The erotic charisma of Alexander Hamilton

As an outsider with a mysterious childhood, Alexander Hamilton is, as psychologists say, a good "hook" for a projective identification. For his admirers Hamilton is a source of political capital. His ideas and proposals about the debt, protectionism, and an American manufacturing base are in the news in the early twenty-first century. Although the Old Left saw Hamilton as an elitist, possibly a monarchist, and a promoter of industrial capitalism, contemporary American progressives have called attention to his explicit support for habeas corpus, his efforts on behalf of banking, and his surprisingly enlightened attitudes about race and slavery. As one of the founders of a new republic, Hamilton knew he would be in the history books, but his image, representations of his physical presence, and speculation about his private life circulate on the Internet in ways that would surely astonish him. Alexander Hamilton not only has admirers in the fields of politics and history; he also has fans. © 2010 Cambridge University Press

Learning a Unified Control Policy for Safe Falling

Being able to fall safely is a necessary motor skill for humanoids performing highly dynamic tasks, such as running and jumping. We propose a new method to learn a policy that minimizes the maximal impulse during the fall. The optimization solves for both a discrete contact planning problem and a continuous optimal control problem. Once trained, the policy can compute the optimal next contacting body part (e.g. left foot, right foot, or hands), contact location and timing, and the required joint actuation. We represent the policy as a mixture of actor-critic neural network, which consists of n control policies and the corresponding value functions. Each pair of actor-critic is associated with one of the n possible contacting body parts. During execution, the policy corresponding to the highest value function will be executed while the associated body part will be the next contact with the ground. With this mixture of actor-critic architecture, the discrete contact sequence planning is solved through the selection of the best critics while the continuous control problem is solved by the optimization of actors. We show that our policy can achieve comparable, sometimes even higher, rewards than a recursive search of the action space using dynamic programming, while enjoying 50 to 400 times of speed gain during online execution

Double minimum in the surface stabilized ferroelectric liquid crystal switching response

A double minimum has recently been observed in the time–voltage switching response for a smectic C* liquid crystal layer in the surface stabilized geometry (“Ferroelectric Liquid Crystal Device,” K. P. Lymer and J. C. Jones, U.K. Patent No. GB2338797, 17th June 1999). Liquid crystal continuum theory is used to demonstrate that this unusual switching behavior arises if the equilibrium orientation of the molecular director rotates around the smectic cone as a function of distance through one half of the layer only. The double minimum is shown to evolve for large differences between the ε2 and ε1 components of the smectic C biaxial permittivity tensor

Simulation Modeling Of A Transport Aircraft Using Flight Test Data

The Mathematical Models Using Flight Test Data With Respect To A Transport. Aircraft For The Offline Simulation Are Described In This Document. For The Purpose Of Simulation Validation Process, Representative Flight Data Sets Are Selected From A Data Bank Which Was Created Previously Using Data From Actual Flight Maneuvers

Identification of behaviour change techniques and engagement strategies to design a smartphone app to reduce alcohol consumption using a formal consensus method

Background: Digital interventions to reduce excessive alcohol consumption have the potential to have a broader reach and be more cost-effective than traditional brief interventions. However, there is not yet a strong evidence base on their ability to engage users or on their effectiveness. Objective: This study aimed to identify the behaviour change techniques (BCTs) and engagement strategies most worthy of further study by inclusion in a smartphone application (app) to reduce alcohol consumption, using formal expert consensus methods. Methods: The first phase of the study consisted of a Delphi exercise with three rounds. It was conducted with seven international experts in the field of alcohol and/or behaviour change. In the first round, experts identified BCTs most likely to be effective at reducing alcohol consumption and strategies most likely to engage users with an app; these were rated in the second round; and those rated as effective by at least four out of seven participants were ranked in the third round. The rankings were analysed using Kendall’s W coefficient of concordance, which indicates consensus between participants. The second phase consisted of a new, independent group of experts (n=43) ranking the BCTs that were identified in the first phase. The correlation between the rankings of the two groups was assessed using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient. Results: Twelve BCTs were identified as likely to be effective. There was moderate agreement among the experts over their ranking (W=.465, χ2(11)=35.77, P<.001) and the BCTs receiving the highest mean rankings were self-monitoring, goal-setting, action planning, and feedback in relation to goals. There was a significant correlation between the ranking of the BCTs by the group of experts who identified them and a second independent group of experts (Spearman’s rho=.690, P=.01). Seventeen responses were generated for strategies likely to engage users. There was moderate agreement among experts on the ranking of these engagement strategies (W=.563, χ2(15)=59.16, P<.001) and those with the highest mean rankings were ease of use, design – aesthetic, feedback, function, design – ability to change design to suit own preferences, tailored information, and unique smartphone features. Conclusions: The BCTs with greatest potential to include in a smartphone app to reduce alcohol consumption were judged by experts to be self-monitoring, goal-setting, action planning, and feedback in relation to goals. The strategies most likely to engage users were ease of use, design, tailoring of design and information, and unique smartphone features

Quantum thermodynamics at critical points during melting and solidification processes

We systematically explore and show the existence of finite-temperature continuous quantum phase transition (CTQPT) at a critical point, namely, during solidification or melting such that the first-order thermal phase transition is a special case within CTQPT. Infact, CTQPT is related to chemical reaction where quantum fluctuation (due to wavefunction transformation) is caused by thermal energy and it can occur maximally for temperatures much higher than zero Kelvin. To extract the quantity related to CTQPT, we use the ionization energy theory and the energy-level spacing renormalization group method to derive the energy-level spacing entropy, renormalized Bose-Einstein distribution and the time-dependent specific heat capacity. This work unambiguously shows that the quantum phase transition applies for any finite temperatures.Comment: To be published in Indian Journal of Physics (Kolkata

The effect of precipitation rate on Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca ratios in biogenic calcite as observed in a belemnite rostrum

This is the author's manuscript - under review for journal Biogeosciences and available online from the publisher via the DOI in this record.Isotopic ratios and concentrations of the alkaline earth metals Mg and Sr in biogenic calcite are of great importance as proxies for environmental parameters. In particular, the Mg/Ca ratio as a temperature proxy has had considerable success. It is often hard to constrain, however, which parameter ultimately controls the concentration of these elements in calcite. Here, multiple Mg/Ca and Sr/Ca transects through a belemnite rostrum of Passaloteuthis bisulcata (Blainville, 1827) are used to isolate the effect of calcite precipitation rate on incorporation of Mg and Sr into the calcite. With increasing calcite precipitation rate Mg/Ca ratios decrease and Sr/Ca ratios in the rostrum increase. In the studied specimen this effect is found to be linear for both element ratios over a precipitation rate increase of ca. 150 %. Mg/Ca ratios and Sr/Ca ratios show a linear covariation with increasing relative precipitation rate, where a 100 % increase in precipitation rate leads to a (8.1 ± 0.9) % depletion in Mg and a (5.9 ± 0.7) % enrichment in Sr. The magnitude of the precipitation rate effect on Mg is (37 ± 4) % greater than that on Sr. Precipitation rate effects are well-defined in the rostrum of Passaloteuthis bisulcata but only account for a minor part of chemical heterogeneity. Biasing effects on palaeoenvironmental studies can be minimised by informed sampling, whereby the apex and apical line of the rostrum are avoided

Inference of biogeographical ancestry and pigmentation phenotype using single nucleotide polymorphisms

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Science.Conventional DNA profiling of Short Tandem Repeats (STR) provides little evidentiary value in the absence of reference profiles or in the case of a non-match. Recently, the forensic DNA intelligence field has flourished to provide investigators with valuable information from DNA samples that can narrow the collection of potential matches by identifying previously unknown reference individuals. Intelligence data of special interest includes the biogeographical ancestry (BGA) and external visible characteristics (EVC) such as the eye, hair and skin colour of unknown DNA samples donors. Innovative technological advances like next-generation sequencing and microarrays have been crucial to the establishment of population diversity repositories comprising millions of DNA markers, the most abundant of which include single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Large-scale SNP studies of global populations have enabled reconstructions of mitochondrial (mtDNA) and non-recombining Y-chromosome (NRY) phylogenies, providing highly comprehensive population specific patterns of maternal and paternal genetic variation. Similarly, numerous patterns of autosomal genetic variation have been identified between different populations. These studies have culminated in panels of markers capable of resolving ancestry at the continental level. The identification of autosomal SNPs associated with human pigmentation variation has also resulted in the discovery of specific SNPs capable of predicting EVCs. Several DNA intelligence and phenotyping assays for the inference of BGA and for the prediction of eye, hair and skin colour have subsequently been developed. However, most of these intelligence tools have primarily focused on the analysis of one class of SNPs, hence limiting the amount of ancestry intelligence that could be obtained. The scarcity and often environmentally compromised nature of forensic biological evidence means that performing numerous individual intelligence tests is not optimal and a consolidated DNA intelligence diagnostic test is very much needed. This study aimed to develop a SNP genotyping system that combined autosomal, NRY and mtDNA markers for comprehensive predictions of BGA and EVCs. Candidate SNPs were selected through literature and database searches to identify loci exhibiting skewed allele frequency differences between Sub-Saharan African, North African, Middle Eastern, European, South and East Asian populations. A hierarchical arrangement comprising five separate multiplexes was implemented, in which SNP typing was performed by single-base extension assays. The haploid mtDNA and NRY SNPs were grouped into Multiplex 1 to 4, with SNPs defining maternal and paternal lineages (haplogroups) affiliated with the same geographic region grouped in the same reaction. The markers defining basal haplogroups were included in Multiplex 1, which is then used to identify the subsequent multiplex(es) required to achieve further haplogroup resolution and to minimise the number of tests required. The autosomal SNPs are typed separately in Multiplex 5. A performance evaluation of the 5-multiplex SNP assay was undertaken on 146 individuals originating from the six major population groups of interest. Population genetic analyses of the mtDNA and NRY haplotypes and autosomal genotypes revealed that a greater degree of population differentiation was achieved with the selected NRY and autosomal SNPs than with the mtDNA SNPs. Moreover, the results indicated that the assay primarily allowed for the differentiation of continental ancestry, with populations in close proximity within continents, such as Europe, the Middle East and South Asia, often difficult to distinguish. However, the observed correlation between the declared and inferred geographic regions of maternal and paternal origin was high; 73-100% for maternal and 79-100% for paternal regional BGA. The bi-parental BGA predictions ranged from 85 to 95%, provided Middle Easterners and Europeans were grouped into a single Western Eurasian population. In 99% of cases, two of the three SNP classes correctly predicted the same ancestry from one of the five broad geographical regions (Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, Western Eurasia, South Asia and East Asia). High prediction accuracies were also observed for the inference of EVCs including hair (86-88%) and eye colour (81-95%). The DNA intelligence assay also demonstrated advanced performance with low starting amounts of genomic DNA, with full profiles observed for up to 100pg of template and for the analysis of routine casework biological samples. Consequently, this study presented the successful development of a novel, consolidated DNA intelligence tool that has displayed high performance for the inference of regional (continental) BGA and EVC in preliminary tests. Further validations of the assay are required; however the developed 5-multiplex SNP assay remains a valuable DNA intelligence diagnostic tool for the forensic science community