1,214 research outputs found
Letter from Upton Sinclair to Melville L. Kress - December 22, 1938
No full textA letter from Upton Sinclair to Melville Kress, dated December 22, 1938, in which Sinclair reflects on relationships and interactions he had as a young author
Letter from Upton Sinclair to Melville L. Kress - June 29, 1933
No full textA brief letter from Upton Sinclair to Melville Kress, dated June 29, 1933, in which Sinclair mentions the author [Thomas] Hardy, calling his books 'pretentious and boring.
Letter from Upton Sinclair to Melville L. Kress - August 5, 1940
No full textA letter from Upton Sinclair to Melville Kress, dated August 5, 1940, in which Sinclair thanks him for his notes on the manuscript, but will not be using some of his suggestions. Sinclair also states that he has been busy writing and getting material from his friend, Martin Birnbaum. Martin Birnbaum, a longtime friend and classmate of Sinclair, was an international art dealer, critic and author, and was the inspiration for the character Lanny Budd, the hero of the World's End series
Entropy production in nonlinear recombination models
No full textWe study the convergence to equilibrium of a class of nonlinear recombination models. In analogy with Boltzmann’s H-theorem from kinetic theory, and in contrast with previous analysis of these models, convergence is measured in terms of relative entropy. The problem is formulated within a general framework that we refer to as Reversible Quadratic Systems. Our main result is a tight quantitative estimate for the entropy production functional. Along the way, we establish some new entropy inequalities generalizing Shearer’s and related inequalities
Nonlinear Dynamics for the Ising Model
No full textWe introduce and analyze a natural class of nonlinear dynamics for spin systems such as the Ising model. This class of dynamics is based on the framework of mass action kinetics, which models the evolution of systems of entities under pairwise interactions, and captures a number of important nonlinear models from various fields, including chemical reaction networks, Boltzmann’s model of an ideal gas, recombination in population genetics and genetic algorithms. In the context of spin systems, it is a natural generalization of linear dynamics based on Markov chains, such as Glauber dynamics and block dynamics, which are by now well understood. However, the inherent nonlinearity makes the dynamics much harder to analyze, and rigorous quantitative results so far are limited to processes which converge to essentially trivial stationary distributions that are product measures. In this paper we provide the first quantitative convergence analysis for natural nonlinear dynamics in a combinatorial setting where the stationary distribution contains non-trivial correlations, namely spin systems at high temperatures. We prove that nonlinear versions of both the Glauber dynamics and the block dynamics converge to the Gibbs distribution of the Ising model (with given external fields) in times O(nlogn) and O(logn) respectively, where n is the size of the underlying graph (number of spins). Given the lack of general analytical methods for such nonlinear systems, our analysis is unconventional, and combines tools such as information percolation (due in the linear setting to Lubetzky and Sly), a novel coupling of the Ising model with Erdős-Rényi random graphs, and non-traditional branching processes augmented by a “fragmentation” process. Our results extend immediately to any spin system with a finite number of spins and bounded interactions
Nonlinear Dynamics for the Ising Model
No full textWe introduce and analyze a natural class of nonlinear dynamics for spin systems such as the Ising model. This class of dynamics is based on the framework of mass action kinetics, which models the evolution of systems of entities under pairwise interactions, and captures a number of important nonlinear models from various fields, including chemical reaction networks, Boltzmanns model of an ideal gas, recombination in population genetics, and genetic algorithms. In the context of spin systems, it is a natural generalization of linear dynamics based on Markov chains, such as Glauber dynamics and block dynamics, which are by now well understood. However, the inherent nonlinearity makes the dynamics much harder to analyze, and rigorous quantitative results so far are limited to processes which converge to essentially trivial stationary distributions that are product measures.In this paper we provide the first quantitative convergence analysis for natural nonlinear dynamics in a combinatorial setting where the stationary distribution contains non-trivial correlations, namely spin systems at high temperatures. We prove that nonlinear versions of both the Glauber dynamics and the block dynamics converge to the Gibbs distribution of the Ising model (with given external fields) in times O(n log n) and O(log n) respectively, where n is the size of the underlying graph (number of spins). Given the lack of general analytical methods for such nonlinear systems, our analysis is unconventional, and combines tools such as information percolation (due in the linear setting to Lubetzky and Sly), a novel coupling of the Ising model with Erdos-Renyi random graphs, and non-traditional branching processes augmented by a fragmentation process. Our results extend immediately to any spin system with a finite number of spins and bounded interactions
Dynamics for the Mean-field Random-cluster Model
No full textThe random-cluster model has been widely studied as a unifying framework for random graphs, spin systems and random spanning trees, but its dynamics have so far largely resisted analysis. In this paper we study a natural non-local Markov chain known as the Chayes-Machta dynamics for the mean-field case of the random-cluster model, and identify a critical regime (lambda_s,lambda_S) of the model parameter lambda in which the dynamics undergoes an exponential slowdown. Namely, we prove that the mixing time is Theta(log n) if lambda is not in [lambda_s,lambda_S], and e^Omega(sqrt{n}) when lambda is in (lambda_s,lambda_S). These results hold for all values of the second model parameter q > 1. In addition, we prove that the local heat-bath dynamics undergoes a similar exponential slowdown in (lambda_s,lambda_S)
Sinclair – Gipson 1931-1932 Correspondence
No full text{"value":"1931 January 12 from P.J. Sinclair (Moshi) to Lawrence H. Gipson (Lehigh Univ.) (Typed letter indicating that Sinclair has received letters from Gipson and Professor Tomlinson who took a trip with Sinclair on the Serengetti Plains. Sinclair says he will send a manuscript to Gipson regarding Beamish which may be of interest to Gipson regarding matters of the British empire.) Scanned 1931 May 29 from P.J. Sinclair (Moshi) to Gipson (Lehigh Univ.) (three page typed letter relates Sinclair\u27s point of view regarding the troubles in East Africa and acknowledge Gipson\u27s interest in the crisis. Sinclair describes life in Tanganyika hunting on the veldt, and planting pineapples in the Hawaiian manner through paper.) Scanned 1931 October 27 from P.J. Sinclair (Moshi) to Gipson (typed letter acknowledges letter of September 15 remarking on the situation in England exceeding expectations referring to Beamish\u27s forecasting a crash. East Africa\u27s affairs are in the background but the efforts made seem to have good effect. Sinclair reports that Adm. Beamish is retiring and hope is that H.H. Beamish be nominated to replace him. Sinclair refers to "the old Manuscript" and its author – most of what Sinclair knows about it is from his grandmother.) Scanned 1932 April 11 from P.J. Sinclair (Moshi) to Gipson (handwritten letter "In view of events in England I did not send the papers relating to Beamish and De la Mothe as I first intended and I hope for some culminative event to round them off, when you would then have had a full perspective view point which would have enabled you to judge of the matter as a whole. However the papers I now send will hold some interest for you I think as they are by no means dry in themselves but hold the interest in a way which is only possible when dealing with the personal element. Your "Studies in Colonial Connecticut Taxation," is intensely interesting and somewhat parallels our case in degree, and I could not stop until I had read every word of it. Thank you very much for sending it I greatly appreciate it.\u27) Scanned (Unrelated handwritten jottings but dates mentioned are interesting "Excise 1785-1786, Phila. 1786 on brown folded paper possibly in Gipson\u27s handwriting) 1932 April 11 from P.J. Sinclair to Gipson (handwritten letter "The paper herein For a mosaic of actual history being the minor facts which make up the Tapestry and the threads of which are rarely seen. As I mentioned before it would be dangerous and not right to expose them to publicity at present, but I understand well your interest as a scholar and historian in the true facts and therefore I leave them to you with confidence.") Scanned","attr0":"description"
Fisher Zeros and Correlation Decay in the Ising Model
No full textThe Ising model originated in statistical physics as a means of studying phase transitions in magnets, and has been the object of intensive study for almost a century. Combinatorially, it can be viewed as a natural distribution over cuts in a graph, and it has also been widely studied in computer science, especially in the context of approximate counting and sampling. In this paper, we study the complex zeros of the partition function of the Ising model, viewed as a polynomial in the "interaction parameter"; these are known as Fisher zeros in light of their introduction by Fisher in 1965. While the zeros of the partition function as a polynomial in the "field" parameter have been extensively studied since the classical work of Lee and Yang, comparatively little is known about Fisher zeros. Our main result shows that the zero-field Ising model has no Fisher zeros in a complex neighborhood of the entire region of parameters where the model exhibits correlation decay. In addition to shedding light on Fisher zeros themselves, this result also establishes a formal connection between two distinct notions of phase transition for the Ising model: the absence of complex zeros (analyticity of the free energy, or the logarithm of the partition function) and decay of correlations with distance. We also discuss the consequences of our result for efficient deterministic approximation of the partition function. Our proof relies heavily on algorithmic techniques, notably Weitz's self-avoiding walk tree, and as such belongs to a growing body of work that uses algorithmic methods to resolve classical questions in statistical physics
Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter, Vol. 28, No. 2
No full text“Lewis and Thompson and the Writers’ War Board,” by Robert L. McLaughlin, Illinois State University
“The Filming of Free Air”
“An Interview with Ken Cuthbertson, Author of Inside: The Biography of John Gunther,” by Susan O’Brien
“Sinclair Lewis as Seen through the Eyes of Ernest Hemingway’s Biographers,” by Sally E. Parry, Illinois State University
“Sinclair Lewis, Dante, and the Jews,” a discussion by Mark Bernheim, Sally E. Parry, and Ralph Goldstein
“Sinclair Lewis,” by George Simmers from Great War Fiction Plushttps://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/slsn/1022/thumbnail.jp
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