Classical Expectations Research Articles

Reterritorialization and aesthetic transformations: the case of Tony Harrison’s Phaedra Britannica and The Misanthrope

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the impact of reterritorialization on classics of the stage. After reflecting on some particularities of classical works, the article focuses on The Misanthrope and Phaedra Britannica by British poet Tony Harrison, the first and rare successes of Molière, and particularly Racine on the Anglo-Saxon stage. It compares the main aesthetic features of Molière’s and Racine’s works with the modernizations operated by Harrison, and comments on the relevance of the historical and geographical transfer as a domestication strategy. While reterritorialization strategically includes the spectator, it does so not without a major impact on certain characteristics of seventeenth-century French theatre. The fact that the plays have a strong aesthetic identity makes the transformations striking. Indeed, what makes up the identity of classical French theatre, namely the unity of action, characterization, passions and, more generally, the nature of comedy and tragedy, is transformed by reterritorialization. Also dependent on reterritorialization, dramatic language, notably rhythm, semantics and versification, is metamorphosed. These two case studies on the impact of historical and geographical transfer shed light on the points of disparity between classical French theatre and expectations of the modern English audience, and help to address other reterritorialized adaptations of classics.

Theory of AC quantum transport with fully electrodynamic coupling

With the continued scaling of microelectronic devices along with the growing demand of high-speed wireless telecommunications technologies, there is increasing need for high-frequency device modeling techniques that accurately capture the quantum mechanical nature of charge transport in nanoscale devices along with the dynamic fields that are generated. In an effort to fill this gap, we develop a simulation methodology that self-consistently couples AC non-equilibrium Green functions (NEGF) with the full solution of Maxwell's equations in the frequency domain. We apply this technique to simulate radiation from a quantum-confined, quarter-wave, monopole antenna where the length $L$ is equal to one quarter of the wavelength, $\lambda_0$. Classically, such an antenna would have a narrower, more directed radiation pattern compared to one with $L \ll \lambda_0$, but we find that a quantum quarter-wave antenna has no directivity gain compared to the classical solution. We observe that the quantized wave function within the antenna significantly alter the charge and current density distribution along the length of the wire, which in turn modifies the far-field radiation pattern from the antenna. These results show that high-frequency radiation from quantum systems can be markedly different from classical expectations. Our method, therefore, will enable accurate modeling of the next generation of high-speed nanoscale electronic devices.

Copyright and Hypernarrative

A substantial body of scholarship has accumulated demonstrating that copyright's current structure entails legacy assumptions regarding authorship and originality. It has become commonplace to acknowledge that copyright doctrine incorporates notions of a “romantic author” who produces original texts from the force of his or her own genius. Equally routine is the recognition that such constructs foster a poor fit with communication technologies that reveal the role of the reader in creating textual meaning. Copyright law has kept pace neither with the development of new media nor with our changed understanding of authorship. This article starts a new thread in this conversation, questioning whether copyright's legacy assumptions also incorporate classical expectations regarding narrative. As new forms of expression have evolved, so have theories of narrative. Computer games and other interactive texts have generated new theories regarding the interaction between reader, content, and technical system. Using recent copyright decisions as a window into the underlying structure of the law, this article argues that copyright entails a view of narrative that has not kept pace with our understanding of the text. The gap between copyright's embedded assumptions and narrative theory exposes both where copyright has been and where it should be going.

Religious, Spiritual, or Social Values and Regulations, Utility Function and Demand

Often spiritualism and religion impose social and economic duties (constraints) on its adherents. Islam promotes various encouragements, limitations and prohibitions on expenditure, consumption and production. So, in modern world, does Islamic brand of economics have a place? Capitalism and Communism have marked this era. Tools of utility and profit maximization have supported renditions of Capitalism: Classical, Keynesian, Neo-Classical Economics and Rational Expectations. This paper examines consumer behavior given Islamic constraints. Some Muslim economists are wary about utility maximization, convinced that the selfishness axiom cannot be adequate for a system bound up in selflessness. Besides, they report that, by some accounts, people do not appear to maximize utility. This paper, using the elementary combination of indifference curve and budget line for optimization exercise, besides showing the unfoundedness of this criticism (because selfishness could include selflessness as its end – finding satisfaction in being considerate and generous), illustrates how, through substitution and income effects, Islamic rules and regulations influence consumption. So, the baby need not be thrown out with the bath water. A reinvention of the wheel is unnecessary.

Identifying mechanisms that structure ecological communities by snapping model parameters to empirically observed tradeoffs.

Theory predicts that interspecific tradeoffs are primary determinants of coexistence and community composition. Using information from empirically observed tradeoffs to augment the parametrisation of mechanism-based models should therefore improve model predictions, provided that tradeoffs and mechanisms are chosen correctly. We developed and tested such a model for 35 grassland plant species using monoculture measurements of three species characteristics related to nitrogen uptake and retention, which previous experiments indicate as important at our site. Matching classical theoretical expectations, these characteristics defined a distinct tradeoff surface, and models parameterised with these characteristics closely matched observations from experimental multi-species mixtures. Importantly, predictions improved significantly when we incorporated information from tradeoffs by 'snapping' characteristics to the nearest location on the tradeoff surface, suggesting that the tradeoffs and mechanisms we identify are important determinants of local community structure. This 'snapping' method could therefore constitute a broadly applicable test for identifying influential tradeoffs and mechanisms.

Quantum Variables in Finance and Neuroscience (Presentation Slides)

A path-integral algorithm, PATHINT, used previously for several systems, has been generalized from 1 dimension to N dimensions, and from classical to quantum systems, qPATHINT. Pilot quantum applications have been made to neocortical interactions and financial options in 1 dimension. Future work is planned to extend qPATHINT to multiple dimensions in these systems, and to extend calculations to multiple scales of interaction between classical events and expectations over quantum processes. Each of the two systems considered contribute insight into applications of qPATHINT to the other system, leading to new algorithms presenting time-dependent propagation of interacting quantum and classical scales.

Quantum Path-Integral qPATHINT Algorithm

A path-integral algorithm, PATHINT, used previously for several systems, has been generalized from 1 dimension to N dimensions, and from classical to quantum systems, qPATHINT. Pilot quantum applications have been made to neocortical interactions and financial options in 1 dimension. Future work is planned to extend qPATHINT to multiple dimensions in these systems, and to extend calculations to multiple scales of interaction between classical events and expectations over quantum processes. Each of the two systems considered contribute insight into applications of qPATHINT to the other system.

CONIC TRADING IN A MARKOVIAN STEADY STATE

Trading strategies are valued using nonlinear conditional expectations based on concave probability distortions. They are also referred to as expectation with respect to a nonadditive probability. The nonadditive probability attains conservatism by exaggerating upwards the probabilities of tail loss events and simultaneously deflating the probabilities of tail gain events. Fixed points for value and policy iterations are obtained when probabilities are distorted and they fail to exist for classical linear or additive expectations. Illustrations are provided for Markovian systems in one, two and five dimensions. Trading positions are seen to balance prediction rewards against the demands for hedging value functions.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF A NON-RELATIVISTIC HERMITIAN TIME OPERATOR

The existence of a hermitian time operator is proposed in the framework of non-relativistic quantum mechanics.The Heisenberg equation of motion is shown to yield constant rate of flow of time.It is shown to yield results consistent with classical expectations,when Bohr's correspondence principle is invoked.Further,it is shown that a massless free particle with non-zero momentum experiences timelessness in its own frame of reference whereas a negatively massive particle perceives forwardness of time.Moreover,application to quantum harmonic oscillators shows instantaneous transition of electrons from one eigenstate to another.

Visualizing trauma – Marc Recha’s Dies D’agost

Abstract Catalan director Marc Recha’s Days of August (Dies d’agost, Recha, 2006) is true to his usual aesthetic and themes. Minimal plots walk a problematic line between narrative and documentary; fiction and reality; past and present. In the rechian universe, cinema’s classical concepts and expectations are challenged and obliterated in an unresolvable chaos of sophisticated styles, media and references. Plots change, but what holds is the succession of dissociated and tenuous scenarios in haunted spaces where messages fail to be transmitted yet human enquiries persist. In Agost, the rechian style turns into a precise idiom to embody what has been forgotten and to communicate what has been left unsaid. Specific challenges stem from Recha’s desire to film our inability to grasp our past. Briefly, tentatively, spectators might understand that unless we tend to our wounds, no one will understand our personal and collective traumas.

The case for an oral architecture: carpentry and communal assembly among the Dong of Southwest China

Chinese architecture was for a long time ignored because it was not produced by architects and because it did not follow Western classical expectations, and vernacular architecture was little discussed until the 1960s, and only recently embraced by its own encyclopaedia. Yet the division of labour between drawing architect and practical builder was never wholly advantageous or inevitable, for specialisation of roles can lead to differentiation, inequality, and division, as well as constructional efficiency. Only in the last century has the division between office work and construction site become so complete, resulting in losses as well as gains. Most obviously it has removed design from making, the person with the drawing pen no longer obliged to experience the materials in their weight and texture, or to discover by handling them the best ways to work them. The designer who has never picked up a brick or wielded a chisel can possess little sensibility for the material, but as long as their duties are fulfilled on paper with apparent competence, the process is carried through. On the receiving end, bricklayer or carpenter must produce what drawings demand even when good sense seems lacking, so they carry the work through grumpily without conviction instead of participating in the creative process. This paper looks at oral architecture in the Dong culture, and the way in which buildings have traditionally been produced by carpenters along with the local community, accompanied by shared rituals which reinforce their significance.

Spontaneous recovery of superhydrophobicity on nanotextured surfaces

Rough or textured hydrophobic surfaces are dubbed "superhydrophobic" due to their numerous desirable properties, such as water repellency and interfacial slip. Superhydrophobicity stems from an aversion of water for the hydrophobic surface texture, so that a water droplet in the superhydrophobic "Cassie state" contacts only the tips of the rough surface. However, superhydrophobicity is remarkably fragile and can break down due to the wetting of the surface texture to yield the "Wenzel state" under various conditions, such as elevated pressures or droplet impact. Moreover, due to large energetic barriers that impede the reverse transition (dewetting), this breakdown in superhydrophobicity is widely believed to be irreversible. Using molecular simulations in conjunction with enhanced sampling techniques, here we show that on surfaces with nanoscale texture, water density fluctuations can lead to a reduction in the free energetic barriers to dewetting by circumventing the classical dewetting pathways. In particular, the fluctuation-mediated dewetting pathway involves a number of transitions between distinct dewetted morphologies, with each transition lowering the resistance to dewetting. Importantly, an understanding of the mechanistic pathways to dewetting and their dependence on pressure allows us to augment the surface texture design, so that the barriers to dewetting are eliminated altogether and the Wenzel state becomes unstable at ambient conditions. Such robust surfaces, which defy classical expectations and can spontaneously recover their superhydrophobicity, could have widespread importance, from underwater operation to phase-change heat transfer applications.

Dynamics of a reconnection-driven runaway ion tail in a reversed field pinch plasma

While reconnection-driven ion heating is common in laboratory and astrophysical plasmas, the underlying mechanisms for converting magnetic to kinetic energy remain not fully understood. Reversed field pinch discharges are often characterized by rapid ion heating during impulsive reconnection, generating an ion distribution with an enhanced bulk temperature, mainly perpendicular to magnetic field. In the Madison Symmetric Torus, a subset of discharges with the strongest reconnection events develop a very anisotropic, high energy tail parallel to magnetic field in addition to bulk perpendicular heating, which produces a fusion neutron flux orders of magnitude higher than that expected from a Maxwellian distribution. Here, we demonstrate that two factors in addition to a perpendicular bulk heating mechanism must be considered to explain this distribution. First, ion runaway can occur in the strong parallel-to-B electric field induced by a rapid equilibrium change triggered by reconnection-based relaxation; this effect is particularly strong on perpendicularly heated ions which experience a reduced frictional drag relative to bulk ions. Second, the confinement of ions varies dramatically as a function of velocity. Whereas thermal ions are governed by stochastic diffusion along tearing-altered field lines (and radial diffusion increases with parallel speed), sufficiently energetic ions are well confined, only weakly affected by a stochastic magnetic field. High energy ions traveling mainly in the direction of toroidal plasma current are nearly classically confined, while counter-propagating ions experience an intermediate confinement, greater than that of thermal ions but significantly less than classical expectations. The details of ion confinement tend to reinforce the asymmetric drive of the parallel electric field, resulting in a very asymmetric, anisotropic distribution.

Experimental evaluation of nonclassical correlations between measurement outcomes and target observable in a quantum measurement

In general, it is difficult to evaluate measurement errors when the initial and final conditions of the measurement make it impossible to identify the correct value of the target observable. Ozawa proposed a solution based on the operator algebra of observables which has recently been used in experiments investigating the error-disturbance trade-off of quantum measurements. Importantly, this solution makes surprisingly detailed statements about the relations between measurement outcomes and the unknown target observable. In the present paper, we investigate this relation by performing a sequence of two measurements on the polarization of a photon, so that the first measurement commutes with the target observable and the second measurement is sensitive to a complementary observable. While the initial measurement can be evaluated using classical statistics, the second measurement introduces the effects of quantum correlations between the non-commuting physical properties. By varying the resolution of the initial measurement, we can change the relative contribution of the non-classical correlations and identify their role in the evaluation of the quantum measurement. It is shown that the most striking deviation from classical expectations is obtained at the transition between weak and strong measurements, where the competition between different statistical effects results in measurement values well outside the range of possible eigenvalues.

A Cobweb Model with Alternating Demand and Supply Functions

In this work I present a cobweb model for markets characterized by two couples of demand and supply functions which cyclically alternate with period two, in a succession of peak and off-peak market phases. Starting from classical adaptive expectations, a new expectation formation mechanism is presented, to take into account such markets’ peculiarity. In particular, to adapt the previous in-phase expected price, agents use both in-phase and out-of-phase expectation errors, suitably weighted through a phase weight. It is shown that the resulting model is described by a non-autonomous difference equation. The local asymptotic stability of the steady state equilibrium is studied, showing that it depends on the expectation weight, the phase weight and on both the relative slopes, at the equilibrium, of the supply functions with respect to the demand functions. Several crucial differences with respect to the classical cobweb model are highlighted, showing the potentially ambiguous role of expectation weight and of relative slopes. It is shown that destabilization can occur both through a flip and a Neimark-Sacker bifurcation, which can occur for the same market conditions and different expectation weights.

Fractional Hida-Malliavan derivatives and series representations of fractional conditional expectations

We represent fractional conditional expectations (an extension of the classical conditional expectations) of a functional of fractional Brownian motion as a convergent series in L 2 (P H ) space. When the target random variable is some function of a discrete trajectory of fractional Brownian motion, we obtain a backward Taylor series representation; when the target functional is generated by a continuous fractional filtration, the series representation is obtained by applying a ”frozen path” operator and an exponential operator to the functional. We provide three examples where our representation gives useful series expansions of expectations in several models.

Local quantum ergodic conjecture.

The quantum ergodic conjecture equates the Wigner function for a typical eigenstate of a classically chaotic Hamiltonian with a δ function on the energy shell. This ensures the evaluation of classical ergodic expectations of simple observables, in agreement with Shnirelman's theorem, but this putative Wigner function violates several important requirements. Consequently, we transfer the conjecture to the Fourier transform of the Wigner function, that is, the chord function. We show that all the relevant consequences of the usual conjecture require only information contained within a small (Planck) volume around the origin of the phase space of chords: translations in ordinary phase space. Loci of complete orthogonality between a given eigenstate and its nearby translation are quite elusive for the Wigner function, but our local conjecture stipulates that their pattern should be universal for ergodic eigenstates of the same Hamiltonian lying within a classically narrow energy range. Our findings are supported by numerical evidence in a Hamiltonian exhibiting soft chaos. Heavily scarred eigenstates are remarkable counter-examples of the ergodic universal pattern.

Immune activation generates corticosterone-mediated terminal reproductive investment in a wild bird.

Despite classical expectations of a trade-off between immune activity and reproduction, an emergent view suggests that individuals experiencing activation of their immune system actually increase reproductive effort and allocation to offspring as a form of terminal investment in response to reduced survival probability. However, the components and mechanisms of increased parental investment following immunostimulation are currently unknown. We hypothesize that increased glucocorticoid production following immunostimulation modulates the increase in reproductive effort that constitutes terminal investment. We activated the immune system of breeding female house wrens (Troglodytes aedon) with an immunogen and cross-fostered the eggs that they subsequently produced to separate prenatal and postnatal components of maternal investment. Cross-fostering revealed an increase in both pre- and postnatal allocation from immunostimulated females, which was confirmed by quantification of egg constituents and maternal provisioning behavior. The increase in maternal provisioning was mediated, at least in part, by increased corticosterone in these females. Offspring immune responsiveness was also enhanced through transgenerational immune priming via the egg. Thus, our results indicate that maternal immunostimulation induces transgenerational effects on offspring through both pre- and postnatal parental effects and support an important role for corticosterone in mediating parental investment.

High incidence of dioecy in young successional tropical forests

SummaryThe role of plant sexual systems in community assembly has been little studied. Classical assumptions predict an association between self‐fertilization and colonizing ability, a pattern not systematically supported by observations.Here, using a data set of 626 462 trees sampled throughout 8300 km2in central Africa and historical information collected 60 years ago on forest successional status, we compare sexual system assemblages between young successional and mature communities.We use two multivariate approaches to assess the variation in community dioecism between successional status, while controlling for covariation between dioecy and six other traits usually considered as good proxies for important functions in forest successional dynamics.We show that dioecious trees are significantly overrepresented in young successional areas, contrary to classical expectations. This robust pattern is unlikely to be driven by soil conditions, by the other associated traits or by species‐specific abundance. Strikingly, dioecy was one of the traits most correlated with young successional areas.These results show that sexual systems play an important role in community assembly. The higher occurrence of dioecy in young successional areas is likely due to a higher relative seed fitness of dioecious species in more stressful conditions or by an evolutionary‐driven association between dioecy and colonization ability, as predicted by theoretical studies.Synthesis. Our study emphasizes an overlooked association between sexual system and community assembly and emphasizes the need to revisit classical assumptions regarding that relationship.

Gas-dynamic acceleration of laser-ablation plumes: Hyperthermal particle energies under thermal vaporization

The expansion of a plume produced by low-fluence laser ablation of graphite in vacuum is investigated experimentally and by direct Monte Carlo simulations in an attempt to explain hyperthermal particle energies for thermally vaporized materials. We demonstrate that the translation energy of neutral particles, ∼2 times higher than classical expectations, is due to two effects, hydrodynamic plume acceleration into the forward direction and kinetic selection of fast particles in the on-axis region. Both effects depend on the collision number within the plume and on the particles internal degrees of freedom. The simulations allow ablation properties to be evaluated, such as ablation rate and surface temperature, based on time-of-flight measurements. Available experimental data on kinetic energies of various laser-produced particles are well described by the presented model.