5,373 research outputs found
An algorithm for amplitude-constrained input design for system identification
No full textWe propose an algorithm for design of optimal inputs for system identification when amplitude constraints on the input and output are imposed. In contrast to input design with signal power constraints, this problem is non-convex and non-smooth. We propose an iterative solution: in the first step, a convex optimization problem is solved for input design under power constraints. In subsequent steps, the constraints considered are the p-norms of the input and output signals, p increases for each iteration step. This is an adaptation of the classical Poà ¿lya algorithm for function approximation, which has previously been used for the related problem of signal crest-factor optimization. Although the difficulty of the problem prevents a proof of optimality, the performance of the algorithm is discussed with reference to a simple example.Swedish Research Council (grant 2006-7551)Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (grant SM07-0035
‘Weird Fucks’, Trojan Horse/Rainbow Flag, ed. Ian Giles/Paul Clinton, published: VideoClub, UK; HOME, Manchester; Baltic Gateshead; Gasworks, London.
No full text‘Weird Fucks’ was a commissioned essay, for the publication accompanying the national tour of artist Ian Giles new film on the destruction of the Joiners Arms gay bar, and the community campaign to save it. The essay was written not about the film, but in parallel to its themes, examining various queer cultural and intellectual responses to urban gentrification, such as those of novelists Samuel R Delany and Sarah Schulman, and gay leftist thinkers Mario Mieli and Guy Hocquenghem. I then expand into the ironies of safe spaces which exclude the economically marginalised, and the classed nature of queer culture, where displays of gender insubordination are often expressed through knowledge gained through further education. Each of these theoretical and historical topics are occasioned by personal anecdotes on my time at this bar, drawing upon feminist thinker Jane Gallop’s notion of ‘anecdotal theory’, a queer adaptation of ‘the personal is political’
The genomic 5' terminus of Manchester calicivirus
No full textAn enteric calicivirus showing the classic cup-shaped surface morphology was identified in a stool sample obtained from a child with symptoms of acute gastroenteritis (Portishead virus, PHV). Genomic RNA was extracted directly from the PHV stool sample and amplified by RT-PCR using primers based on the Manchester isolate of HuCV. The 3' terminus of the cDNA was defined by homopolymer tailing with dATP and revealed an additional 165 nucleotides suggesting that the previously determined Manchester HuCV (MV) genome sequence was incomplete. Homopolymer tailing of MV cDNA primed using sequence data from the 5' terminus of PHV allowed extension of the MV genome by a further 165 nucleotides thereby increasing the overall genome length to 7431 nucleotides and resulting in an additional 72 amino acids at the N-terminus of the polyprotein. A conserved sequence motif typical of other caliciviruses was also identified at the extreme 5'-terminus of the genome
Transforming Power Relationships: Leadership, Risk, and Hope. IHS Political Science Series No. 135, May 2013
No full textChronic communal conflicts resemble the prisoner’s dilemma. Both communities prefer peace to war. But neither trusts the other, viewing the other’s gain as its own loss, so
potentially shared interests often go unrealized.
Achieving positive-sum outcomes from apparently zero-sum struggles requires a kind of riskembracing leadership. To succeed leaders must: a) see power relations as potentially
positive-sum; b) strengthen negotiating adversaries instead of weakening them; and c) demonstrate hope for a positive future and take great personal risks to achieve it.
Such leadership is exemplified by Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk in the South African democratic transition. To illuminate the strategic dilemmas Mandela and de Klerk faced, we examine the work of Robert Axelrod, Thomas Schelling, and Josep Colomer, who highlight important dimensions of the problem but underplay the role of risk-embracing leadership. Finally we discuss leadership successes and failures in the Northern Ireland settlement and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Journeys into Seeing: Amateur Film-making and Tourist Encounters in Soviet Russia, c. 1932
No full textThis article examines in detail amateur film imagery of Soviet-era Russia held in the North West Film Archive at Manchester Metropolitan University. It discusses footage made and shown during the early 1930s by an early regional cine enthusiast, and places the material within the context of contemporary developments of amateur film aesthetics, of meta-narratives of international relations, and most significantly of local inflections in the Manchester area of cultural exchange between the United Kingdom and the USSR. The article explores issues of East-West relations, identities and visual memory-making within broader considerations of amateur film practice, travel narration and tourism history
Ian Fraser: theology and ecumenism
No full textTim Duffy places the work of Ian Fraser in the context of Presbyterian culture, and more particularly as part of an influential network within the Church of Scotland in the 1950s and 1960s. The article also touches on Fraser’s work as a hymn-writer, his wider social commitments, and similarities between the shifting polarities of Hugh MacDiarmid’s thought and the dialectical play between the interpersonal and the social in Fraser’s work.Publisher PD
An Oral History of Footballing Communities at Liverpool and Manchester United Football Clubs
No full textMy three cited studies, The Kop, Red Voices and The Boot Room Boys, focus on two English football clubs, Liverpool and Manchester United and some of the footballing communities within these clubs. All three books use oral history as means of detailing various aspects for historical study.
The clubs have been deliberately chosen because they rank as the most successful and best supported clubs in English football. Red Voices is an oral history of fans at Manchester United and as such is a wider examination of the social history of the club’s fans and the culture of fandom at Old Trafford since the 1930s. The two other books are about Liverpool Football Club and focus on different communities. The Kop focuses on a particular area of the ground known as the Spion Kop, where the most fervent of Liverpool fans used to stand but now sit. The other book, The Boot Room Boys, focuses on a community that is centred on the club’s coaching staff who took up residence in the club’s boot room beneath the Main stand. This room took on mythical proportions during the 1960s, 70s and 80s when the club’s successes seemed to have emanated from the discussions, tactics and approach of its occupants.
Across these three publications interviews have been conducted with more than 250 people ranging from ordinary fans to owners, directors, players, administrators and managers. By drawing on this wide range of personal experiences, many going back to before the Second World War, it is possible to gauge the importance of the various communities to the footballing map and to ascertain the various changes that have taken place in the culture of football.
Backed by extensive research, the reader is able to reconsider the history of football spectatorship in the twentieth century through the experiences of pre-generational fans. My findings suggest that spectatorship divides into three distinct: the pre-1960s; the period 1962 to 1989; and the post Hillsborough period, 1989 to the present. The interviews detail the social, ethnic and gender makeup of spectators throughout the years and also reveal important findings on rites of passage and the role played by fathers and elder siblings in the initiation of younger people into spectatorship. Ritual also emerges as a crucial element in spectatorship. In the case of Liverpool Football Club the interviews suggest that being a ‘Kopite’ is a crucial statement in terms of social identity. Anfield, the home of Liverpool is also identified as the focal point for the emergence of chanting and singing by fans on the terraces in the 1960s. Fashion at Liverpool and hooliganism at Manchester United are shown to have been important in the later period identified as ‘fanatical fandom’. And finally there is evidence from the interviews to suggest that significant cultural changes in fandom have taken place with the introduction of all-seater stadia.
Not only does this testimony highlight the social history of spectatorship but it also encourages a new perspective, based on the individual experience which can also include emotional responses to spectatorship. In doing so this has had the effect of fleshing out the history of football, enabling it to break free from the traditional perspective of events on the pitch towards the inter-relationship between sport and everyday life
Stable dynamic walking over uneven terrain
No full textWe propose a constructive control design for stabilization of non-periodic trajectories of underactuated robots. An important example of such a system is an underactuated “dynamic walking” biped robot traversing rough or uneven terrain. The stabilization problem is inherently challenging due to the nonlinearity, open-loop instability, hybrid (impact) dynamics, and target motions which are not known in advance. The proposed technique is to compute a transverse linearization about the desired motion: a linear impulsive system which locally represents “transversal” dynamics about a target trajectory. This system is then exponentially stabilized using a modified receding-horizon control design, providing exponential orbital stability of the target trajectory of the original nonlinear system. The proposed method is experimentally verified using a compass-gait walker: a two-degree-of-freedom biped with hip actuation but pointed stilt-like feet. The technique is, however, very general and can be applied to a wide variety of hybrid nonlinear systems.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Grant 0746194
Trans-urban Networks of Learning, Mega Events and Policy Tourism: The Case of Manchester's Commonwealth and Olympic Games Projects
No full textThis paper argues for a rethinking of our understanding of what and where go into the ‘urban’ in the New Urban Politics (NUP). It contends that these issues have always been more complex, complicated and, most importantly, contested than has sometimes appeared to be the case in the literature. Using the example of one trans-urban policy learning network—that around the city of Manchester’s bids for the Olympic and Commonwealth Games—the paper makes the case for taking seriously the politics around comparison and referencing in making possible the NUP. It argues that there is a need to study the circuits, networks and webs in and through which urban knowledge and learning are constituted and moved around, and that often underpin the territorial outcomes that have been the traditional focus of scholars working on the NUP
Feedback controller parameterizations for reinforcement learning
No full textReinforcement Learning offers a very general framework for learning controllers, but its effectiveness is closely tied to the controller parameterization used. Especially when learning feedback controllers for weakly stable systems, ineffective parameterizations can result in unstable controllers and poor performance both in terms of learning convergence and in the cost of the resulting policy. In this paper we explore four linear controller parameterizations in the context of REINFORCE, applying them to the control of a reaching task with a linearized flexible manipulator. We find that some natural but naive parameterizations perform very poorly, while the Youla Parameterization (a popular parameterization from the controls literature) offers a number of robustness and performance advantages.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Award IIS-0746194
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