A study of the activities of James Dunwoody Bulloch: Confederate naval agent in Great Britain

When I first thought of writing this paper it seemed like an insurmountable task. I certainly would never have completed the task if it had not been for the capable advice and assistance of several people. I was bewildered in the entanglement of British-American relations seeking a possible thesis topic when I disintered the name of James Dunwoody Bulloch. James Bulloch was a Southern gentleman who had vision and ability. He was as valuable to the Confderate navy as Lee was to the Confederate Army. Bulloch\u27s exploits were not recorded in the history books as arduously as were those of Northern Navel officers such as David G. Farragut and David D. Porer. Fate seems to reserve a grave of obscurity for men who fight on the losing side

Non-equilibrium fixed points of coupled Ising models

Driven-dissipative systems are expected to give rise to non-equilibrium phenomena that are absent in their equilibrium counterparts. However, phase transitions in these systems generically exhibit an effectively classical equilibrium behavior in spite of their non-equilibrium origin. In this paper, we show that multicritical points in such systems lead to a rich and genuinely non-equilibrium behavior. Specifically, we investigate a driven-dissipative model of interacting bosons that possesses two distinct phase transitions: one from a high- to a low-density phase---reminiscent of a liquid-gas transition---and another to an antiferromagnetic phase. Each phase transition is described by the Ising universality class characterized by an (emergent or microscopic) $\mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry. They, however, coalesce at a multicritical point, giving rise to a non-equilibrium model of coupled Ising-like order parameters described by a $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2$ symmetry. Using a dynamical renormalization-group approach, we show that a pair of non-equilibrium fixed points (NEFPs) emerge that govern the long-distance critical behavior of the system. We elucidate various exotic features of these NEFPs. In particular, we show that a generic continuous scale invariance at criticality is reduced to a discrete scale invariance. This further results in complex-valued critical exponents and spiraling phase boundaries, and it is also accompanied by a complex Liouvillian gap even close to the phase transition. As direct evidence of the non-equilibrium nature of the NEFPs, we show that the fluctuation-dissipation relation is violated at all scales, leading to an effective temperature that becomes "hotter" and "hotter" at longer and longer wavelengths. Finally, we argue that this non-equilibrium behavior can be observed in cavity arrays with cross-Kerr nonlinearities.Comment: 19+11 pages, 7+9 figure

Capital Gains, Dividends, and Taxes: Market Reactions to Tax Changes

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of a capital gains tax reduction on the stock price of firms that have not historically paid a dividend. If markets are semi-strong-form efficient, one would expect that the market price would have already adjusted prior to the day the announcement was made, assuming no new information was included in the announcement. If markets have not already incorporated the information, there would be a possibility for abnormal returns from investing in the stocks on the date of the announcement. This paper studies the returns from companies prior to, and subsequent to, the capital gains tax reduction announcement date and compares the price changes of non-dividend paying companies to those of similar firms that have historically paid dividends. The a priori expectation of the study is that the majority of a change in prices will take place prior to the announcement date as investors anticipate the likelihood of passage by the Congress and the President

Driving Entrainment of Locomotor and Respiratory Systems to Determine Metabolic Efficiency

Many biological rhythms, including breathing and locomotor rhythms, are interconnected through a phenomenon known as coupling. Locomotor respiratory coupling (LRC) is quantified using a ratio of stride cycles to breaths. For example, an entrained LRC ratio of two strides to one breathing cycle, is a typical ratio humans use while walking. While various ratios have been recorded, previous research has suggested that not deviating from a particular ratio is associated with low energy expenditure. However, recent research challenges the assumption that stronger LRC correlates with lower energy expenditure, but rather, LRC variability is associated with lower energy expenditure. In addition, preferred stride frequency is associated with low energy expenditure. Both LRC variability and stride frequency may play pivotal roles. PURPOSE: This study investigates the intricate relationship between LRC variability, stride frequency variability, and energy expenditure during human walking, offering potential insights into the significance of variability within biological rhythms, movements, and processes as an indicator of a healthy statistic. METHODS: 10 college-aged females (age: 21 ± 1.2; height: 170 ± 4.1 cm; mass: 66 ± 10.8 kg) underwent a 1-minute walking trial to determine their self-selected walking speed. After motion capture marker placement, the subjects underwent a 5-minute walking bout to assess their preferred LRC. Following that, they were provided with a portable VO2 measurement device and participated in a 7-minute treadmill trial that included seven conditions that manipulated visual cues for timing the breathing and/or walking rates based on preferred LRC. The seven conditions were: (1) familiarization, (2) no cue, (3) walking cue, (4) no cue, (5) breathing cue, (6) no cue, and (7) walking + breathing cue. Energy expenditure and LRC variability were recorded and subjected to ANOVA analysis. RESULTS: Findings indicate that the impact of breath, walking, or breathing + walking cues on energy expenditure during walking was not significantly different from the non-cued condition (p= 0.43). The difference in coupling variability between cued conditions and the non-cued conditions were also not significant (p=0.21). CONCLUSION: The present findings indicate that manipulation of breath or step timing did not impact energy expenditure nor variability of LRC. Future data analyses could include the confirmation of LRC ratios, number of ratios, and percent of time spent in different ratios to determine how often subjects changed LRC ratios throughout the cuing conditions. Upon visual inspection of the data, it did appear that there were two different strategies. A sample of subjects had higher energy expenditure in the cued conditions, indicating that when variability was restricted, energy expenditure was affected. The other strategy was that no difference in energy expenditure was seen between any of the cue conditions versus the non-cued conditions. Future work is needed to determine if personal characteristics contribute to different strategies. Increasing the sample size may yield more substantial outcomes as standard deviations were quite high

Predictors of short-term clinical response to cardiac resynchronization therapy

Aims: Cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) reduces morbidity and mortality in patients with symptomatic heart failure and QRS prolongation but there is uncertainty about which patient characteristics predict short-term clinical response. Methods and results: In an individual patient meta-analysis of three double-blind, randomized trials, clinical composite score (CCS) at 6 months was compared in patients assigned to CRT programmed on or off. Treatment–covariate interactions were assessed to measure likelihood of improved CCS at 6 months. MIRACLE, MIRACLE ICD, and REVERSE trials contributed data for this analysis (n = 1591). Multivariable modelling identified QRS duration and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) as predictors of CRT clinical response (P < 0.05). The odds ratio for a better CCS at 6 months increased by 3.7% for every 1% decrease in LVEF for patients assigned to CRT-on compared to CRT-off, and was greatest when QRS duration was between 160 and 180 ms. Conclusions: In symptomatic chronic heart failure patients (NYHA class II–IV), longer QRS duration and lower LVEF independently predict early clinical response to CRT

Robust and Listening-Efficient Contention Resolution

This paper shows how to achieve contention resolution on a shared communication channel using only a small number of channel accesses -- both for listening and sending -- and the resulting algorithm is resistant to adversarial noise. The shared channel operates over a sequence of synchronized time slots, and in any slot agents may attempt to broadcast a packet. An agent's broadcast succeeds if no other agent broadcasts during that slot. If two or more agents broadcast in the same slot, then the broadcasts collide and both broadcasts fail. An agent listening on the channel during a slot receives ternary feedback, learning whether that slot had silence, a successful broadcast, or a collision. Agents are (adversarially) injected into the system over time. The goal is to coordinate the agents so that each is able to successfully broadcast its packet. A contention-resolution protocol is measured both in terms of its throughput and the number of slots during which an agent broadcasts or listens. Most prior work assumes that listening is free and only tries to minimize the number of broadcasts. This paper answers two foundational questions. First, is constant throughput achievable when using polylogarithmic channel accesses per agent, both for listening and broadcasting? Second, is constant throughput still achievable when an adversary jams some slots by broadcasting noise in them? Specifically, for $N$ packets arriving over time and $J$ jammed slots, we give an algorithm that with high probability in $N+J$ guarantees $\Theta(1)$ throughput and achieves on average $O(\texttt{polylog}(N+J))$ channel accesses against an adaptive adversary. We also have per-agent high-probability guarantees on the number of channel accesses -- either $O(\texttt{polylog}(N+J))$ or $O((J+1) \texttt{polylog}(N))$, depending on how quickly the adversary can react to what is being broadcast