The Crisis of Fordism

This chapter offers an account of the crisis of Fordism in France from the 1970s on, identifying key developments at the global, national, and regional level, showing how these have affected corporate governance, so that by the 2000s the experience of work had radically altered. This will enable a clearer distinction between ‘post-Fordism’, a term we take in a general sense to refer to the unstable set of economic arrangements emerging from the crisis of Fordism, and ‘neo-liberalism’, understood as an ideological project that has exploited that crisis to push for welfare reductions and the liberalisation of global flows of goods, capital, and labour. This then leads into a critical review of a range of diagnoses of this situation, from those (Frédéric Lordon) who see it as the product of neo-liberalism as an exogenous ideological project, to those (Yann Moulier Boutang) who highlight its endogenous determinants within the contradictions of Fordism, to those (El Mouhoub Mouhoud and Dominique Plihon) who occupy a mid-point in these debates. The aim here is to begin sketching a new interpretative framework from a critical synthesis of these accounts.

A simple random walk model explains the disruption process of hierarchical, Eccentric three-body systems

ABSTRACT We study the disruption process of hierarchical three-body systems with bodies of comparable mass. Such systems have long survival times that vary by orders of magnitude depending on the initial conditions. By comparing with three-body numerical integrations, we show that the evolution and disruption of such systems can be statistically described as a simple random walk process in the outer orbit’s energy, where the energy exchange per pericenter passage (step size) is calculated from the initial conditions. In our derivation of the step size, we use previous analytic results for parabolic encounters, and average over the (Kozai–Lidov) oscillations in orbital parameters, which are faster then the energy diffusion time-scale. While similar random walk models were studied before, this work differs in two manners: (a) this is the first time that the Kozai–Lidov averaged step size is derived from first principles and demonstrated to reproduce the statistical evolution of numerical ensembles without fitting parameters, and (b) it provides a characteristic lifetime, instead of answering the binary question (stable/unstable), set by case-specific criteria.

An Analysis of Interlanguage Features and English Learning

The term interlanguage was first used by American linguist, Larry Selinker. It is the unique linguistic systembecause it is neither L1 nor L2 but at the same time bears resemblances to both, which functions as a relatively systematic transition from initial knowledge of a language tonative proficiency during the process of language acquisition, is always regarded as an unstable set of language characteristics produced by learners.Fossilization in interlanguage is significantin English learning.it is a universal phenomenon in Second Language Acquisition and it derives from multiple factors. This paper analyzes the conception and the causes of the phenomenon. Through this research, we should hold a totally different view from traditional one on the nature and function of teacher’s training, teaching materials and the handling of the learners’ errors, etc.It try to propose some solutions to dealing with fossilization so as to improve the effect gains in English learning.

Exact conditions for preservation of the partial indices of a perturbed triangular 2 × 2 matrix function

The possible instability of partial indices is one of the important constraints in the creation of approximate methods for the factorization of matrix functions. This paper is devoted to a study of a specific class of triangular matrix functions given on the unit circle with a stable and unstable set of partial indices. Exact conditions are derived that guarantee a preservation of the unstable set of partial indices during a perturbation of a matrix within the class. Thus, even in this probably simplest of cases, when the factorization technique is well developed, the structure of the parametric space (guiding the types of matrix perturbations) is non-trivial.

A Data Segmentation-Based Ensemble Classification Method for Power System Transient Stability Status Prediction with Imbalanced Data

In recent years, machine learning methods have shown the great potential for real-time transient stability status prediction (TSSP) application. However, most existing studies overlook the imbalanced data problem in TSSP. To address this issue, a novel data segmentation-based ensemble classification (DSEC) method for TSSP is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the effects of the imbalanced data problem on the decision boundary and classification performance of TSSP are investigated in detail. Then, a three-step DSEC method is presented. In the first step, the data segmentation strategy is utilized for dividing the stable samples into multiple non-overlapping stable subsets, ensuring that the samples in each stable subset are not more than the unstable ones, then each stable subset is combined with the unstable set into a training subset. For the second step, an AdaBoost classifier is built based on each training subset. In the final step, decision values from each AdaBoost classifier are aggregated for determining the transient stability status. The experiments are conducted on the Northeast Power Coordinating Council 140-bus system and the simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can significantly improve the classification performance of TSSP with imbalanced data.

Regular approximate factorization of a class of matrix-function with an unstable set of partial indices

From the classic work of Gohberg & Krein (1958 Uspekhi Mat. Nauk. XIII , 3–72. (Russian).), it is well known that the set of partial indices of a non-singular matrix function may change depending on the properties of the original matrix. More precisely, it was shown that if the difference between the largest and the smallest partial indices is larger than unity then, in any neighbourhood of the original matrix function, there exists another matrix function possessing a different set of partial indices. As a result, the factorization of matrix functions, being an extremely difficult process itself even in the case of the canonical factorization, remains unresolvable or even questionable in the case of a non-stable set of partial indices. Such a situation, in turn, has became an unavoidable obstacle to the application of the factorization technique. This paper sets out to answer a less ambitious question than that of effective factorizing matrix functions with non-stable sets of partial indices, and instead focuses on determining the conditions which, when having known factorization of the limiting matrix function, allow to construct another family of matrix functions with the same origin that preserves the non-stable partial indices and is close to the original set of the matrix functions.

Wieler solenoids, Cuntz–Pimsner algebras and -theory

We study irreducible Smale spaces with totally disconnected stable sets and their associated $K$-theoretic invariants. Such Smale spaces arise as Wieler solenoids, and we restrict to those arising from open surjections. The paper follows three converging tracks: one dynamical, one operator algebraic and one $K$-theoretic. Using Wieler’s theorem, we characterize the unstable set of a finite set of periodic points as a locally trivial fibre bundle with discrete fibres over a compact space. This characterization gives us the tools to analyse an explicit groupoid Morita equivalence between the groupoids of Deaconu–Renault and Putnam–Spielberg, extending results of Thomsen. The Deaconu–Renault groupoid and the explicit Morita equivalence lead to a Cuntz–Pimsner model for the stable Ruelle algebra. The $K$-theoretic invariants of Cuntz–Pimsner algebras are then studied using the Cuntz–Pimsner extension, for which we construct an unbounded representative. To elucidate the power of these constructions, we characterize the Kubo–Martin–Schwinger (KMS) weights on the stable Ruelle algebra of a Wieler solenoid. We conclude with several examples of Wieler solenoids, their associated algebras and spectral triples.

A socio-cognitive approach to historical politeness

The central argument of this paper is that “politeness”, when looked at not as a theoretical term but as a lexeme in the English language, has a relatively unstable set of cognitive concepts for which it prompts when used. The first-order notion of “politeness” developed by Watts, Ide and Ehlich (1992a), Watts (2003, 2005) and Locher (2004) entails the need for a very different form of theorisation from the rationalist/objectivist approach presented in Brown and Levinson ([1978] 1987). The only way to develop such a new “theory” of first-order “politeness” is to take positively and negatively evaluated linguistic expressions referring to the general area of “politeness” (polite, polished, refined, well-mannered, standoffish, etc.) to prompt for the socio-cognitive construction of a range of meanings that do not always correspond to one another or even overlap, i.e. to develop a socio-cognitive constructionist approach to emergent social practice. In terms of looking at “politeness” from a historical point of view, it is obviously difficult if not impossible to reconstruct the forms of emergent social practice, but English writings during the early eighteenth century are replete with references to terms such as polite, polished, affected, politeness, etc. The close study of how such terms are used reveals that what was understood by them was very different from what politeness researchers of today understand by “politeness”, and such differences can only be accounted for by positing a relativist model that can account for variability and change.

Dynamics and Control of the Reaction Mass Pendulum (RMP) as a 3D Multibody System: Application to Humanoid Modeling

Humans and humanoid robots are often modeled with different types of inverted pendulum models in order to simplify the dynamic analysis of gait, balance and fall. We have earlier introduced the Reaction Mass Pendulum (RMP), an extension of the traditional inverted pendulum models, which explicitly captures the variable rotational inertia and angular momentum of the human or humanoid. In this paper we present a thorough analysis of the RMP, which is treated as a 3D multibody system in its own right. We derive the complete kinematics and dynamics equations of the RMP system and obtain its equilibrium conditions. Next we present a nonlinear control scheme that stabilizes this underactuated system about an unstable set with a vertically upright configuration for the “leg” of the RMP. Finally we demonstrate the effectiveness of this controller in simulation.