Flake

Poetry by Kyle Clark

Ottoman Diplomacy and Hegemonic Masculinity during the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875-78

This article will examine Ottoman and British diplomatic correspondence and the satirical press and argue that during the Eastern Crisis of 1875-78, representatives of the Great Powers conceived of a hierarchy of masculinities that became a major part of their diplomatic rhetoric. At the top of this order was the masculinity that European statesmen saw in themselves and legitimized their imperialist projects; they particularly emphasized honor, and a logic-based intelligence which enabled them to order their governments, economies, and households so that noble, white, Christian men controlled the people of presumed lesser classes, races, religions, and genders. Until the end of this crisis, Ottoman officials sought to convince their European counterparts that they should accept them as, if not equals, at least junior partners. Therefore, Ottomans did not challenge the European belief in a hierarchy of masculinities but sought instead to prove that the new Ottoman statesman was a modern and rational man both capable and in possession of the moral imperative to rule over the lesser peoples of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, Ottoman officials depicted Christian separatists as cruel, savage, and too ignorant for independence, mirroring the arguments that anti-Ottoman Europeans made about the Ottomans

Are We Unnecessarily Serving Up Civil Liberties on a PATRIOT Platter?

This paper seeks to identify the general cognitive biases and overall measurement errors inherent in recent studies seeking to measure the effects of terrorism. Such biases lead to unprincipled conclusions founded upon incomplete information. These problems are exacerbated by inaccurate measures of the true impact of terrorism on the economy, the human psyche, policy-making and the world community. Such measurement errors severely diminish the probative value of the studies and lead to merely speculative conclusions. The goal of this paper is to shed light on these inaccurate conclusions in the hope that future legislation and practices aimed at curbing terrorism are not based on the inaccurate conclusions concerning the social and economics effects of terrorism

The Impact of Relative Permeability on Horizontal Well Type Curve Analysis in Coalbed Methane Reservoirs

Coalbed methane (CBM) production has become increasingly profitable in recent years. Production prediction and analysis is challenging in these reservoirs due to two-phase flow conditions. A CBM reservoir is classified as an unconventional gas reservoir due to its unique flow and storage characteristics. Software simulators are by far the best way to predict production performance in CBM reservoirs.;This study investigated the impact of relative permeability on production type curves of horizontal wells in CBM reservoirs. Both relative permeability to gas and water were analyzed using numerical models. The simulation model used for this study is Eclipse Office due to its capability of incorporating the unique flow and storage characteristics of CBM reservoirs. A set of production type curves were developed throughout the study to compare all results. After the type curves were analyzed, a correlation between the relative permeability exponents and the peak production rate was generated and verified. A range of parameters was chosen to use for each simulation model based on previous work in the area.;The water relative permeability exponent had significant impact on gas production up until the peak gas rate was reached. The gas relative permeability exponent only had minor impact on the gas production type curve up until the peak production rate was reached. The shape of the water production type curve seemed to only be affected when the gas relative permeability exponent became large. The well penetration (L/Xe) also had a significant impact on the gas production type curve

The influence of ancestors: kinship and cooperation in iban ancestor worship

This work explores, extends, and tests a novel evolutionary theory put forth and refined by Lyle Steadman, Craig Palmer, and Kathryn Coe. The approach is the descendant-leaving strategy theory, which outlines how ancestors influence their descendants through the traditions they begin and transmit to future generations. In order for this theory to be valid, traditions must be sustained over long periods of time so that ancestors' influence descendants in generations long after the ancestors' lifetimes. Here I test whether four ritual behaviors are traditional, using data from the Iban of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Traditional behaviors may include forms of ancestor worship that reinforces ancestor authority while also creating recognition systems for large numbers of kin. I describe the evolutionary implications of ancestor worship with examples from the Iban. Finally, I empirically evaluate a model of altruism based on the descendant-leaving strategy literature. I find that many Iban ritual behaviors are traditional, and argue that Iban ancestor worship extends kinship networks. However, the evidence that Iban individuals will favor closer kin over distant kin is mixed, so the statistical tests find little support for the prediction. Generally, Iban ancestors appear to influence their descendants' behavior, especially in a ritualistic sense, even if there is little current evidence supporting their influence on cooperation outside of rituals

A stable, single-photon emitter in a thin organic crystal for application to quantum-photonic devices

Single organic molecules offer great promise as bright, reliable sources of identical single photons on demand, capable of integration into solid-state devices. It has been proposed that such molecules in a crystalline organic matrix might be placed close to an optical waveguide for this purpose, but so far there have been no demonstrations of sufficiently thin crystals, with a controlled concentration of suitable dopant molecules. Here we present a method for growing very thin anthracene crystals from super-saturated vapour, which produces crystals of extreme flatness and controlled thickness. We show how this crystal can be doped with a widely adjustable concentration of dibenzoterrylene (DBT) molecules and we examine the optical properties of these molecules to demonstrate their suitability as quantum emitters in nanophotonic devices. Our measurements show that the molecules are available in the crystal as single quantum emitters, with a well-defined polarisation relative to the crystal axes, making them amenable to alignment with optical nanostructures. We find that the radiative lifetime and saturation intensity vary little within the crystal and are not in any way compromised by the unusual matrix environment. We show that a large fraction of these emitters are able to deliver more than $10^{12}$ photons without photo-bleaching, making them suitable for real applications.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, comments welcom

Conservative Estimation of Inertial Sensor Errors Using Allan Variance Data

To understand the error sources present in inertial sensors, both the white (time-invariant) and correlated noise sources must be properly characterized. To understand both sources, the standard approach (IEEE standards 647-2006, 952-2020) is to compute the Allan variance of the noise and then use human-based interpretation of linear trends to estimate the separate noise sources present in a sensor. Recent work has sought to overcome the graphical nature and visual-inspection basis of this approach leading to more accurate noise estimates. However, when using noise characterization in a filter, it is important that the noise estimates be not only accurate but also conservative, i.e., that the estimated noise parameters overbound truth. In this paper, we propose a novel method for automatically estimating conservative noise parameters using the Allan variance. Results of using this method to characterize a low-cost MEMS IMU (Analog Devices ADIS16470) are presented, demonstrating the efficacy of the proposed approach

JaK\u27D Modular Drum System

The JaK’D Modular Drum System (MDS) is a drum module that allows the customer to purchase a base mod­ule with a certain amount of ports and allows the option to purchase add-on modules to give more input ports as needed. With existing drum modules on the market, if one were to run out of input ports, they would have to buy an entirely new module that has room for the new devices. The JaK’D MDS negates this problem by introducing expandability to the drum module market. The front of the main module has an LCD screen with directional buttons to navigate, as well as an enter button, back button, power button, and six rotary knobs for volume control. Two additional buttons are used to determine which inputs are being controlled with the volume knobs allowing the user to have control over all inputs without cluttering the face with numerous knobs. The screen and navigation buttons are used to assign sound effects to each of the inputs, as well as monitor the sound levels of the inputs. The back of the module has the input and output ports. The add-on modules have no buttons on their top and, like the base module, the inputs are along the back of the add-on modules with the hardwire connection being on the side of all modules

Transformers as Soft Reasoners over Language

Beginning with McCarthy's Advice Taker (1959), AI has pursued the goal of providing a system with explicit, general knowledge and having the system reason over that knowledge. However, expressing the knowledge in a formal (logical or probabilistic) representation has been a major obstacle to this research. This paper investigates a modern approach to this problem where the facts and rules are provided as natural language sentences, thus bypassing a formal representation. We train transformers to reason (or emulate reasoning) over these sentences using synthetically generated data. Our models, that we call RuleTakers, provide the first empirical demonstration that this kind of soft reasoning over language is learnable, can achieve high (99%) accuracy, and generalizes to test data requiring substantially deeper chaining than seen during training (95%+ scores). We also demonstrate that the models transfer well to two hand-authored rulebases, and to rulebases paraphrased into more natural language. These findings are significant as it suggests a new role for transformers, namely as limited "soft theorem provers" operating over explicit theories in language. This in turn suggests new possibilities for explainability, correctability, and counterfactual reasoning in question-answering.Comment: IJCAI 202