Such misbeliefs, unlike occasional lucky falsehoods, would have been systematically adaptive in the evolutionary past. Such misbeliefs, furthermore, would not be reducible to judicious - but doxastically1 noncommittal - action policies. Finally, such misbeliefs would have been adaptive in themselves, constituting more than mere by-products of adaptively biased misbelief-producing systems. We explore a range of potential candidates for evolved misbelief, and conclude that, of those surveyed, only positive illusions meet our criteri

Understanding housing affordability to determine the best property search areas for homeowners moving out of London

In this paper we created a novel framework for understanding housing affordability in England using a linked house price dataset. Regional house price studies revealed that after the global economic crisis, there was an unprecedented regional house price divergence driven by faster price increases in London from 2009 onwards. To ease England’s resulting housing affordability issues, we consider the scenario of a typical London homeowner to offer a new insight into local housing affordability by different property type in England and explore the best property search areas for homeowners moving out of London

Ephemeral Londoners: Modelling Lower Class Migration to Eighteenth Century London

Between 1750 and 1801 the population of London grew from approximately 750,000 to 1.1 million people. Relocating to London in the eighteenth century only occasionally generated a paper trail, but a significant number of failed migrants were rounded up for ‘wandering and begging’ on the streets and sent back from whence they came to their parish of legal settlement. Records of these removals have been digitised and are used in this paper to model migration into London, to throw light onto the patterns of movement at this time

Delineating the spatio-temporal pattern of local authority house prices variation in England between 2009 and 2016

Most spatio-temporal studies of house price in the UK are carried out at national or regional scale, but house prices differences could be better understood at finer spatial scales. Since England’s house prices, standardised by the size of the property (£/m2), have been shown to be somewhat clustered at local authority level and highly clustered at Middle Layer Super Output (MSOA) level, in the period 2009 to 2016, this research aims to further explore the nature of spatial and temporal variation in house prices at local authority level in England. Growth curve modelling offers a model-based description of the spatio-temporal patterns of local authority house price variation. This research explores local authority effects and three different time effects (quarter, half-year and year) on house price spatio-temporal variation. Results show that these three time effects are essentially identical and are extremely small, in comparison with local authority effects. Since annual effects provide the best fit, local authority annual house price trajectories between 2009 and 2016 are further explored. Local authorities with higher house prices in 2009 are found to have faster growing prices over the eight-year period than local authorities with lower house prices. Moreover, two clear geographic hubs of house price change over the period are observed, one centred on London, the other on Brist

Creating a new dataset to analyse house prices in England

House price data deficiencies hinder UK housing market research. House price research in the UK is limited by lack of an open and comprehensive house price database that contains transaction price alongside individual property characteristics. This research outlines one approach which addresses this deficiency in England. Land Registry Price Paid Data (PPD) is the official house price dataset in England covering residential transactions in the housing market. It has two main disadvantages: first it is not geo-referenced and second, it lacks accurate information on housing size. We create two data linkage methods to overcome these two shortcomings, first by linking the Land Registry PPD with Ordnance Survey (OS) MasterMap and OS AddressBase Plus, second by linking the resulting data with total floor area information from Domestic Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs). This new linked dataset offers greater flexibility for the exploration of house price variation in England over different scales. A strong positive relationship is observed between house price and total floor area. This relationship varies at different geographic scales and over different property types across England

“Free Will and Affirmation: Assessing Honderich’s Third Way”

In the third and final part of his A Theory of Determinism (TD) Ted Honderich addresses the fundamental question concerning “the consequences of determinism.” The critical question he aims to answer is what follows if determinism is true? This question is, of course, intimately bound up with the problem of free will and, in particular, with the question of whether or not the truth of determinism is compatible or incompatible with the sort of freedom required for moral responsibility. It is Honderich’s aim to provide a solution to “the problem of the consequences of determinism” and a key element of this is his articulation and defence of an alternative response to the implications of determinism that collapses the familiar Compatibilist/Incompatibilist dichotomy. Honderich offers us a third way – the response of “Affirmation” (HFY 125-6). Although his account of Affirmation has application and relevance to issues and features beyond freedom and responsibility, my primary concern in this essay will be to examine Honderich’s theory of “Affirmation” as it concerns the free will problem

Can biological quantum networks solve NP-hard problems?

There is a widespread view that the human brain is so complex that it cannot be efficiently simulated by universal Turing machines. During the last decades the question has therefore been raised whether we need to consider quantum effects to explain the imagined cognitive power of a conscious mind. This paper presents a personal view of several fields of philosophy and computational neurobiology in an attempt to suggest a realistic picture of how the brain might work as a basis for perception, consciousness and cognition. The purpose is to be able to identify and evaluate instances where quantum effects might play a significant role in cognitive processes. Not surprisingly, the conclusion is that quantum-enhanced cognition and intelligence are very unlikely to be found in biological brains. Quantum effects may certainly influence the functionality of various components and signalling pathways at the molecular level in the brain network, like ion ports, synapses, sensors, and enzymes. This might evidently influence the functionality of some nodes and perhaps even the overall intelligence of the brain network, but hardly give it any dramatically enhanced functionality. So, the conclusion is that biological quantum networks can only approximately solve small instances of NP-hard problems. On the other hand, artificial intelligence and machine learning implemented in complex dynamical systems based on genuine quantum networks can certainly be expected to show enhanced performance and quantum advantage compared with classical networks. Nevertheless, even quantum networks can only be expected to efficiently solve NP-hard problems approximately. In the end it is a question of precision - Nature is approximate.Comment: 38 page

On the influence of the Sun on the rapid variability of compact extragalactic sources

Starting from December 2004, a program for the monitoring of intraday variable sources at a frequency of 5 GHz was performed at the Urumqi Observatory. The analysis of the variability characteristics of the flat-spectrum radio source AO 0235+164 revealed the existence of an annual cycle in the variability amplitude. This appears to correlate with the solar elongation of the source. A thorough analysis of the results of the MASIV IDV survey --- which provides the variability characteristics of a large sample of compact radio sources --- confirms that there is a small but detectable component of the observed fractional modulation which increases with decreasing solar elongation. We discuss the hypothesis that the phenomenon is related to interplanetary scintillation.Comment: 10 pages, 12 figures and 2 tables. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic