Physical Limits on Self-Replication Processes

Using few very general axioms which should be satisfied by any reasonable theory consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics we argue that: a) “no-cloning theorem” is meaningful for a very general theoretical scheme including both quantum and classical models, b) in order to describe self-replication, Wigner’s “cloning” process should be replaced by a more general “broadcasting”, c) “separation of species” is possible only in a non-homogeneous environment, d) “parent” and “offspring” must be strongly correlated. Motivated by the existing results on broadcasting which show that only classical information can self-replicate perfectly we discuss briefly a classical toy model with “quantum features” — overlapping pure states and “entangled states” for composite systems.     

“Those found responsible have been sacked”: some observations on the usefulness of error

Erik Hollnagel’s body of work in the past three decades has molded much of the current research approach to system safety, particularly notions of “error”. Hollnagel regards “error” as a dead-end and avoids using the term. This position is consistent with Rasmussen’s claim that there is no scientifically stable category of human performance that can be described as “error”. While this systems view is undoubtedly correct, “error” persists. Organizations, especially formal business, political, and regulatory structures, use “error” as if it were a stable category of human performance. They apply the term to performances associated with undesired outcomes, tabulate occurrences of “error”, and justify control and sanctions through “error”. Although a compelling argument can be made for Hollnagel’s view, it is clear that notions of “error” are socially and organizationally productive. The persistence of “error” in management and regulatory circles reflects its value as a means for social control.     

High aspect ratio electrostatic micro actuators using LIGA process

High-power electrostatic microactuators using LIGA process have been fabricated. Comb drive type actuators and a wobble motor were designed and fabricated. A basic structure of the microactuators was composed of movable and fixed electrodes of Ni, a sacrificial layer of SiO₂ and a Si substrate, and carried out by one mask process. As design rules, a minimum resist width of 2 μm, resist height of 120 μm, maximum width of movable parts of 10 μm, minimum width of fixed parts of 40 μm and driving voltage of about 100 V, were decided. A 120 μm-thick PMMA resist was formed on a Si substrate by a casting method. The PMMA was exposed using a compact SR source “AURORA”, using an X-ray mask with 7 μm-thick Au absorber on a 2 μm-thick poly-Si membrane. The exposed PMMA was developed by a developer. Ni microstructures with 100 μm-height, 2 μm-minimum width, 2 μm-minimum gap, and then maximum aspect ratio of 50, were made by electroforming. Ni microstructures used for movable electrodes were separated from the substrate by lateral etching of SiO₂. After lateral etching of SiO₂, Au wires were bonded to electrodes. Actuation of the comb drive type actuator and rotation of the wobble motor were confirmed. The applied voltage to the comb drive actuator and the wobble motor were 65 and 125 V.     

Management: a scientific discipline for humanity

This paper proposed a new concept of management: Managing According to Reason (MR). Since “manage” means to lead, plan, organize and control, and “reason” means to understand the law of the development of objects being managed, this new concept is an integration of the two elements of “managing” and “reason”. MR studies the contradictory relationship between “managing” and “reason”, and considers how such a relationship changes and develops. MR is an integration of the disciplines of management, philosophy, natural science, engineering technology, and social science. We believe the MR is a comprehensive scientific discipline that will greatly benefit humanity. Since “management” cannot work without power, while “reason” relies on science, MR is an integration of power and science. Power is MR’s assurance, and science is MR’s basis. We believe that MR will play a major role in twenty-first century.     

SU-8 as resist material for deep X-ray lithography

 A new negative tone resist for deep X-ray lithography is presented. This resist is a nine parts to one mixture of the EPON SU-8 resin with 2,2-bis-(3,5-dichloro-4-hydroxyphenyl)propane (Tetrachlorobisphenol A, TCBA), the latter acting as the photoinitiator. The resist was irradiated at the synchrotron source of DCI at LURE. It was dried for 7 to 20 days beforehand over silica gel while under a light vacuum (20 mbar). Best results for a 150 μm high resist were obtained with a X-ray bottom dose of 3 kJ cm⁻³ and a post exposure bake at 33 °C. Differential Scanning Calorimetry measurements (DSC) determined the glass transition temperature of the resist. The glass transition for the undried, loose resist was 34.7 °C, and it was 28.7 °C when the resist was pressed on a silicon substrate. For a sample of the dried resist, the glass transition was 33.4 °C for the loose resist and 29.8 °C when it was pressed on a Silicon substrate. CD measurements were made on top surface of a set of 100 μm long columns structures, which were produced in 150 μm of this resist. These structures have a constant 100 μm pitch, and the structures themselves varied in width from 20 to 17 μm. For these structures, the CD was calculated to be 0.15 ± 0.03 μm. Received: 8 February 2000/Accepted: 3 March 2000     

Some Kind of Analogtivity: anti-simulation through design

This paper discusses and explores issues surrounding current approaches to the design of technological products and offers two critical design proposals for presentation and debate. Primarily driven by contemporary theoretical writings and thoughts on the subject of ‘technology’ and ‘simulation’, currently being offered by leading thinkers on these subjects and expressed as ‘technological objects’; they are the result of a critical investigation into the emerging design issues surrounding ‘interaction’ and ‘transparency’. By using ‘popular’ language of product design as a vehicle, they exist as ‘cultural offerings’ exploring an alternative future for technological products not necessarily governed by science and economics.     

Calculus of the modulus of continuity for nonconcave functions and applications

For a continuous nonconcave function on [a,b] we prove that the modulus of continuity of f satisfies ω(f;δ)=max{|f(a+δ)−f(a)|; |f(b−δ)−f(b)|}, for δ sufficiently small. Some applications in approximation theory are given.     

An informational divergence geometry for stochastic matrices

Summary The informational divergence between stochastic matrices is not a metric. In this paper we show that, however, consistent definitions can be given of ‘spheres’, ‘segments’ and ‘straight lines’ using the divergence as a sort of ‘distance’ between stochastic matrices. The geometric nature of many ‘reliability functions’ of Information Theory and Mathematical Statistics is thus clarified. This work has been done within the GNIM-CNR research activity.     

Matters of (Meta-) Modeling

With the recent trend to model driven engineering a common understanding of basic notions such as “model” and “metamodel” becomes a pivotal issue. Even though these notions have been in widespread use for quite a while, there is still little consensus about when exactly it is appropriate to use them. The aim of this article is to start establishing a consensus about generally acceptable terminology. Its main contributions are the distinction between two fundamentally different kinds of model roles, i.e. “token model” versus “type model” (The terms “type” and “token” have been introduced by C.S. Peirce, 1839–1914.), a formal notion of “metaness”, and the consideration of “generalization” as yet another basic relationship between models. In particular, the recognition of the fundamental difference between the above mentioned two kinds of model roles is crucial in order to enable communication among the model driven engineering community that is free of both unnoticed misunderstandings and unnecessary disagreement.     

Scope control and grammatical dependencies

This paper develops a semantics with control over scope relations using Vermeulen’s stack valued assignments as information states. This makes available a limited form of scope reuse and name switching. The goal is to have a general system that fixes available scoping effects to those that are characteristic of natural language. The resulting system is called Scope Control Theory, since it provides a theory about what scope has to be like in natural language. The theory is shown to replicate a wide range of grammatical dependencies, including options for, and constraints on, ‘donkey’, ‘binding’, ‘movement’, ‘Control’ and ‘scope marking’ dependencies.     

Parallel integer sorting and simulation amongst CRCW models

 In this paper a general technique for reducing processors in simulation without any increase in time is described. This results in an O(√log n) time algorithm for simulating one step of PRIORITY on TOLERANT with processor-time product of O(n log log n); the same as that for simulating PRIORITY on ARBITRARY. This is used to obtain an O(log n/log log n+√log n (log log m− log log n)) time algorithm for sorting n integers from the set {0,…, m−1}, m≧n, with a processor-time product of O(n log log m log log n) on a TOLERANT CRCW PRAM. New upper and lower bounds for ordered chaining problem on an allocated COMMON CRCW model are also obtained. The algorithm for ordered chaining takes O(log n/log log n) time on an allocated PRAM of size n. It is shown that this result is best possible (upto a constant multiplicative factor) by obtaining a lower bound of Ω(r log n/(log r+log log n)) for finding the first (leftmost one) live processor on an allocated-COMMON PRAM of size n of r-slow virtual processors (one processor simulates r processors of allocated PRAM). As a result, for ordered chaining problem, “processor-time product” has to be at least Ω(n log n/log log n) for any poly-logarithmic time algorithm. Algorithm for ordered-chaining problem results in an O(log N/log log N) time algorithm for (stable) sorting of n integers from the set {0,…, m−1} with n-processors on a COMMON CRCW PRAM; here N=max(n, m). In particular if, m=n ^O(1) , then sorting takes Θ(log n/log log n) time on both TOLERANT and COMMON CRCW PRAMs. Processor-time product for TOLERANT is O(n(log log n)²). Algorithm for COMMON uses n processors. Received August 13, 1992/June 30, 1995     

Rudolph M. Schindler—Proportion,Scale and the “Row”

Jin-Ho Park interprets Schindler’s “reference frames in space” as set forth in his 1916 lecture note on mathematics, proportion, and architecture, in the context of Robinson’s1898–99 articles in the Architectural Record. Schindler’s unpublished, handwritten notes provide a source for his concern for “rhythmic” dimensioning in architecture. He uses a system in which rectangular dimensions are arranged in “rows.” Architectural examples of Schindler’s Shampay, Braxton-Shore and How Houses illustrate the principles.     

A software interface and hardware design for variable-precision interval arithmetic

This paper presents a software interface and hardware design for variable-precision, interval arithmetic. The software interface gives the programmer the ability to specify the precision of the computation and determine the accuracy of the result Special instructions for vector and matrix operations are also provided. The hardware design directly supports variable-precision, interval arithmetic. This greatly improves the accuracy of the computation and is much faster than existing software methods for controlling numerical error. Hardware algorithms are presented for the basic arithmetic operations, exact dot products, and elementary functions. Area and delay estimates indicate that the processor can be implemented on a single chip with a cycle time that is comparable to existing IEEE double-precision floating point processors.

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Программный интерфейс и конструкция аппаратуры для интервальной арифметики переменной разрядности

Описываются программный интерфейс и конструкция аппаратуры для интервальной арифметики переменной разрядности. Программный интерфейс дает программисту возможность управлять разрядностью вычислений, определяя точность результата. Также предусмотрены специальные инструкции для векторных и матричных операций. Конструкция аппаратуры напрямую поддерживает интервальную арифметику переменной разрядности, что значительно повышает точность вычислений и обеспечивает выигрыш в скорости в сравнении с сушествуюшими программными методами управления величиной численных погрешностей. Представлены аппаратно реализованные алгоритмы для основных арифметических операций, точных скалярных произведений и элементарных функций. Оценки времени вычислений и требуемой площади кристалла покззывают, что соответствуюший процессор может быть реализован на одном кристалле с рабочей частотой, сравнимой с существующими процессорами плавающей точки двойной точности стандарта IEEE.

     

Exponential Stability of Slowly Time-Varying Nonlinear Systems

Let be a time-varying vector field depending on t containing a regular and a slow time scale (α large). Assume there exist a k (τ)≥1 and a γ(τ) such that ∥x _τ(t, t ₀, x ₀)∥≤k(τ) e ^{−γ(τ)(t−t0)}∥x ₀∥, with x _τ(t, t ₀, x ₀) the solution of the parametrized system with initial state x ₀ at t ₀. We show that for α sufficiently large is exponentially stable when “on average”γ(τ) is positive. The use of this result is illustrated by means of two examples. First, we extend the circle criterion. Second, exponential stability for a pendulum with a nonlinear slowly time-varying friction attaining positive and negative values is discussed. Date received: January 22, 2000. Date revised: April 14, 2001.     

‘Working Well, Together’: Arts-Based Research and the Cultural Future of Small Cities

This article offers a research update on a 3-year programme initiated by the Kamloops Art Gallery and the University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, British Columbia. The programme is supported by a ‘Community–University Research Alliance’ grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the collaboration focuses on the cultural future of small cities – on how cultural and arts organisations work together (or fail to work together) in a small city setting. If not by definition, then certainly by default, ‘culture’ is associated with big city life: big cities are equated commonly with ‘big culture’; small cities with something less. The Cultural Future of Small Cities research group seeks to provide a more nuanced view of what constitutes culture in a small Canadian city. In particular, the researchers are exploring notions of social capital and community asset building: in this context, ‘visual and verbal representation’, ‘home’, ‘community’ and the need to define a local ‘sense of place’ have emerged as important themes. As the Small Cities programme begins its second year, a unique but key aspect has become the artist-as-researcher. Correspondence and offprint requests to: L. Dubinsky, Kamloops Art Gallery, 101–465 Victoria Street, Kamloops, BC V2C 2A9 Canada. Tel.: 250-828-3543; Email: ldubinsky@museums.ca     

Opinion helpfulness prediction in the presence of “words of few mouths”

This paper identifies a widely existing phenomenon in social media content, which we call the “words of few mouths” phenomenon. This phenomenon challenges the development of recommender systems based on users’ online opinions by presenting additional sources of uncertainty. In the context of predicting the “helpfulness” of a review document based on users’ online votes on other reviews (where a user’s vote on a review is either HELPFUL or UNHELPFUL), the “words of few mouths” phenomenon corresponds to the case where a large fraction of the reviews are each voted only by very few users. Focusing on the “review helpfulness prediction” problem, we illustrate the challenges associated with the “words of few mouths” phenomenon in the training of a review helpfulness predictor. We advocate probabilistic approaches for recommender system development in the presence of “words of few mouths”. More concretely, we propose a probabilistic metric as the training target for conventional machine learning based predictors. Our empirical study using Support Vector Regression (SVR) augmented with the proposed probability metric demonstrates advantages of incorporating probabilistic methods in the training of the predictors. In addition to this “partially probabilistic” approach, we also develop a logistic regression based probabilistic model and correspondingly a learning algorithm for review helpfulness prediction. We demonstrate experimentally the superior performance of the logistic regression method over SVR, the prior art in review helpfulness prediction.     

Resolution principle for the minimum covering problem of a 0–1 matrix

Conclusion Our experiments establish sufficient efficiency of the g.r.p. for MCP (WMCP), and in many cases show it to be superior by running time to the branch-and-bound method for this problem. The analytical bounds given above point to stable behavior of the g.r.p. Note that in the theoretical arguments of the previous section we have assumed that in the generated resolvent column at least one 1 is distributed with probability of order 1/k among the rows in a covering withk or fewer rows. Of the two rows α, β from the sought covering and such that α contains a greater number of 1s than β, α obviously has a higher probability of getting a 1 in the resolvent column than β. However, each time that the “greedy” algorithm prefers row α over row β (includes α in the covering and does not include β), a cutting column is constructed by Theorem 2 in which α is guaranteed to contain 0. Thus, the more times row α is selected without row β, the higher the number of additional 1s accumulated in row β. This suggests that the number of 1s in rows α and β tends to equalize. This argument can be extended to any pair of rows in the sought covering. The argument presented in this paper is thus valid on average. Translated from Kibernetika i Sistemnyi Analiz, No. 1, pp. 135–146, January–February, 1996.     

Traditional patterns in Pyrgi of Chios: Mathematics and Community

Ethnomathematical research has revealed interesting artifacts in several cultures all around the world. Although the majority of them come from Africa, some interesting ones exist in Western cultures too. Xysta of Pyrgi are a designing tradition that concerns the construction of mainly geometrical patterns on building fa?ades by scratching plaster. The history and the culture of the community, the way that this tradition is connected with them, as well as the informal mathematical ideas that are incorporated in this tradition are some of the issues that are explored here. H εθνoμαθηματική έρευνα έχει φέρει στην επιφάνεια ενδιαφέρoντα τεχνoυργήματα απó óλo τoν κóσμo Παρóτι η πλειoνóτητά τoυς πρoέρχεται απó την Aφρική ενδιαφέρoντα σχέδια υπάρχoυν και σε δυτικές κoυλτoύρες. Tα ξυστά στo Πυργί της Xίoυ απoτελoύν μια σχεδιαστική παράδoση πoυ αφoρά στην κατασκευή γεωμετρικών, κυρίως, σχεδίων στo σoβά πoυ βρίσκεται στην πρóσoψη των σπιτιών. Σ’ αυτή την εργασία εξερευνάται κυρίως η ιστoρία και η κoυλτoύρα της κoινóτητας τoυ Πυργιoύ, η σύνδεσή τoυς με την παράδoση των ξυστών καθώς και oι άτυπες μαθηματικές ιδέες πoυ είναι ενσωματωμένες σ’ αυτή την παράδoση.     

A micro cycloid-gear system fabricated by multi-exposure LIGA technique

 In this paper, a prototype of 2 mm-diameter micro-cycloid gear system fabricated by the multi-exposure LIGA technique is presented. The gear system is composed of a casing and three vertically stacked disks and gears. Each part consists of three different levels. The first level, 40 μm high, was fabricated by UV-lithography, and the second as well as the third level, 195 μm and 250 μm high respectively, were processed by aligned deep X-ray lithography (DXL). The alignment error between two DXL-processed layers has been measured to be within ±5 μm range. As a result of the height control process, the deviation of structural height has been maintained within ±3 μm range for the UV-lithography-processed structures, and ±10 μm for the DXL-processed structures. Preliminary tests of gear assembly have been implemented with 125 μm-diameter commercially available glass fiber, and the further efforts are being carried out.     

A Term Project: Creating a Geometry Cathedral

Michael Serra’s high school classroom became a “geometry Cathedral” when students created panels with a stained-glass effect for the windows in the classroom. Projects like this can convert “math atheists” into “geometry believers”.